Speed rankings of Next Gen hardware

[itix]

@spirantho

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=60604

[itix]

Ehm...

Those timing graphs are completely irrelevant. They were made by Piru (a MorphOS developer), and do not compare like with like (the different versions were made on different people's systems with a different version of the software, probably compiled by a different compiler) - they're not comparing one system with another, they're comparing a truckload of variables, making the comparison useless for anything except propaganda.

Ok...

I believe the order for most uses of AmigaOS 4 is:
AmigaOne X1000
Pegasos II G4
AmigaOne XE G4
Sam 460 1.1GHz
Sam 440 Flex and EP (faster CPU, 800MHz)
Pegasos II G3 600MHz
Sam 440 Flex and EP (Slower CPU, <733MHz)
AmigaOne XE G3
Micro-A1
CS-PPC
Blizzard PPC

We are very scientific here, arent we?

I mean, good that you are critical. But denying benchmarks and providing your own chart based on personal feelings does not compute

[itix]

@Itix

Completely OT here but I was just wondering how possible would
it be to develop OS4Emu for LinuxPPC ...

Just create modified version of AROS.

[itix]

I'm not "denying" benchmarks, I'm just saying that they're not providing the whole picture, which they're not. Heck, we don't even know if Altivec was enabled for both platforms, and if so in what Altivec was used.

I posted a link to thread where these benchmarks were discussed 18 months ago. Go read it and find out what conditions were used.

There is no Altivec in SAM so it doesnt matter was Altivec enabled or not (lame benchmarks). I dont know if X1000 has Altivec or not. But if you go read that thread you are likely to find it out.

What's most annoying, though, is that the OP was quite specific about what he wanted - an OS4 speed comparison - and yet the same old MorphOS benchmarks get wheeled out of retirement. Who cares how fast a G5 Mac is when you want to run OS4?

There is OS4 speed comparison. Just filter out Macs and you get what you wanted. The hardware selection is quite scarce from OS4 user POV but these are the best benchmarks we have.

[itix]

In the used market, they are more than affordable.  Even new (assuming you can find a new one to buy), the 440 boards are significantly cheaper than they were when they were brand new.  Performance wise, I am willing to bet most people who own them have few to no complaints.  

When I had my A1200 with 040 and BVision I was happy with it. It didnt feel slow. When I jumped to Peg1/G3@600MHz I was more than satisfied with it and suddenly my old A1200 was slow and limited. If I was upgrading from my A1200 again I could consider getting SAM if it was available in 2005 and Pegasos 2 didnt exist.

Personally I would try to get Pegasos 2 because it has better price and is more performant.

[itix]

I don't expect to be able  to run OS4 software on MorphOS machines.

What I really meant, I guess, is "If I write a game that works perfectly on MorphOS G4/G5 then can I recompile the code using OS4 include files and it will work perfectly?"

Or are they just too incompatible with each other?

Is there a list somewhere of all the incompatibilities between OS3, OS4 and MorphOS?

As a developer I am totally confused about what functions I am allowed to use that will still work on other platforms as advertised.

If you use OS3 API then it is compatible with OS4 and MorphOS. Sometimes you have to tweak your code because you may have to tell the operating system that this code is PPC native now. (*)

Only restriction is that there is no support for BCPL anymore and hardware resources no longer exist.

However if you are supporting OS3 I dont see any reason to make PPC native compiles. You are only wasting your time and adds complexity (*). You can still use most of new MorphOS APIs from 68k code if you need it.

So I would just consider PPC native builds as an unnecessary micro optimization.

*) In Magellan porting project those issues escalated. The 68k compile works just fine on all platforms but things were getting worse when we had to get all sublibaries working on all platforms. OS4 library system is totally incompatible with OS3 and MorphOS at source code level and  MorphOS libraries are sometimes incompatible to OS3 at source code level. So great amount of glue code had to be written and if/when AROS port is done there will be more...