PC still playing Amiga catchup

[stefcep2]

It's only relevant to people when try to prove that a system that has had no development on it for the past 15 years is suddenly better then the latest tech.

So why are there Linux kernels compiled with different schedulers readily available in most Linux repo's?  Must mean the Linux user community has already had this very discussion, and felt the need to re-compile their kernel with a new scheduler, just to try to catchup to the Amiga?  Kernels with different schedulers exist because they offer something the standard one doesn't.  Whether you want to make use of it is besides the point.

[stefcep2]

It's all down to the trolling at this point.
The amiga was great because back in the day the graphics knocked your socks off.

The Amiga was great for a lot of reasons other than the graphics.  But if the A500's graphics is what made it great for you, then I'll take that into account when giving any credibility to what you post.

[stefcep2]

PC wins. Can i have my rep points back now, please?

[stefcep2]

What really gets to me on the pet peeve level is that in 2009, a full 15 years after the death of Commodore, there are still those so desperate to hang on to "what used to be", that they invent the smallest, most asinine reasons that they believe the Commodore Amiga -- a computer almost 8 times removed from Moore's Law -- is still a commercially competitive (not to even mention viable) platform...

who said they believe the Commodore amiga is still commercially competitive platform?

[stefcep2]

I find it doubly bizarre that those who regard it in that light are usually quite dismissive of things like UAE that can actually transform an OS3.x installation into a platform that can actually hold it's own thanks to the exponential increase in raw horsepower you get from it.

Interesting.  So what you are saying is that its the lack of raw computing power of the hardware-not the OS itself- that prevents it from holding its own?

[stefcep2]

In 2008, there's about 31 million gaming laptops sold i.e. an install base that rivals Xbox360 and larger than PS3.
Refer to http://au.gamespot.com/news/6210424.html

"The study further found that 42 million PC desktops and 31 million notebooks capable of playing games were shipped during the year;"

In terms of annual gaming laptop unit growth (i.e. 31 million per year), it easily beats the combined Nintendo Wii/Xbox 360/PS3 annual unit growth.

gaming-capable and used to play games on are not the same thing.  Go to any retail outlet and you'll find Pc gets about 20% shelf space.  Ofcourse you can download PC games, but thats not relatively common.  PC gaming these days is heading towards role play/strategy genre that takes years off your life, and the FPS coz of the mouse and keyboard control, byt FPS's on consoles are becoming popular, just depends on what you prefer as a control method.

[stefcep2]

Retail space wouldn’t indicate market size.



Reference 1 http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/3766/pc-largest-single-platform-for-gaming-revenue-is-about-11-billion

The PC is the largest single platform for games with annual worldwide revenue of about $11 billion. This is more than any of the console and portable systems from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

• In emerging markets such as Asia and Eastern Europe the PC has become the de facto platform of choice for games as console systems have not had major penetration in most countries.

• Even in North America and Western Europe the PC is the leading single platform for games with over $6 billion in combined revenue from those markets.

• Broadband penetration has been a key driver of growth and revenue growth for PC games, and is directly tied to growth in broadband penetration.

• The three biggest trends in 2008 were 1) the growth of online digital distribution via services like Valve’s Steam; 2) the growth of free games with a virtual item purchase model and 3) the growing presence of game cards at major retailers like 7-Eleven.

• Top PC games regularly generate over $50 million at retail revenue but can generate substantially more in subscription and/or add-on revenue.

• Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are the leading products for both revenue and profits. Several Asian MMOGs are generating over $100 million in annual revenue after 5+ years on the market. World of Warcraft is generating over $1 billion in annual revenue. The Lich King expansion to World of Warcraft outsold its predecessor. In 2008, two major new subscription MMOGs (Warhammer Online and Age of Conan) sold over 1 million units at retail.

• Digital distribution, free-to-play models and retail game cards are well-established in Asia, but just starting to emerge in North America and Europe.



Reference 2 http://au.gamespot.com/news/6210424.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;5

• According to the PCGA's 2008 Horizon's Report, PC gaming software saw global revenues reach $12.7 billion in 2008, a year-over-year rise of $1.9 billion, or nearly 18 percent. Overall, the study found that the PC software and hardware market stood at $68 billion in 2008.



Reference 3 http://www.edge-online.com/news/ea-pc-becoming-worlds-largest-games-platform

• "Electronic Arts chief financial officer Eric Brown has said that “the online part of our business is growing as much as 60% year over year" and that the PC is rapidly becoming the largest gaming platform in the world."

Retailers are not in it to make a loss.  Space costs money.  PC games don't make as much for them because they don't sell as much.

I doubt very much that PC game sales would get anywhere near console game sales, may be if you compare individual consoles yes, but not the whole console game market.

[stefcep2]

"Pssst, hey buddy, here is a 50 if you display my console games up front k".

50 aint gonna cut it.

At EB during the time when Gamecube was out, Nintendo was at the back of the store no advertising in store, nothing.  When the Wii and DS started to boom, mainly because of Nintendo's marketing, Nintendo now gets the most shelf space-the DS alone get as much as PC, plus the Wii, at the front of the store.  PC's games are somewhere down the back.  Successful sales get you more prominent shelf space, it must be since the PS1 and N64 days that PC got more space than consoles.

[stefcep2]

CD32 vs SNES:

Q: How big was the SNES marketing in the USA?
In Australia the C64 and the A500 were the most popular games machine until Playstation came along. SNES got the highest penetration because of Mario and Street Fighter, from anecdotal evidence.

I wouldn't have thought the A500's popularity extended till the PS came out.  I was a student working nights at a major toy retailer in 1990 or so, and we kept 5 A500's and games, but the SNES software outsold it at least 10:1

[stefcep2]

Just when you thought it was safe to kiss this thing goodbye:  RAM: disk.  Discuss.

[stefcep2]

Because that'd blow his argument up! Don't you follow this thread? He's being "objective" - which apparently means you have to dismiss any information that is contrary to your position and call anyone who points this out biased.

:laughing:

or dismiss any information that is contrary to your position by saying that you personally don't use it, and therefore don't need it and so it doesn't matter..finished off with LOL

[stefcep2]

1.  Hard drives are fast, but files are so big.  So access from hard drive on a PC will never be as fast as access from a dynamic RAM: drive.
2. Writing and deleting files frequently as would happen if you used your hard drive as a dumping ground for eg unarchiving stuff which you delete afterwards results in disk fragmentation, reducing your PC's performance over time.
3.  Its a pain to have to delete unwanted files, wouldn't you just prefer they weren't there next time ypou booted... oh hang-on no-one here boots up anymore so yeah you have to remember to delete otherwise you'll soon have a lot of crap you don't want filling mots of yor hard drive.( don't tell me, hard drives are so BIG now THAT akso doesn't matter).
4.  what about installing and running software in RAM just to check it out?

[stefcep2]

Erm, that's a bit of a silly way to put it. Really big files aren't going to fit comfortably into memory either. Chances are they'll get paged out to hard disk anyway.



That really depends on your filesystem. Using your Amiga's RAM disk to save disk fragmentation is all well and good but you're ultimately just fragmenting the memory instead. Which isn't a great idea. With 256MB of ram, I've been unable to run an application needing 32MB without a reboot due to this issue.



Use /tmp for your dumping ground and use tmpwatch. Problem solved.



Sure, that's handy sometimes.

Incidentally, you do realise that RAM disks are available on other operating systems, right?

For example:



Et voila, a 16MiB ram disk. It's actually more like RAD, in that it's fixed size, but like RAM: it's entirely volatile.

I was thinking more of windows regarding fragmentation.  I've never experienced the RAM: fragmentation due to reading and writing to the RAM: disk.  i used it to store animation frames, which then color reduced, resized, deleted and replaced with the processed frames, which were finally compressed into an animation automatically with an arexx script.

One of the features of the Amiga's ram: disk is that its dynamic, only as big as it needs to be and handles transparently for the user by the OS. Can this be done in Linux ?

[stefcep2]

still, its not as simple as having a ram disk icon and dragging stuff in an out of it right from the time you boot up.

What about Windows?  Never seen or even heard anyone doing it..

[stefcep2]

Found one, game over plyr 1:

http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php

what was interesting about this was this:

"The most important difference between a RAM disk and a hard disk is access speed. The time taken for a hard disk to move its magnetic heads over the spinning disks (much like the arm moving over old vinyl record player) is typically measured in milliseconds (thousandths of a second). Whereas a RAM disk does not have mechanical parts and its access speed is typically measured in nanoseconds (billionths of a second). Access to a RAM disk may be 50 times faster or more than to a hard drive."

So that addresses the "hard drives are fast enough" issue.  Quite simply, they aren't.

secondly, since an argument against executive was that its a third party utility-now freeware but did cost 10 pound. this is a third part utility, and

Thirdly $50!!!!!!  or $100 if you want to use an OS that sees more than 3 gig ram, and if you're gonna use a ram disk in windows you'd want to be able to do that.  Thats more than half the price of of an OEM version of the OS itself..

[stefcep2]

Guys, to be honest some of the technical detail you've gone into is over my head.  You are probably right about how more advanced modern PC operating systems are, in particular how their multitasking systems and memory protection ought to make for a more responsive system.  What i can argue though is what I see in front of me with my machines.

So I got out the 060 A1200 and just had a play with it.  No executive or other speed hacks.  I set up a Real 3D animation render in 640x480 24 bit shadows, reflection, refraction antialias, saving each frame progressively to hard drive, basically all knobs on.  I screen flicked to workbench: it was instantaneous.  On workbech screen (8 colors 640x480 productivity) the mouse pointer moved as smoothly and precisley as if nothing was happening in the background. I double clicked my hard drive partition with 25 drawers, no delay in opening and displaying them in window. I started unarchiving a 10 meg zip file to hard drive with Real 3D still going. I closed the window, the close gadget responded instanteously to my mouse click.  Opened the partition again, no delay.  Opened the games drawer with 28 drawers, no delay in displaying the window contents. Dragged the window, no delay in  redrawing the window.  Right clicked to bring the Workbench menu bar, which has 11 menues, many with submenu. Sliding the mouse pointer along the menu bar, each menu drawn instaneously drawn, no delay, no screen garbage left behind, no overlap of each menu as a new one is erased, no sticking or skipping of the mouse pointer as I slide it down each menu, mouse pointer totally smooth. Don't forget both Real 3D and the archiver are writing periodically to the internal hard drive.

Yes it takes longer to do the render in Real, it takes longer to unarchive the zip, but THE SYSTEM is still very snappy.

Contrast this with Vista on my 2.4 ghhz c2D with 4 gig ram and 7200 rpm hard drive and 256 meg Geforce 9200: The start menu jerks up, especially if I select the orb whenever anything is being read/written to the hard drive. The mouse pointer jerks as well, disappearing and reappearing somewhere unpredictably.  The system cannot highlight each item in the start menu as I move my mouse pointer, so it "jumps", ie it can't keep with the mouse pointer.  I am in Firefox on its menu bar and I move my mouse along the menu bar: I can see momentarily an overlap of the new menu and the previous menu.  Mind you, I have not started any CPU intensive task in the background.  It just feels like the GUI is covered in molasses, a crap user experience. And no its not just MY laptop, I see it on my brothers vista laptop as well. I don't care how many processes it has to do in the bachground that I don't know about, its simply no longer good enough, we should be well and truly past this rubbish with the hardware specs we are running.  So yeah you can argue about all the technical advancements of the modern PC and its modern OS's, at the end of the day, what matters is what I see and feel in front of me.