UAE vs real A1200

[Waccoon]

UAE might seem faster on pure cpu power and such, but try a game that really takes advantage of the amiga custom chipset, then you will see that it runs far from as smooth as on the real thing... A scroller game or demo is a real nice test for this.

This has more to do with the throttling of chipset timings.  Note that the original Amigas had trouble with the CPU and chipset timing fighting with each other, which is one reason why the AGA chipset in the 1200 runs faster than the 4000.  I can only get major CPU speed with running in RTG -- this is explained in more detail in the AIAB documentation.  Also, things get choppy on my machine without VSync, but with VSync on, things are PERFECTLY smooth -- not a single hickup anywhere.  I'm not sure if I should blame the emulation or WinUAE's terrible display code for this.  WinUAE really tortures the video system, and it's the only application I run that can regularly lock-up Win2000.  That says a lot.

I must say the new versions of WinUAE are really troublesome.  I still prefer 8.26 over 1.0RC.

Also, for some weird reason, WinUAE and some older Win95 games run a hell of a lot better on Athlon / nForce than on Pentium / Intel chipset.  I think the two use different low-level timers... or something.  I prefer AMD for emulating WinUAE.  The P4 does weird things.

[Waccoon]

but vsync on, enables more precise chipset timing in the emulation, and hence the emulation suffers. like in workbench for example boot times and load times are greatly decreased i found

Architectually speaking, the Amiga is too smart for its own good.  Everything is syncronous and depends on the chipset timings, so turning on Vsync will slow everything down.  Use RTG and turn the floppy drives off, and WinUAE really flies.

Also noteworthy, is the fact the Amiga does all floppy error correction in the CPU, so floppy disk access is always a pain to emulate.  You have to emulate the rotation of the disk and everything.

BTW, is it "disc" or "disk" with regards to floppies?

so the solution is only turn on vsync to 60hz for games.

Yeah.  I have about ten WinUAE configs, mostly for speed and not for compatibility.  Now THAT's why I prefer WinUAE over my genuine 1200.  :-)