Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site caip.RUTGERS.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!ut-sally!topaz!caip!IEEE-CS From: IEEE-CS@SU-SIERRA.ARPA Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga Subject: Re: Reply to: Questions about ST vs. AMIGA Message-ID: <832@caip.RUTGERS.EDU> Date: Mon, 23-Dec-85 19:30:31 EST Article-I.D.: caip.832 Posted: Mon Dec 23 19:30:31 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 25-Dec-85 03:29:01 EST Sender: daemon@caip.RUTGERS.EDU Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 39 From: IEEE CS Students Erik Freed writes: > I would still like to know why the Amiga even with a 68020 and fast memory > still is significantly slower than the ST. Is their a hardware type out their > who can look at the memory cycles and see why the current claims of "no cpu > slowing due to graphics chips" seems to not be proved by the real world. If > I had one I would do it myself. If possible could a Amiga hardware engineer > explain this disparity? It seems very strange. P.S. I know that the clock is > slightly slower. Well, as they say, there are lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. As far as I can tell, ALL of the benchmarks quoted on the net so far have been tests of the COMPILERS, rather than the machines -- and, since I program mostly in assembly language anyway, have little meaning as regards the code I'll produce. Still, if anyone would care to settle the issue once and for all, let's see if someone out in netland can get his/her hands on an ASSEMBLY-LANGUAGE version of these same benchmarks. Then, we would see a much better comparison of the power of the two machines. My educated guess is that the slightly slower clock speed of the Amiga, plus the overhead introduced by its multitasking executive, will make it come in at about 10% below the Atari in raw computational speed. On the other hand, for high-speed graphics work (does anyone have a realistic benchmark for this?), I would expect the Amiga to win by a factor of 10 or so. In any case, the current comparisons are comparing apples to oranges, and should be treated as such. Both machines are significantly faster than anything that has hit the consumer market before, so -- in the final analysis -- does it really matter, anyway? Brett Glass -------