Amiga emulators: is it worth it?

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Running WinUAE on a modern PC is now for me, perfect... It is more compatible than my real Amigas... That is to say, I only need one WinUAE, when I would need to use several different models of real Amiga, and I can also build any config I need.

My real Amigas are now museum exhibits... Preserved to show my grandchildren... But as I have mentioned before, display technology is moving on and it won't be long before I have no way to get Video Output from an Amiga that is compatible with any display device...
Even my last VGA monitor is due to be dumped in 4 months... Then I will be DVI only...  

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@StormLord

Well I use E-UAE on my Macbook Pro to run OctaMED... While E-UAE is not even close to the level of WinUAE, I do get Audio latency below 8ms, which as a professional musician is better than the minimum required for studio work... Where anything over 14ms is unusable...

So I stand by my statment that emulation is almost perfect. As pointed out, what we don't have anymore is low quality Display (TV) and Audio devices which cover up the flaws in the Amiga's outputs...  

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DiskDoctor wrote:

Quote:

    The problem with emulating a computer is that there will always be latency. Usually this is most visible in sound.

I don't think so. Even if there was any latency I doubt any human can notice it.

Maybe I wasn't precise.

The problem with the sound is actually that it rraaapdly loops for a while, then gets back to its pace and time frame.  I called it latency, I should have said echoing rather than that.

Sorry for this confusion.

Oh very odd! I suggest that you increase the priority of the Emulator, that sounds like the audio buffer isn't being filled in time.

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shoggoth wrote:

amigaksi wrote:
If you go by PC standard hardware, it is impossible to do the cycle-exact emulation of the Amiga.

I'd like to see you explain that statement. Emulation granularity is *not* dictated by hardware capabilities such as timers, sprites, multi-channel audio chips. Generally that's not how you solve these things, at least not in any of the emulators I've worked on.

Ignore amigaski, he is more ilinformed than a British General during the First World war...

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amigaksi wrote:

Regardless, of how fast your CPU is, it won't make your beep speaker (1-bit resolution) do 4-channel 16-bit 44Khz audio.  Regardless if your CPU is Pentium IV at 4Ghz, it won't improve your timers.  And you can't time things equally or better with 1.19Mhz timer vs. a 3.57Mhz timer-- just seems to be violating some laws.

On my nice new 2.8Ghz Core2Duo, UAE uses ~12% of my CPU when emulating an A500 using the most accurate, most compatible settings... the video and audio are perfect...

Put it another way, it doesn't matter about timers, the Emulator is able to complete all required operations and then spend 88% of it's time just waiting to run the next cycle...

No matter how you try and spin it, a 2.8Ghz CPU can easily accommodate the 28Mhz system of the Amiga.

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@amigaski

Just for your info, the HPET is a 64bit, 10Mhz Timer...

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Hammer wrote:

bloodline wrote:
@amigaski

Just for your info, the HPET is a 64bit, 10Mhz Timer...

Does AROS use HPET?

No, IIRC AROS uses the millisecond timer, and generates a fake VBL at 50Hz :-)

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amigaksi wrote:
>by Hammer on 2009/1/23 15:48:42

Quote:
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>bloodline wrote:
@amigaski

>Just for your info, the HPET is a 64bit, 10Mhz Timer...

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>Does AROS use HPET?

10Mhz, that's all?  I thought the spec was for 14.318Mhz or higher.  10Mhz could be problematic as Amiga is using NTSC frequencies and not being evenly divisible by them would pose a problem in this case.

Every PC has always had a 1.193182Mhz timer, this is 1 third the NTSC colourburst...

But most Video cards have a VBL interrupt, and UAE allows you to sync the emulator to a real Video card VBL... I don't see how it could be any more perfect than that...

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WTF!!!! where have all my posts gone? How frustrating! :-x

amigaksi wrote:

>>10Mhz, that's all? I thought the spec was for 14.318Mhz or higher. 10Mhz could be problematic as Amiga is using NTSC frequencies and not being evenly divisible by them would pose a problem in this case.

>Every PC has always had a 1.193182Mhz timer, this is 1 third the NTSC colourburst...

>But most Video cards have a VBL interrupt, and UAE allows you to sync the emulator to a real Video card VBL... I don't see how it could be any more perfect than that...

For frame rate, it may be good approximation, but there's other things going on in the system than video running at 60Hz.  And even the video is subject to latency and phase shifts.  Sure it could be better if every cycle was a real Amiga cycle in time.

The human is refreshed at (on a PAL Amiga) 50 times a second... Or once every 25ms. As longs as the real Amiga and the emulator refresh the human at the same rate, there is no difference between the two systems WRT to the human. On both a real Amiga and the emulator a large chunk of time is just spent waiting for the VBI... So it doesn't matter which system waits the longest...