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From: jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <8704231521.AA21519@mitre-bedford.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 23-Apr-87 10:21:24 EST
Article-I.D.: mitre-be.8704231521.AA21519
Posted: Thu Apr 23 10:21:24 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Apr-87 04:31:18 EST
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Joel Plutchak writes:

>   ...Koronis Rift ...runs on all kinds of "impossibly slow"
>   machines (I have in mind particularly the 6502-based Atari 800 series).

This brings to mind the report some time ago of the "bouncing ball" demo
running side-by-side on an Amiga, an ST, and a 130XE.  The reporter said that
the animation was BY FAR the best on the 130XE.  Don't underestimate the power
of that little ANTIC chip in the 8-bitters!!!  Also, for passing bytes around
and controlling things in realtime, don't OVERestimate the advantage of an
8-MHz 68000 over a 1.8-Mhz 6502!!!  Many factors are involved in bottom-line
performance, and the more than 4 to 1 higher clock speed is ONE of them.
Another is the fact that the quickest 6502 instructions take 2 clock cycles,
while the 68000's quickest instructions, if I read the book arightly, take
14 or so.  (Well maybe 8 in a few cases?)  That's SEVEN to one the OTHER WAY,
i.e. the 6502 is AHEAD at the moment by nearly TWO TO ONE!  Then again, the
more flexible addressing modes of the 68000 may require many fewer
instructions to do the same thing.  For most tasks, the 68000 is probably 3 or
4 times as fast as the 6502.  Probably there are tasks where the advantage is
greater.  And probably there are a small set of tasks where the 6502 can equal
or SLIGHTLY EXCEED the speed of the 68000, which it would definitely do if it
could use almost exclusively 2-clock-cycle instructions and about the same
number of them per loop as the 68000!  Then, of course, there are the ANTIC
and the POKEY to consider, and if you are talking animated games, they count
for A LOT!!!  With all of these facts in mind, it is not at all surprising
that the 8-bitters can hold their own with the newer 16-bit machines in the
limited arena of games.

Long live the 8-bitters!!!!  LOAD and STORE forever!!!  (Which is what it
SEEMS like when your are programming them!!!)

-John Sangster, jhs@mitrebedford.arpa