PC still playing Amiga catchup

[stefcep2]

You are joking, right? There are hundreds of processes on my PC currently as well as several large applications.

There's also a CUDA simulation running which is pushing hundreds of megabytes of data per second across the PCI express bus and several mysql client processes interrogating a mysql server on the machine resulting in heavy disk IO.

The machine is still as responsive as when none of this was happening.

Just threw EUAE on top of the pile and it's running orders of magnitude faster than my actual amiga

No he's not joking.  So you can run dozens of processes and some large apps: well dammit you have 1000x the RAM that works at lightening speeds, you have 4 or more CPU's with HUGE caches each running at clock speed that are 1000x faster, you have lightening fast data and display busses   So why does my start menu stutter to open when a simple web page is loading, why don't application menus open instantaneously but there is a short pause because some irrelevant background task is getting priority over a users command to open the menu?  And i can go and on:  Windows and PC's do not have user responsiveness as a high priority.  As a test I switched on my A1200 with 40 mhz 68060 ( yes it only runs at 40 mhz not 50) with 32 meg ram and executive: 5 sec boot up, ran Dpaint, Opus,  Aweb Miami YAM, Image FX and Cinema 4d, final writer, magic menu, tools menu, oxypatcher, fblit, ftext and a few other things in the background, and it was far far more responsive to user commands ie opening a menu, opening new apps, closing apps, painting in dapint, typing in final writer, rotating a scene in Cinema 4d (whilst rendering in the background) than Vista.  Why?

Having said thatWindows 7 RC is actually significantly more responsive than Vista, at least as fast as XP ( which itself is an 8 year old OS) running on modern hardware, so clearly the problem is the OS not the hardware.

[stefcep2]

I think the two opposing camps are arguing about 2 separate things: one side is arguing about how many calculations per second a PC can do, about how fast its display is and how much higher res it has, or how much more bandwith and speed the newer busses have.  The other side is arguing about what really matters: the user experience.  This includes boot up time and the system putting you in control to do what you want to do when you want to do it.  Personally I expected so much more than I'm getting from my current PC hardware running Vista.  The hardware specs of even a 5 year old PC are insane, the average Joe's PC is more powerful than computers used in physics labs only a few years ago, yet it takes time to open a start menu, it takes time to draw the contents of a window, i have to wait for no apparant reason to pull down a menu even though an app has loaded.  

When I went from my A500 with 3 meg ram to my A1200 40 mhz 68030 with 16 meg ram i thought WOW, now this progress!!  And then I got an A4000 with 68060 and CV64 and I thought I was in Cray supecomputer territory.  Just imagine i thought if I owned one of the piping hot 200 mhz pentiums...purely judging on mhz and necer used a PC before.  What a joke things have turned out to be: my 3000 mhz C2duo runs general operating system tasks no faster than that 200 mhz pentium running Win95, and yet we still communicate with the hardware in the same way: by a mouse menu and icons.  And yes Xp and vista are more complex beasts than Win 95, but this is NO EXCUSE because the hardware more than makes-up for the increased complexity of the OS.  Sure we can crunch numbers faster, but the user experience is just as stop-start as it ever was.  

My 13 year old son switches on his A1200 with a 68060, it boots in under 5 seconds, dpaint loads in 4 seconds and he's spray painting in real time in under 20 seconds from switching on.  He asks me "Why don't they make computers like this anymore".  He "gets" Amiga.  And those of you who are happy with your PC, quite simply, don't.

[stefcep2]

Then please do. I'm genuinely intrigued as to what this one example could be.

I'll give you THREE:

1. Boot up time
2. Shut down time
3. Application launch time  (and don't give me the spiel about how much bigger modern apps are because they do so much more so ofcourse they' take longer to load, thats all negated by the fact that you're running those apps on hardware specs that are many many factors faster clock speed and higher capacity ram and bussess, than the hardware used to launch Amiga apps.)

[stefcep2]

In what sense is (1) and (2) remotely relevant unless you spend all your time rebooting? Bootup times on most machines are limited by having to wait for things. Network connections, hardware initialisation etc. All systems wait at the same speed. My current PC boots into linux in about 25 seconds, during which time it starts several server processes. It's true that my A1 can A1200 can boot faster from a warm reset, but then, I never have to reboot the linux box unless I consciously turn it off or intend to upgrade the kernel. My A1200 waits for 10 seconds just to see if anything is attached to the BPPC SCSI. It never boots in less than 20 seconds, even warm. There are additional delays whilst AmiTCP fires up and talks to the router.

3) Complete and utter rubbish, I am afraid. I can launch applications that take up more memory on this PC than I have fitted in all my amigas put together and they open faster than most applications on my actual amiga. For example, Firefox 3 is reportedly using 350MB of memory at the moment. It took about 2 seconds to start.

What's more, like 1 and 2, it's a contrived measure of user experience. I don't know about you but I tend to start applications once and then carry on using them for as long as needed. I don't sit there opening and closing them repeatedly and marvelling at the speed.

My ZXSpectrum boots from cold in about 1 second. It's obviously the best of the lot, by your reckoning.

well you must be the only person on the planet that sees no value in fast booting and shut down.  Go to any Win 7 forum and you'll see boot up and shut down time is a MAJOR concern of many many PC users, so much so that MS has gone out of its way to reduce both of these in Win 7, making sure that people know about this as well.  Unlike you, most people do turn their computers on and off numerous times in a day, maybe to surf a bit, send an email, do some banking, and then live the rest of their lives, only to do boot up a few hours later to do the same, or something completely different.

Regarding shut down, I don't like to remeber the times I've had to leave the house quickly but have to wait for the PC to shut down, or I leave after shut down, and coming home to find some stupid process has stopped the shut down and the PC's been on for 8 hours.  Never happened with Amiga..

Application start up time is a real measure of the user experience.  I get on the net on my A1200 68060 far more quickly than my PC.  I have the google home page up faster on ibrowse than i do with Firefox; from the time I launch both browsers  Its a joke that ancient hardware can do this.  Try loading Word 2003 on a PC from 2003 see how fast it loads..and tell me if you enjoy your experience with loading Fireox3 on that as well.

BTW you only needed ONE, you've got three..

[stefcep2]

Wow, really? Sh!tfire, I must be a total freak if I think waiting 20 odd seconds either way is fast enough for something I do at most once a day. My work machine takes a whopping minute to start on a slightly less powerful PC. However, it's only been rebooted about 6 times in 3 years, 3 of those times were due to office moves.

i can assure you its not 20 seconds, its no less than 2 minutes, often 2 and half.  Well you ARE a freak if you boot up once per year, excluding office moves.  Seriously, thats not representative of the average PC users experience, not even in the same universe..

No way! Rock on. Guess what? I don't actually have to connect. I just start a browser (this is also true on my A1200 and A1, both of which are connected to the same router). I just opened firefox and it was at my homepage instantly. I really can't shave any time off.

I think maybe lynx is slightly faster.

BS.  it takes time to start Firefox, and that time is longer than Ibrowse.  you're not at you home page "instantly"

Three what? Totally limp wristed non-arguments I've heard dozens of times that have never gotten any more meaningful no matter how many times repeated? If you ask any sane person if they have to choose between slightly faster boot times or the actual need to reboot in the first place, I wonder which they'd choose?

You only wanted ONE thing that the PC is playing catch-up at, I gave you boot-up time shutdown time and application load times.  You only hear what you want to hear and dismiss what doesn't sit well with your argument.

[stefcep2]

@stefcep

I understand your need to feel like the 1985 Amiga is still as capable as a modern day PC or Mac.  I really do.  Everyone feels the need to justify why they're still running what they do, especially in light of overwhelming evidence to support the contrary.

Using an Amiga today is a hobby for everyone, and I mean 99.999% of everyone on the planet.  Aside from the strange car wash or local public television station, there are literally no more legitimate uses for an Amiga in a professional setting.  

Take away professional settings, and you're left with personal use, which -- when you consider there are better and faster alternatives out there -- means "a hobby".

There's nothing wrong with that.

For the record, I loathe Windows to my very core and even moreso when I have to use it at work.

That being said, there simply isn't any single way on the planet that you can compare a 2 GIGAhertz machine to a 7 (or even 14) MEGAhertz computer and have the latter come out ahead in ANY category on the planet.  Sorry.  You just can't do it.

I often laugh when some people trot out reboot times and "I don't have to shut my machine down".

What you, and every other stalwart defender of the faith always forget is that yes, Windows and Macs take longer to boot, but when they boot, they're loading up easily 100 times more active features than the antiquated Amiga.  

If you want a fair test on boot times, take your 14mhz machine, load it down with network stacks, font handling stacks, printer handlers, and everything else that a stock Windows box does by default.  Have it then automatically connect to everything from your printer to the network to.. well, everything that Windows does automatically, then time it from the moment you hit the power button until the time the hard drive quits gronking.

You *will* find that your precious little Amiga will take -- at a minimum -- more time to boot than even a mid-level Windows box.  That is, *if* you could get the Amiga to even load 1/10th the features that Windows has, and you can't do it because frankly, the features Windows has by base install don't even exist for the Amiga.

I don't say this to tear you down.  I really don't.  Like I said, I'm a Mac guy and I hate Windows as much as you do, but... You can't sit here defending the Amiga as being better because it boots faster and come out sounding the least bit credible.  It just makes you sound like a fanboy, which I'm sure is not your intent.

Also for the record, prior to the demise of my last Windows box, which I worked on 10 hours a day, 6 days a week professionally for an Internet Registrar doing everything from programming to tech support.  During that time, my average "up time" (between reboots) was well over 6 months between reboots for a matter of 8 YEARS.  

Most of those reboots caused by extended power outages which drained the UPS system I have in place.

Live well, Learn much, Love often,

Wayne

Sorry Wayne but you've got all me wrong.  

I' not a fanboy, I use an Amiga for fun and I know what year it is, but your post makes you sound like someone who doesn't really understand the core of the argument.  

Of course PC's load 100 more processes, but they have 1000 times the memory.  (We'll ignore the other advancements in RAM design and clock spec modern PC's have.).  Ofcourse the latest PC CPU can process numbers much, much faster than a 14 mhz 68020, thats because the PC's has several CPU's with clock speeds that are a factor of 200 times faster.  (We'll ignore the other advancements in cache design, hyperthreading blah blah etc.  We'll also ignore the blazingly fast graphics chips/gpu's, PCIE busses, SATA , USB2.   So 1000 times more RAM, 200 x 2,3,4 CPU speed increase, super fast GPU superfast SATA but I've gotta wait 2 and half minutes to boot.  I gotta put up with a start menu that stutters to open, because a web page loads, I've gotta search for the mouse pointer on screen beacsue its mysteriously teleported itself from one side of the screen to the other beacsue the OS doesn't have enough resources( !!!) to animate it smoothly because another app is loading in the background.

So you can't load vista on an 8 meg 68020 A1200?  No kidding.  That shows you just
'don't get it".  Let me put it this way;  Your PC has 1000 times the hardware specs to load and process 100 times the data, EVERYTHING ought to be 10 times faster.  Ask yourself : IS it?  Why not?

[stefcep2]

My god man...you must be running XP on a 486.  Every machine I've had from my AMD 2200+ CPU based system to my Quad core system runnning XP to Vista, I've never had any issues like that ever.    

My "everyday office computer" at work is very responsive also.  Its a Dell core2duo laptop w/a 17" display, 4 gigs ram running XP.

that my friend is the elephant in the room that you can't see:  you are running a 7 year old OS on hardware specs that are more or less 12 months old.  try running XP on a p3 600 with 256 meg ram, hey that was the average PC when XP came out.  And run Word 2003, a web browser an email client and see how much you enjoy it.  you might not even be able to open the start menu for all the hard drive groaning you'll get..

your system runs ok because you are using the "if its slow, then throw more hardware at it' philosphy.

[stefcep2]

p3 600? LOL.  get with the times.  Yea its great going on a long trip in a 1974 VW Beetle but its not as fun and comfortable as my wife's 2008 Chevy Tahoe.



Actually, that never crossed my mind.  Systems nowadays, if you build your own, are VERY affordable.  If you're using a p3 600, then its your own fault, go wallow in your own sorrow.  I have no sympathy for you.

Its not my fault XP is 7 years old.  I upgrade my systems to keep up with the times.  I'm glad XP runs well on my systems at work.   At home, I'm ballin' with a HP laptop runnin openSuSE 11.

Too many people bash XP when its their dinosaur hardware causing the bottleneck.

Ok someone ELSE who "just doesn't get it".

I don't use a P3 anymore, silly.  I know that to get a current  MS OS running as opposed to walking you need hardware 5 years ahead of the OS. BUT THE P3 WAS HARDWARE THAT WAS COMMONLY AROUND WHEN XP WAS RELEASED.  THATS WHAT XP WAS MADE TO RUN ON.  Its the hardware advancement 7 years later not the OS that improves the user experience.  You just basically poved you still can't see the elephant in the room..

[stefcep2]

@Linde

 This is a good old "which platform is better" war, like we all used to enjoy back in the late 80's early 90's.

Thats not my angle.  I simply believe that relative to the hardware resources modern PC's are inferior to Amiga in responding to user coomands.  Things that should not be slow on a PC are slow.  There's far too much waiting to do simple things than there should be.

Heres another example: I'm on a c2d 2.4 ghz with 4 gig ram 512 gpu laptop.  Vista.  I go to Firefox menu bar and left click and move across the menu bar: there is a delay in the menu being drawn, I can FEEL the pointer sticking as the mneu is drawn, and as I drag the pointer along i can see the new menu being drawn top-down and bits of the previous menu being erased.  This doesn't even happen on a 14 mhz 68020.  Why?  I read an Australian Commodore and Amiga review article circa 1995: Alta Vista ran on 10 CPU DEC alpha machine with total 6 gig ram.   The same DEC alpha takes ten times longer to render a scene in Real 4D than an Athlon X2 2400, which is slower than my C2D.  So I have a PC with hardware that was faster than that used by a THE major web search engine of a decade ago-but I still have to put up with delays in an app menu being drawn..

The lack of progress is just diappointing.

To the guys using 7 year old XP on current hardware: in 5 years time when you have a 16 core CPU running each at 3 ghz and 32 GIG RAM, 10 terrabytes of solid state hard drive space on a GPU with 8 gig video ram, I'm sure you'll think Vista is a speed demon too, except you'll still be seeing the start menu stutter, still have your 2 minute boots, still have your menus open slowly ON THE CURRENT MS OF THE TIME..

[stefcep2]

@stefcep2

The thing is, I stop reading when I get to "Vista", "XP" or anything else on your list of "it's so slow compared to the resources available." Windows is a heavyweight OS that basically tries to start everything and the kitchen sink at boot time. You can tune it if you want and it improves.

However, the catch is, I don't use Windows. I don't use PC's and Windows interchangably like some on the thread have done when they want to highlight what they consider as deficiencies on the PC. They aren't. They are defiencies in Windows and/or it's configuration. Take Windows out of the equation, shove a better OS - of which there are many to choose from - and you can see the raw speed of the machine.

Somebody earlier all but called me a liar for saying firefox 3 starts "instantly" on this machine. I actually took 0.14 seconds, so yeah, I guess I exaggerated. Under Vista, on the same physical box it took about 5 seconds to launch. Clearly the OS performance is a huge factor when it comes to the end user experience.



Try a different operating system

Well the term "PC" is now a generic one meaning x86 hardware with a Microsoft OS.  That would be true in more than 95% of cases when someone says "PC".  No-one says "Mac PC's" and how many even say "Linux PC's" ( personally "Linux box" is what I know it as).  And yes I made the point about the mismatch between the user-experience and the hardware specs on modern PC's, and ofcourse this has to be down to the OS ie Windows.  Afterall its the OS that lets you make the hardware do things. You therefore can't isolate the hardware and "say yes i have a responsive computer because I have fast hardware".  Amiga was never just about the hardware, and never just about the OS, but rather it was about the sum of these: thats what determines the user experience.  Microsoft and Apple(less so) are still yet to learn this.

[stefcep2]

Yet here, on my 7 year old PC with PentiumIV 1.7GHz, 1GB RAM, 32MB graphics (no gpu), XP Pro SP3, Firefox 3 -- there is no such faffing, the menus are fine, they just appear in full form, no appreciable delays, no funny drawing, it's all good. So it doesn't sound like it's either the hardware OR the older OS that is to blame. Maybe you've got yours configured badly?

  No its Vista, the current OS running on current hardware( 2 months old). But I'm sure in 5 years time Vista will fly on that hardware.

[stefcep2]

Not where I come from, no. A PC running Linux is a PC running Linux ("PC running Linux" and "Linux box" aren't mutually exclusive, you see). As I know it, PC usually refers to the IBM PC compatibles and their current "descendants".

So the whole thing boils down to you grasping for some flawed definition to back your point up. And no, I don't think that Wintel PCs are playing catchup either.


Yes, monolithic system design is the way of the future. Sigh.

I always referred to Windows.  Yes I can get Puppy Linux to fly on an x86 PC.    Thsfact is 95%  of PC user have no idea what Linux even is.  Witness the Ubuntu netbooks that got sent back when people realised its not what they were used to ie Windows.  You're a computer hobbyist, Karlos is an advanced computer user, neither of you are representative of the average computer user.  Most people would have no idea what x86 means.  To most people "PC" means a computer with Windows on it.  And no I've done Linux, its multitasking is worse than Windows and definatley worse than Amiga.

[stefcep2]

Something has to be wrong there.

My machine is nearly a year old now. Admittedly it was pretty high-spec when I built it but I wanted something that was going to last a while.

intel Q9450 @ 2.66 GHz
intel X48 chipset
4GB DDR3 1600 (running at 1333 but with 7-7-7 latency)
500GB Seagate HDD
XFX GTX260 640MHz version


As I said earlier, I do use Vista (64-bit home premium ed) whenever I want to indulge in a spot of gaming. Admittedly, it's not as responsive as Linux, but I couldn't possibly describe it as slow, not by any stretch of the imagination.

FFS Karlos!!!!  Look at your specs.  You don't have a garden variety PC there.  It runs Vista ok?  No kidding!!  Keep throwing a gazillion CPU's and gigabytes of super fast RAM, ANYTHING will fly.  Thats the point.

[stefcep2]

I didn't suggest it was a garden variety, merely recent. Less recent than yours, too. Ironically it cost about the same to build as the A1. Less if you factor in inflation :-o

When your PC was made is not relevant IF you go out and buy the top of the range (or near) hardware  you can get at the time.  When XP came many new PC's were being sold with 128 meg ram ,then 256 meg and 18 months ago a mate of mine bought a Dell PC with XP and 512 meg.  Its pitifully slow and unresponsive.

I think you have neatly summarised  your argument:  Basically what you are saying is: " You have this PC with high-end CPU ram, MB, graphics card, all of which which you have tweaked/overclocked, you are  running an OS that is not mainstream, probably hacked and slashed for performance, all probably at an increased risk of stability, and now you are happy that you can match the responsiveness of a stock standard A1200 running at 14 mhz with 4 meg ram".  If you see nothing wrong with this, then good luck to you.

[stefcep2]

Re: Joyport / Parallel port. Current PC's don't have either port to compare against. Your inability to use your "low level" coding skills to write an accurate timer for x86/HPET is no reflection on the hardware..

Re: bootup times:

From cold, timed this morning:

My A1200T (25MHz 68040, 240MHz 603e, 256MB 60ns RAM, BVisionPPC)

SCSI check: 10sec
Floppy check: 2sec
Initial startup, 3.9 ROM loading: 4 sec
Reboot pause: 3 sec
SCSI check: 10sec
Floppy check: 2sec
Startup: 26 sec
End of WBStartup activity: 5 sec

Grand total: 62 sec

PC:
POST Test: 5sec
DPMI Verification: 3 sec
GRUB wait for user select: 10 sec
Linux Kernel decompression&initialisation: 1 sec
Startup to login screen: 22 sec
End of post login window manager activity: 3 sec

Grand total: 44 sec

Waiting for stuff occupies the lion's share of both. Suffice to say, no matter how fast a CPU is, they all wait at the same speed...



Or talk bollox.

You have a Frankenstein A1200.

My system: A1200, 68060, 32 meg ram, OS 3.1 (Magic menu, tools menu, magicwb, toolmanager docks, 1 gig flash card):  

Boot up time when hard drive light stops and i can use the OS without delays, stutters :4.0 seconds.  

Shut down: flick of a switch ( how fast can you do that)

Good luck beating that.