3D - F030 vs Amiga 1200

[Flash951]

Realtime 3D is useless or limited on both machines, that's why I don't understand the compare parameters.

If you compare you got to count Fast Memory on the 1200, because it was standard, all people had it. Many games and programs would not work without it. When added, the CPU MIPS goes from 2x an Amiga 500 to about 5x an Amiga 500. It was less than 100 bucks, and it added the missing RTC to. The same goes for RAM expansion in A500 and A1000 too, the games required it and it was less than 100 bucks.

The AGA has broader bandwith, allowing for hardware scrolling of hires, hires sprites and so on. It has 24 bit - 16,8 mill color palette (A030 has 18 bit), The co-processors has nothing to do directly with 3D, but it takes the CPU load off for the other things when displaying 3D, so the CPU only has to do the 3D. Using "Chunky" on the F030 for example will make little CPU left for the 3D calculations. Amiga is like Atari ST series, 2D platforms. Back then, you need a Silicon Graphics workstation or a SGI Mini or something to get good realtime 3D.

When it comes to making professional 3D, Amiga 3000 and 4000 was sold bundled with Video Toaster systems as Video Toaster Amiga, that hardware included special processor for faster 3D rendering, Lightwave, and also supported multiple Amigas as render farms. This 3D system was used for creating first seasons of Babylon 5 on TV, special effects for Robocop movie, like the rpg missils, Seaquest movie etc.

On Amiga you also get RTG cards with real 3D hardware and Open GL support, like with Cybervision 64.

Capture source looks like emulator to me...no doubt ran with an emulated 50Mhz 030

I just tested this demo on my own A1200, it ran silk smooth, just like the YouTube one.

[ctirad]

I agree, F030 seems like a powerful computer with lots of useful features for the price. But if you only "count" number of features you get, the the Amiga 1200 also has it features, like custom co-processors like Alice and Lisa (copper, blitter), denise, paula, that takes the CPU load off,

Well, the STE/F030 have blitter as well but on the higher end machines it is barely usable.
The copper is just a simple timer tied to the position of the video beam, that can make simple tasks like to change pallete or registers or perform and interrput. Nice thing for a 1980 raster effects in demos, but pretty useless for 3D or any production usage.

The other chips you named are just RAMDACs, soundchips or controllers like MFP, VIDEL, COMBEL or ACIA.

It can display 262 144 colors (18-bit) in HAM-8.

The HAM/HAM8 are not regular modes that could be used for anyting. They are similar to Photochrome or Spectrum512 on ST/E with a similar limitations.

The graphics has 32 bit DMA to chip RAM, and would not "slow" the CPU bandwith down like on the F030.

That is not true. In fact it is exactly the oposite.
Firstly, the DMA doesn't mean it won't slow the BUS. It Does. It is just save the CPU cycles.

Secondly, the VIDEL chip in F030 has 32bit access to the ST-RAM. And it is 32MHz with possibility to overclock to 50Mhz easily. This is a HUGE difference.
Thanks to that, Falcon can do nice and ergonomic VGA modes, while the VGA on Amiga is just a joke.

The core of the Amiga OS in a 512 Kb ROM (Kickstart 3.0 or 3.1), fully multitasking system.

But with no memory protection and due to ignorance of the original authors it is imposible to add later. The multitasking is thus windows95 like.

[ctirad]

If you compare you got to count Fast Memory on the 1200, because it was standard, all people had it.

It was standard because it was a must if you didn't want to stuck with the games started from the floppy. That was the reason I decided to switch the platfrom, because the A1200 + accelerator costed about the same as F030 and still there were no HD floppy, no better audio, no usable VGA atc atc...

[ctirad]

Capture source looks like emulator to me...no doubt ran with an emulated 50Mhz 030

Why do you think? The demo is very oldschool, most of the effects you can see even on STE, just with less colors and lower framerate.

[shoggoth]

Flash951: You still miss the point. "3D - F030 vs Amiga 1200". We're talking stock machines. Naturally both suck at this by modern standards, but it's pretty clear that the F030 has a significant edge compared to the A1200. Nothing in the AGA chipset "takes the load off" here, because it's all CPU (and/or DSP in the case of F030). I say this from a coder perspective, with no bias whatsoever. Fastram wasn't standard, it was an additional option, so just please get the point - "3D - F030 vs Amiga 1200". It's not an "Amiga vs Atari" thread.

The AGA has broader bandwith, allowing for hardware scrolling of hires, hires sprites and so on.

No. Every coder active on both platforms *knows* this. AGA has *less* bandwidth, that's why F030 ports of TBL demos etc. runs faster or this machine compared to the A1200 + similar accellerator.

Using "Chunky" on the F030 for example will make little CPU left for the 3D calculations.

Not really, because it's a native chunky mode, compared to the nasty C2P-thing you'd have to do on the A1200.

When it comes to making professional 3D, Amiga 3000 and 4000 was sold bundled with Video Toaster systems as Video Toaster Amiga, that hardware included special processor for faster 3D rendering, Lightwave, and also supported multiple Amigas as render farms. This 3D system was used for creating first seasons of Babylon 5 on TV, special effects for Robocop movie, like the rpg missils, Seaquest movie etc.

Completely off topic. Read the subject line.

On Amiga you also get RTG cards with real 3D hardware and Open GL support, like with Cybervision 64.

Completely off topic, read the topic line.

Don't get me wrong - there are lots of stuff to compare and discuss, but you're trying to make a point by stating "my expanded Amiga is faster than your unexpanded Falcon", which is plain silly.

[Flash951]

Here are my setup to day, the Atari 520 ST in the box, the Amiga 1200 on the table.

commodore_game_room-atarist520-floppies.jpg

commodore_game_room-a1200.jpg

[shoggoth]

Here are my setup to day, the Atari 520 ST in the box, the Amiga 1200 on the table.

Very nice setup, but you're in the wrong thread

[Flash951]

You've right, wrong thread.
I agree 030@16 will make realtime 3D faster than 020@14 when doing only that, so don't misunderstand. But I don't see the meaning of a thread discussing something that narrow and meaningless.

[calimero]

Thread is not meaningless.

Capture source looks like emulator to me...no doubt ran with an emulated 50Mhz 030

Why do you think? The demo is very oldschool, most of the effects you can see even on STE, just with less colors and lower framerate.

I am still confusef how they manage to make Nexus 7?!? It has huge, complex and fast 3D textuing on 14mhz 1200 with fastram. What demo on STe is similar to this (regarding 3d parts)? There are demos on Falcon that are similar to Nexus 7 but I expected more from Falcon since it has dsp (or: I expected less from Amiga )

Just like new demo for ST - Thunderdome - how they make so huge 3d objects to run so fast?!? (I did not see anything like that on Amiga 500).

There is also one great A1200 demo with lot of 3D objects (it start similari to Sonoluminizer by Avena with 3d fish but in Amiga demo there are twice as much fish ). I can not remeber the name of that Amiga demo but I will!

[Flash951]

Looks like they got inspired by this Amiga 500 demo from 1993
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4M7e79XTYk.

[calimero]

How much cycles A1200 spend on C2P?
Is there any special tricks/optimizations? (Like movep in ST planar mode?)

[Flash951]

A typical demo on A500 with an HAM (4096 colour) raytraced 3D animation on the end of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuesTvUYsSc

[ctirad]

I am still confusef how they manage to make Nexus 7?!? It has huge, complex and fast 3D textuing on 14mhz 1200 with fastram.

Are we talking about the same demo? The only part with texturing is the 3D sphere. It is not even a full lowres but likely a 2x2.

Just like new demo for ST - Thunderdome - how they make so huge 3d objects to run so fast?!? (I did not see anything like that on Amiga 500).

The second part of Thuderdome is indeed a masterpiece. The ST have a advantage over the A500 because of slightly faster CPU clock, RAM access and diffent organisation of the bitaplnes, that allows faster C2P conversions. On the other side there is limited pallete, only PSG sound and no overscan.

[ctirad]

A typical demo on A500 with an HAM (4096 colour) raytraced 3D animation on the end of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuesTvUYsSc

And the same animation on the plain ST without HAM at all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V043KPRO4ts

[Flash951]

Just a little bit worse picture quality because of fewer colours and downscaled because of lacking overscan resolution and dithering instead of colours, and little bit worse music do to the sound hardware etc.

[shoggoth]

@Flash951: It's not like this forum constitutes a parallell universe where everyone is magically unaware of what an Amiga is and hence needs to be educated about this, and even if that was the case, I'd prefer to receive technical details from someone who actually *knows* what the technical details are.

If you read the topic, it says "3D - F030 vs Amiga 1200", and you fail completely to form some kind of technical argument within that context. You're in the wrong thread - you may not like the topic - but it *is* the topic.

[ctirad]

Just a little bit worse picture quality because of fewer colours and downscaled because of lacking overscan resolution and dithering instead of colours, and little bit worse music do to the sound hardware etc.

Sure, it's just an ST with a 16/512 colors, framebuffer and nothing more. But on a CRT TV you will barely see the difference without side by side comparison.

[Cyprian]

The graphics has 32 bit DMA to chip RAM, and would not "slow" the CPU bandwith down like on the F030.

but it slows down A1200, especially in 256 color mode.
Videl in Falcon has also full 32bit access to the RAM, also it has a better bus bandwidth which is visible especially in 256color mode where it's faster than a1200 in the same mode,

The main issue with A1200/A3000/A4000 is that all of those machines are just a bit upgraded A500. The most important chips are directly taken from A500. Like Alice (old Agnus) which has the same memory access time as A500, has the same old slow 16bit blitter and old 16bit copper; or Paula with its 8bit sound. I wonder why they didn't changed/improved those functions since 1984!

The only real change is a wider bus - 32bit vs 16bit in A500 and two more bitplanes (8) for video than A500.

Why not compare "F030?" with "A4000/040", or "A4000t/060"?

Why not. But I guess you would be a bit surprised.
Below you can find a memory performance for stock Falcon and A4000:

Code: Select all

                                        Read LW (MB/s)   Write LW (MB/s)
Falcon 030/16, ST-ram                            5.345             6.488
Amiga 4000, 030/25, Chipram                      3.100             4.300

More figures you can find there: Falcon's 16bit bus myth - 32bit vs 16bit war

[ctirad]

If you read the topic, it says "3D - F030 vs Amiga 1200",

Well, the answer it is pretty straghtforward and obivous. Even if you forget the DSP and possible overclocking, the F030 has faster CPU, faster BUSes, more chipRAM, faster treuecolor chunky mode and even faster C2P in planar modes due to different bitplane organisation. Any 3D that Amiga can do, F030 will do faster and with more colors. End of story.

[calimero]

OFFTOPIC ahead:

The main issue with A1200/A3000/A4000 is that all of those machines are just a bit upgraded A500. The most important chips are directly taken from A500. Like Alice (old Agnus) which has the same memory access time as A500, has the same old slow 16bit blitter and old 16bit copper; or Paula with its 8bit sound. I wonder why they didn't changed/improved those functions since 1984!

because Commodore management was real mess.

Dave Haynie wrote quite many text about development process in Commodore. They even had Amiga 3000 prototype with DSP and 16bit sound but Commodore want to rush things and they made Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 instead of further develop Amiga 3000. It looks like they run of time, it is understandable that Commodore want new machine that can sell ASAP.

EDIT: even better, you can listen Dave talk about development of Amiga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rcr2CFV0T4I !!
He talks exactly about memory, bus-es...!

It is similar with Atari: It took 5 years to complete 32-bit successor to Atari ST which come to market under name TT! Atari had quite few prototypes like EST before TT.

[Flash951]

Many of the arguments here are in my opinion based on myths and lack of knowledge about the Amiga.

For example the memory speed of the A4000.
He measured the CHIP RAM speed of the Economy model 030 version of the A4000, this RAM is not used by the CPU, only fast RAM is used by CPU. This model was never sold or delivered without Fast RAM on the mainboard (4-16 Mb). His example was of the RAM speed of the Economy model 030, the tower models I mentioned doesn't even exists with 030, only 040 or 060.

Another example: "VGA output from the Amiga is useless"
Why is that useless? I used VGA output all the time for productivity. On my early A500 I upgraded the chip set to ECS (A500+) to be able to output VGA, and I used it for all productivity. Also in school for learning graphic design, all the Amiga 4000 used VGA output. The school also had A2500 computers wish used "VGA" output (31kHz) using the flicker fixer that came with it.

@Flash951: It's not like this forum constitutes a parallell universe where everyone is magically unaware of what an Amiga is and hence needs to be educated about this, and even if that was the case, I'd prefer to receive technical details from someone who actually *knows* what the technical details are.

If you read the topic, it says "3D - F030 vs Amiga 1200", and you fail completely to form some kind of technical argument within that context. You're in the wrong thread - you may not like the topic - but it *is* the topic.

The starter of this thread was visiting the Amiga forum and was doing the stuff you describe over there, that's what's got my attention in this thread.

[calimero]

If you read the topic, it says "3D - F030 vs Amiga 1200",

Well, the answer it is pretty straghtforward and obivous. Even if you forget the DSP and possible overclocking, the F030 has faster CPU, faster BUSes, more chipRAM, faster treuecolor chunky mode and even faster C2P in planar modes due to different bitplane organisation. Any 3D that Amiga can do, F030 will do faster and with more colors. End of story.

than Amiga coders really kick ass!
This is 14MHz 020 with FastRAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GmzmOQ6VWA
(there is even motion blur! )

[ctirad]

Dave Haynie wrote quite many text about development process in Commodore. They even had Amiga 3000 prototype with DSP and 16bit sound but Commodore want to rush things and they made Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000 instead of further develop Amiga 3000.

That is pity, the A3000 is the best Amiga ever made. It has SCSI, built in VGA scandoubler and stylish case. The A4000 is more like A1200 with a accelerator in ugly 286 like case. Still both machines are based around the same chipset as the A500+/A1200 as Commodore newer developed a new chipset for its highend machines.

It took 5 years to complete 32-bit successor to Atari ST which come to market under name TT! Atari had quite few prototypes like EST before TT.

The TT was not meant as ST successor in any case. It was pretty expensive worksatation originally designed in UniX on mind. Also it was pretty well designed, with the 32bit chipset, plenty of RAM, native VGA, 256 colors, 64bit access to ST-RAM. Sadly its F040 successor was never finished.

[calimero]

That is pity, the A3000 is the best Amiga ever made. It has SCSI, built in VGA scandoubler and stylish case. The A4000 is more like A1200 with a accelerator in ugly 286 like case. Still both machines are based around the same chipset as the A500+/A1200 as Commodore newer developed a new chipset for its highend machines.

That exactly Dave Haynie said!

please check youtube video that I put in my previous post!

[Cyprian]

Also it was pretty well designed, with the 32bit chipset

some of them are 64bit like Memory Controller, Funnel and Shifter which has 64bit access to the Ram

They even had Amiga 3000 prototype with DSP and 16bit sound

That is pity, the A3000 is the best Amiga ever made.

and also it was made from A500 parts. Beside an old memory cotroller/blitter/copper/paula also they used an old gfx chip ECS. It seems that they just changed a chassis and the CPU and put a new sticker.

It is similar with Atari: It took 5 years to complete 32-bit successor to Atari ST which come to market under name TT! Atari had quite few prototypes like EST before TT.

4 years, because of a key engineer left Atari.


From my point of view, the only a500 is a quite interesting machine. It has an interesting DMA functionality like blitter and copper (which is sometimes wrongly called as co-processor). The rest is just a cheap copy of a500