newb questions, hit the hardware or not?

[Sean Cunningham]

Speed or compatibility, you can rarely pick more than one of these.

[Sean Cunningham]

...Sometimes optimising an algorithm in C has no visible benefits because it's not called often enough and it's more cost effective to throw away the optimised version.

Your name made me recall the first generation of next-gen consoles and how they relate directly to this discussion.  The developers on the original PSX titles were coding games in C and couldn't achieve anything but porkish performance and absolutely nothing for the first couple generations could achieve anything approaching arcade quality responsiveness and framerates.  

Over at SEGA, in particular their AM divisions, they were coding for the Saturn "close to the metal" and could actually achieve arcade feel with arguably less power (if you weren't fully taking advantage of its multi-processor design, and most 3rd parties weren't really up for this kind of complexity, just like they weren't for a long time with the PS3 and virtually any other multi-processor design).  

The Saturn didn't have the true 3D acceleration that the PSX had but the Sony developers made it swim through a pool of peanut butter by coding the games the way they did.  At the resolutions those titles were working at the Sony games should have been 30-60fps out of the gate with no lag and that was definitely not the standard.

It cracks me up that all this time there's any room for discussion over how to get the best performance on an Amiga (or any system that doesn't just have excess horsepower to subsidize generic coding methodologies, which relates to my dislike for X-Windows).  The highest performance apps, highest performance games, highest performance demos all speak to the truth of you not getting there through the OS.  Where are these high performance applications that were coded through the OS, particularly with respect to graphics effects, realtime or other forms of manipulation?

[Sean Cunningham]

Sorry but the Saturn games were not "poor".  The AM divisions games were outstanding and offered arcade feel, something virtually no PSX game ever did, across its entire lifetime.  The closest to that feel that I ever got was from Psygnosis' Wipe-out, but it still didn't have the refresh.  The Tekken series were okay but still didn't feel "arcade" and felt laggy compared to VF2 though the Tekken series was lightyears better than Toshinden, ugh.

None of the PSX 3D fighters had the same responsiveness or arcade feel as the VF series, Fighting Vipers, Last Bronx, etc. and the 2D fighters that were available for both platforms played better on the Saturn.  One of the few 3D fighters available for both, Dead or Alive, was better on the Saturn (I had it for both, to counter your Tomb Raider example).  The PSX had some clever games but it was a major disappointment and rarely got pulled out at my house, and I had both systems the first day they went on sale.  

I played Ridge Racer some and Midnight Club and Rage Racer but they didn't have the arcade feel of Sega Rally Championship.  The top PSX track-n-field game was disappointing after playing Sega's high-resolution 60fps game.  

Sorry, nope.  3rd party offerings on the Saturn were generally not too good, I'll give you that, unless they were 2D.  None of them invested in coding the way the AM divisions at SEGA did.  But playing PSX games it was like Sony had never been to an arcade before.  NAMCO was likely the most successful but they still seemed like they couldn't quite get there.