I'm more convinced video performance is an artifact of the architecture. Let's look seriously at the heritage: the Amiga was designed from the get-go as video compatible, while PC are business with video and sound as a grafted-on after-thought.
I have my issues with the x86 architecture, especially around performance of commercial software. Scene programmers aside, it seems that programmers do not really understand the limitations inherent in the underlying hardware. There are simply too many hacks to make crappy interfaces work. I will grant that PCIe and SATA are giant leaps forward in terms of hardware architecture. But looking back: IDE is a crap foundation; PCI was a half-baked step back from VLB, even with progression; and AGP was deliberately crippled. Pretty much all in the name of price-points. Better hardware died or was relegated to
But there's still the x86 architecture which is now 24 years old (80386, 1984-ish) and should have died back in the 90s with the advent of 64-bit CPUs (DEC Alpha, PowerPC, and the later SPARCs.) Of course, Intel can produce better marketing and business alliances to keep x86 alive than they can produce a 64-bit architecture.
I get tired of watching video, on broadcast TV no less, with pauses while buffers are repopulated. I hated that a parallel device could bring the system to a stand-still. Greeting a CD-ROM can bring Windows to a full stop, especially if there's bad blocks on the CD. The list continues. While it's true that there's a lot of software to blame, I maintain that the problem is based in hardware, and the software simply cannot handle, accommodate, or subvert the problems inherent in hardware.
