Registering Interest for AmigaOne X1000

[billyfish]

Sorry, can't help you there...

With the content of your posts on threads such as these, I'm fairly sure you can't help me anywhere! :-)

Seriously, why are you so bothered by the X1000? Why do you care so much if people want to buy it or not? I'm genuinely interested in your motivation. It doesn't make any difference to me if people want to buy this, a power mac or a dead parrot as long as they're happy with their purchase, that's great.

As for any performance of the X1000, I quote from http://blog.hyperion-entertainment.biz/?p=580

"Given the rushed nature of this AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5 release, there are still some bugs and a few rough edges. Remember, the X1000 was originally planned to be released only with AmigaOS 4.2 installed. Also please keep in mind most of the X1000 system is still unoptimized. This is truly the most powerful Amiga Operating System hardware platform ever released and we plan to utilize this hardware to its full potential in due course."

Basically wait until the software is fully optimized for the X1000 before analysing performance too deeply.

[billyfish]

Someone asked how much A1X1K costs and so far takemehomegrandma's answer was closest one.

30 PowerMacs? As currency goes, it's a little bit cumbersome! :-)

The performance figure "A1X1K is roughly as fast as PowerMac" is also correct and not contradicting with the official Hyperion statement "the most powerful Amiga Operating System hardware platform ever released" at all. A1X1K is the fastest Amiga Operating System Hardware you can buy. Not fastest Amiga obviously but Hyperion never claimed that :-)

The relevant part was actually "Also please keep in mind most of the X1000 system is still unoptimized." My point is, as with any software, when it's in beta, it's not generally going to be running at the same speed as in its final polished state.

[billyfish]

Awesome! Maybe somebody can start a bounty to get the drivers written and OS4 out of beta!

Sigh, do you realise how long these things take to write, debug, optimise, etc? It's hard work. OS4, MorphOS and AROS are all playing catch up with regards to fully supporting the hardware, e.g sound card drivers for the 460, wireless support for the Mac Mini, etc. The issue's the same: do they wait until everything's fully finished (if such a thing exists with software...) or release it in state with rough edges?

I've had many years of being a programmer in that lovely, shiny boat and generally speaking it's a "damned if we do, damned if we don't" situation

By the way, whatever happened to the contractor who was writing the XMOS support for OS4?

No idea, but since it's nothing to do with me, I'm not surprised that they don't give me daily reports.

Same question as I asked grandma: why do you care so much about the X1000 and/or OS4? I assume you've no interest in buying one so why do you care if others do?

[billyfish]

This is a discussion board, meant for discussions...

Ok I'll repeat my question as part of this discursive joy: why do you care so much about something that you clearly have no intention of buying and won't affect you in any physical way? I'm fairly sure it's not like a puppy gets killed every time someone buys an X1000. I'm willing to guarantee that no animals were harmed during the making of the X1000 or OS4 if that helps you.

As for my response to the original topic, and to quote Darrin, DONE!

[billyfish]

I'll rather post it to "comparing MorphOS on quad core G5 vs AmigaOS 4 on dual core X1000" thread which would make as much sense, i.e. none.

I'm glad that we agree that the benchmark comparison has a sense rating of none as I explain below...

I know it's hard to accept that 5+ years old apple HW can beat your favorite, and is a lot cheaper, and is more easily available, and has better support and repair possibilities...

Piru, the X1000 software is still unoptimised. You know as well as I do that the benchmark comparisons aren't worth the pixels they're drawn with if you're comparing a debug-type build with an optimised one.

[OFF TOPIC]
I once built a large scale molecular simulation and after running and ananlysing it, managed to get a 900% increase, by changing all the distance comparisons to work in squared distances rather than Euclidean. I.e. getting rid of sqrt () from getting the distance from A to B worked wonders.
[/OFF TOPIC]

My point being compiler support and algorithm optimisation can make *HUGE* differences and given that they've said that it's currently unoptimised means that there is a large scope for improvement.


I'd suggest that a more accurate representation *as the software stands at the minute* would be

1. Code running on a single core on the PowerMacs is probably slightly quicker a single core of the X1000.

2. The memory access speeds on the X1000 are much faster than on the PowerMac.

3. The graphics card capabilities of the x1000 are much ahead of the Mac Mini.

4. All these are subject to change as OS4 and MorphOS code gets more optimised for these systems.

Would you agree with this?

[billyfish]

I'm providing a critical view in a community where criticism aren't allowed, consumer awareness about better alternatives in a community with a long tradition of shifting semi-functional products to gullible trade mark followers at an overprice, and rational thinking in a community where all rationality and logic seemingly left over a decade ago. "The usual suspects" always come moaning abou this, as we see in this thread as well.

Let's look at the "provocative" picture again, that made some of them cough their Kool-Aid all over their Boing-Ball branded keyboard from Amigakit:

provocative, as in titillating? I can't say an orgy with 30 power macs really does it for me :-)

What provokes them aren't the fact that this is roughly how many (depending on your search abilities) PPC NG computers you can get for *the same* amount of money as one single A1X1K system. No, what provokes them is the fact that someone has the nerve to actually point this out!

WTF?!? Do you genuinely believe that criticism, constructive or otherwise, isn't allowed isn't allowed on this forum???

Billyfish, I will keep enlighten the world about things like this, about the alternatives you can choose instead. Don't like this? Well, too bad...

But you bang on about it in every single os4-related thread. Do you genuinely think you become more persuasive by repeating something over and over again? I absolutely concede that there's a very different price point between an x1000 and a morphos-enabled mac. You mention the alternatives you can choose instead, the point is if someone *still* chooses to get the X1000, that's their prerogative. Why it bothers you so much is just plain bonkers to me. In the same way I can't imagine sitting here fuming that somebody has decided to buy 5 country and western albums even though I said I didn't like that music, HOW DARED THEY!! ;-)

[billyfish]

@billyfish


Thanks, I enjoyed that. Funniest thing in the entire thread, and anyone who read the entire thread will appreciate the competition for laughs contained within

It's a scary day when *IM* marvelling at the stupidity and immaturity on display

Thank you! /me takes a bow :-)

[billyfish]

Having a motherboard only option would not only lower the cost (face it, they *are* making a premium on the components - that's only basic business sense), but would have actually got me on the sign up sheet regarding pre-orders if the price on the mobo was acceptable.  

This is an interesting point, I agree that having a motherboard-only option would be a good idea. Hypothetically speaking, given the price for the pre-built system, what price would the motherboard need to be approximately for you to want to go for it? I wonder if there were enough people of a similar view to you whether Trevor and co might be tempted to offer that option.

[billyfish]

This claim keeps resurfacing, but I haven't seen any valid data to back this up.

I'm going by Steve Solie's comment on the Hyperion blog. Since neither you nor I have access to the OS4 code, I see no reason not to take him at his word.

This makes little practical difference as there are no 3D drivers for the new cards. MorphOS is massively ahead in 3D.

I disagree on this being of little practical difference since this is currently being worked on by Hans de Ruiter and the Friedens on the OpenGL implementation means we'll see a leap in performance when this comes into play.

I don't see much performance improvements coming from code optimizations at this point, at least for MorphOS. MorphOS has been fairly optimal for years.

Now, it might be that OS4 is still lagging behind in numerous ways but considering it has been way over 10 years now I can't see how it would change anytime soon.

On this I'll agree that MorphOS appears to be more optimised but I disagree that OS4 can't catch up. I think one of the reasons that OS4 took longer to get going is that prior to the SAMs being released, OS4 was limited to cyberstorm boards, whereas MorphOS had made the leap to the PPC macs. I think that there's definitely the potential for OS4 on the X1000 to take up some of this slack. I guess time will tell which one of us has the less murky crystal ball.

[billyfish]

It's not like MorphOS has been standing still regarding 3D either, but I assumed "accurate representation *as the software stands at the minute*". So we'll consider "future tech" after all?

Fair point, my fourth point was more future looking.

I'd say it's rather the opposite. Most of the MorphOS optimizations were already done by the time MorphOS was ported to Mac mini. Bulk of the work was done on the slower systems where the difference in optimization could be easily felt in practice.

I think it's rather the opposite that might happen. With all the raw CPU crunch and especially fast memory bus around it is IMHO more likely that basic optimizations are not done because performance is already adequate with less optimal code. Similar progression has happened with Linux for instance where for instance reliance on large CPU caches and fast memory bus has severely hurt performance on low end systems.

I see where you're coming from but I can give you another context. When I had a piece of software that took about an hour to compile on my 1200, it made testing, changing, debugging and optimising the code so much slower. Moving on to compiling it on my pc brought the compilation time down to about a couple of minutes. So whereas I could maybe build the project 4-5 times in a day previously, on my pc I could be way more productive. My desire to optimise the code remained exactly the same (I think most developers brought up on Amigas have a similar urge) and the massive increase in productivity meant I could do this without aging in front of a slow moving make process!

The point is the faster your development systems is, the more productive you can be. You can still test the software on a slower system in terms of finding optimistations.

The other side of optimisation are things like being able to utilise software that takes advantage of the extra system resources to hand, mpi and fftw spring to mind.

[billyfish]

@drHirudo

FYI Odyssey a.k.a. MUIOWB is the most popular browser for Amiga.

Really?? I think it's a fine piece of work and hats off to Fab and co for it, but for example netsurf-m68k has 13760 downloads. Don't you think that there are more classic systems (especially including amikit, etc.) and consequently it's 68k-based browsers that are in use the most. Checking the logs of places such as here, amigaword, amigans, will give a better indication I guess.

[billyfish]

Isn't a platform migration the natural thing to do at that point? There is no "Power" in PowerPC, not in the year 2012 and beyond! ARM and/or x86, but not PPC! Since those features would require a break from the past, why continue with PPC at all? Why not bring the new platform onto a modern architecture? For example, if MorphOS developers would want to start exploring 64-bit support for the future (as suggested by Fab in his presentation of MorphOS future), why would they do that on a *dead* G5 platform (or PA6T for that matter)? I mean, if the legacy is to be broken anyway, why not migrate to greener pastures while you are at it?

It depends upon what your starting point is. Bear in mind x86 is little-endian and AFAIK arm processors are bi-endian.

I still haven't got a simple answer on why you care so much if someone buys an x1000. It's their money and to be honest if you turn my question on its head, why do you think they should care what your opinion is? You're happy with MorphOS on PowerMacs? Great, simply enjoy it then. I pity your poor wife/gf/partner if they have the audacity to pick a different brand of orange juice to the one you like and you bang on about it like this for 20 years! :-)

[billyfish]

Yes you might be right on that. Although... never mind, lets discuss it on another thread another time

Deal! Over a pint! :-)

[billyfish]

Firstly, I have no interest in NG "amiga" options anymore. If I want a machine to deal with the modern world, I'll use a modern machine, simple as that (and I'll get it for cheaper than either OS4 or MOS' cost of entry). Now I say this so people are under no illusions as to my agenda. This said:

This is an amiga website. There's few outside eyes watching. People know what theyre buying into, they know the stories, they know prices/pros/cons.

Do all the clowns that keep posting the same **** over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (yes, its excessive to type the same thing so often, but some people think this is normal) is enlightening anyone? Do they think theyre providing any revalations? Are they really so stupid as to think people dont see right through any feeble attempts to cover thier real agenda? People who are interested in something arent going to be swayed by people so transparent they irritate even those with no interest. Want to promote your system of choice? Great, but these negative tactics lose any value pretty quickly, to a point that any interest someone originally had in the product promoted by those using negative tactics also fades pretty quickly.

Personally I love my a1200 still. It cost me a pretty penny to upgrade it to a point its on par with a mac or pc Id have thown away 15 years ago, but guess what? I dont give a ****, it's my hobby and I enjoy it. No amount ot negativity from strangers who by now sound either like turrets sufferers stuck on a groove, or mentally challenged will change that.

This isnt to say I dont find some benchmarks interesting, I do, but there's only so many times a person can find a tenuous segue and repeat the same thing before they make people like me lose interest (someone who was previously interested in all amiga options until the community changed his mind with all the bull****(and make no mistake this isnt just one camp either)).

So no, youre not "informing people", youre doing damage and making the amiga scene appear as screwed up as it really is.

Totally agree, though I think you missed out a couple of "and over"'s :-)