@bloodline
[/quote]No Amiga graphics cards are built using the same chips as PC graphics cards.[/quote]
None ? And were they significantly less powerful than the PC graphic cards of the same technological generation ? -- I don't mean the same "era" as the delay between PC and Amiga hardware, at the time of the Amiga graphic cards, may be attributed to other factors than power difference between the two standards.
The Amiga was a little bit cheaper than the PC at the high end of the Market. But for the little more that you paid with the PC you got better Graphics. With the Amiga you had to pay the price of the Base machine and the graphics card, this pushed costs to far more than the PC.
At the top end of the market the Amiga was considerably more expensive to achieve the same results.
I agree, but the price factor depends on success, and success is not only the consequence of price, but reputation, and the reputation was mainly made by journalists, the majority of which never considered the desktop Amiga models, making price increase and condemning the Amiga to death (as if it was a game console). Since graphic cards were (almost) only designed for desktop models, it may be enough to explain their rarity and the technological delay.
Plus the Amiga Operating system offered little support (ie none) for these graphics cards. This support had to be added by third party and were often buggy and incompatible.
I hadn't thought about that. Yet again I can't remember any journalist complaining about this problem, while even any video game journalist would any time criticize MS-Dos and Windows, hence encouraging progress.
But in the time frame we are looking at, neither the A500 or the "portable PC" would have been used for serious graphics work.
Then we must only compare PCs to Amiga with graphic cards. Yet most journalists were only interested in the "portable" Amiga. Open any game magazine of that era : all talk about the Amiga 500, and later 600, CDTV, CD32 and 1200, but most act as if they ignore the existence of the A2000, 3000 and 4000, to such an extent that they were comparing 486 or Pentium PCs to the Amiga 500 or 600 - and nobody realized it was absurd.
AGA should have been included in a minor 1988/1989 update to the A500. It is after all little more than a new 24bit Denise chip.
Thee A2000 is just an A500 with ZorroII slots...
Yes but the AGA chipset was not upgradeable anyway, so the Zorro slots hence desktop models had to be the key of Amiga evolution, which they couldn't be because of public disinterest forced by journalism.
The advantage was economic.
You see, power did not make everything.
Amiga's stopped being value for money at the high end graphics market in about 1991... and the low end of the market by 1993. This was Commodore's fault. They assumed that the Amiga like the C64 would just sell, without the need to constantly innovate.
But as I say I think it was already too late in 1991, as journalism had already been sending the A2000 (and later 3000 and 4000) - hence indirectly the whole Amiga range - into oblivion for five years. Commodore has only accelerated the demise. A computer can't sell if nobody talks about it.
Apple had a better marketing team, and were more prepared to take risks with innovative devices
Yes indeed, but people were not acting as if the only Apple on the market in 1992 was the '84 Mac or the Apple IIc.
