Message from discussion Windows crashes. Was: The AAA and AGA

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From: s...@cy.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Windows crashes. Was: The AAA and AGA
Date: 16 Jun 1993 15:37:08 GMT
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science
Lines: 82
Message-ID: <1vnen4$h0j@Tut.MsState.Edu>
References: <1993Jun15.180848.29688@seas.gwu.edu> <1993Jun16.150844.549@sol.ctr.columbia.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cy.cs.olemiss.edu

In article <1993Jun16.150844....@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> je...@msi.com (Jerry Shekhel) writes:
>Gerald G. Washington (ger...@seas.gwu.edu) wrote:
>: >
>: >Are you saying that AmigaOS's application availability is comparable to that
>: >of Windows?  Oh, I get it; it's a joke, right?
>:
>: The infamous Shekhel-Subject-Shift strikes again.
>
>Ah, the infamous Gerald-O-Matic Bitching Machine is in full operation again.

Thank goodness!  At least we can count on a number of arguments 
involving the Amiga from you two!  That may be enough to justify
the existence of this oh-so-horrid newsgroup to the tighty-whitey
(that means that their jockey underwear is too small, not anything
racist, BTW) crybabies who want to disband it.  :-)

>: Obviously, both AmigaDOS and Windows have application availability.  More or
>: less doesn't make it a feature.  Some ATI local bus graphics card can display
>: higher resolutions than AGA, but that doesn't make graphics a unique feature
>: of the ATI card.
>
>Try "high resolution graphics".

Just to add a bit of fuel to the fire, let's discuss not only the
resolution of the ATI board, but also the bandwidth of it versus
that of the AGA and 3rd party Amiga boards in the same price range.
Under MSDOS, the 66MHz DX2 machine that I am using maxes out at
around 44M/sec using 32bit transfers to main memory for both reads
and writes.  The ATI VLB board gets 22M/sec for writes and 10M/sec
for reads using 32bit transfers in all video modes up to 1280x1024
in 256 colors.  

Now, it has been stated by some that the A4000/040 with AGA can do
around 3.5M/sec to Chip RAM, others have claimed 7M/sec.  There has
been lots of folks talking about the Retina and other boards which
offer resolutions similar to that of the ATI and other SVGA boards,
but no mention of the bandwidth to the on-board VRAM.  I suspect 
that it is certainly better than AGA, but when the board is Zorro II,
I can't help but think that it wouldn't be all that fast.  Zorro III
certainly has the potential, but the manufacturers seem to shy away
from it due to the small market size.  

Another point that some will certainly make is that the ATI and a
66MHz DX2 are by no means low-end.  Therefore, let's also throw a
low-end Clone into the equation, equipped as follows:

33MHz 486DX
4M RAM
64k cache
1M VLB SVGA, 1024x768x256, 800x600x64k, 640x480x16.7M
VLB IDE Combo (2 Serial, 1 Parallel, 1 Game Port)
233M 12.5ms IDE Hard Drive w/128k cache
Case, Keyboard, and Mouse
Gravis UltraSound 16bit Sound Board
MS-DOS & Windows 3.1
~$1500

This is a bit more than an A1200HD with monitor, but to bring the
machines more in line, one of the 030 boards and an equivalent 
sized HD would most certainly do the trick.  As there is really
nothing for the Amiga to match the GUS, we'll pretend that there
is no big difference in the quality. 

A friend of mine just purchased such a system as above and of course
I measured its performance.  It only managed 12M/sec for writes and
5M/sec for reads using 32bits, but then again, the video board was
under $100, even with VLB.  This is less than the ATI, but more than
a match for AGA.  Personally, while I think that the AGA has some
advantages over SVGA, overall, it is severely lacking with respect
to performance and value.  It's great if all you want to do is play
games, but for GUI's and other work, it just doesn't cut it.

>: -- Gerald
>--
>+-------------------+----------------------------+---------------------------+
>| JERRY J. SHEKHEL  | Molecular Simulations Inc. | Time just fades the pages |
>| Drummers do it... |     Burlington, MA USA     | in my book of memories.   |
>|    ... In rhythm! |        je...@msi.com       |         -- Guns N' Roses  |
>+-------------------+----------------------------+---------------------------+

Skip Sauls
s...@cy.cs.olemiss.edu