What are the advantages of the present/future Amiga?

[shoggoth]

amigaksi wrote:
That's true since Mac has less custom hardware supporting it, it's easier to emulate whereas Amiga is impossible to emulate for certain things on a PC. I would like to know what target machine (spec) you are comparing to since I have seen Macs emulated on Atari ST, Amiga, and various PCs and newer so-called "Macs".  That way we can better tell whether they can be called "Macs".

Amiga isn't impossible to emulate accurately. Emulation is always a trade between performance and accuracy. I've seen claims like this numerous times for different platforms, but technically I haven't seen anything that explicitly prevents accurate Amiga emulation. The possibility of emulating Amiga hardware doesn't make the Amiga less attractive, quite the contrary imo.

amigaksi wrote:
For example, you can't show real-time sprites all over a screen on a machine that does not have sprites.

Sure you can. Just look at other platforms from the same era, or even earlier. On a modern machine it's not an issue at all.

Not true. It all depends on how much CPU power per VBL you have, what RAM bandwidth you have, what VBL synchronisation you have.

Yeah. But you can achieve that even on a sprite-less mid/low-spec 68k machine.

Sprite hardware is cool, and on a 7Mhz 68k machine it really makes wonders. It's not some holy grail of performance in todays computing, however.

Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?  Think again.  It only takes a few microseconds on an Amiga 1000.

You can achieve the same in software even on a mid-spec 68k machine. Either you have no clue, or I completely misjudged the core argumentation here.

[shoggoth]

amigaksi wrote:
Do you agree that technically it's more accurate to measure something with a ruler marked with cm rather than inches?  If so, then you will also agree that having a timing mechanism to accuracy of 1/3.579545Mhz (Amiga) is more accurate than one at 1/1.19318Mhz (PC).  Opinions are only good if you don't have the facts.

Since when did hardware timer granularity dictate how accurately one machine can emulate another?

Opinions are only good if you don't have the facts. Your words. To what extent have you engaged in emulator programming yourself? Any first hand experience?

Whether in the earlier era or now, hardware sprites are always better than software ones.  I saw the terrible/flickering games on earlier systems w/software sprites.  Anyway, the keyword you missed there is real-time...

Realtime in this context is most likely connected to the VBL frequency (or HBL frequency for that matter). Having enough juice to provide a result equal to a machine having hardware sprites while still keeping an equivalent amount of spare CPU time to the application should be enough to qualify as "realtime" in this particular context. And that's not a utopia at all.

You can use about 30 Amiga hardware sprites to cover up almost the entire screen using about 40 microseconds of CPU time.

No. But put CPU cycles per microseconds into that equation - and add a 2-3x faster CPU. Sure, rendering the sprites constitutes overhead, but you'll still end up with more spare cycles for your application.