Falcon 030 vs. A1200 vs. Performa 400

[HopperJF]

Hi guys,

Just found an interesting article posted back in March 1993 reviewing the capabilities of the Falcon 030, the A1200 and the Mac Performa 400 and comparing them. It makes quite an interesting read.

The Falcon seems to trounce the A1200 in quite a few areas but the A1200 beats it to a pulp when it comes to video and graphics.

Here is the link

[alexh]

I see no real comparisons (except MIPS) just features.

[Hammer]

According wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Falcon
Falcon's 030 CPU is connected to a 16bit bus.

What happened to 14bit Paula audio modes for the Amigas?

The Atari Falcon is the only computer here with a DSP (digital signal processor) chip.

Besides the blitter, the Amiga has a custom co-processor for video effects.

[AmigaHeretic]

I'll admit that many years ago, about the time the A1200 came out and I got mine ( I think I paid around $599 US dollars) and that was around 1994.  I remember going into the one and only Atari computer store in town here and they had this "new" Atari ST falcon on display.  

They had a "Demo" running on it.  It had what looked like true color pictures and there was some pretty awsome realtime effects being done to the pictures.  Stuff I still have never seen my Amiga's do.

Made me feel like the first time I say the NewTek Demo Reel 3 on Amiga or Shadow of the Beast.  I was a bit jealous.  

I have no idea what the demo was called, but would love to see it again to see if really was as good if I remember or if I was just having a little guilt having just dropped a bunch of cash on my A1200.

Of course I loved my A1200 and Amiga blows Atari out of the water, but that one demo seemed, well, pretty cool.

[spihunter]

I have a B&W 68030 Mac running system 7.01. My god is it slow!
Its like swimming in molasses.

I think OS3.9 on a stock 020 w/ 2mb or chip ram is faster! :lol:

[Darth_X]

The A3000 was supposed to be released with AGA and a DSP, but you know C= always trying to mess around with their R&D dept, cutting funding, delaying projects, etc..

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Stupid thing is that there's stated that all three systems have multitasking, as if the cooperative multitasking of the Apple is equal to the preemptive multitasking of the Amiga. That's like equating windows 3.0 with Windows NT 4 :roll:

[Speelgoedmannetje]

AmigaHeretic wrote:
I'll admit that many years ago, about the time the A1200 came out and I got mine ( I think I paid around $599 US dollars) and that was around 1994.  I remember going into the one and only Atari computer store in town here and they had this "new" Atari ST falcon on display.  

They stated in the link: "However, models with hard drives were used for comparison purposes."
I guess this is why they state such high prices.

They had a "Demo" running on it.  It had what looked like true color pictures and there was some pretty awsome realtime effects being done to the pictures.  Stuff I still have never seen my Amiga's do.

Weren't the Atari Lynx, Falcon and the Jaguar been made by former Amiga engineers? :-)

[Speelgoedmannetje]

Darth_X wrote:
The A3000 was supposed to be released with AGA and a DSP, but you know C= always trying to mess around with their R&D dept, cutting funding, delaying projects, etc..

Damn, that would have blown everyones socks off back in the day. Too bad it didn't happen :-(

[shoggoth]

Hammer wrote:
According wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Falcon
Falcon's 030 CPU is connected to a 16bit bus.

A standard falcon has a 16 bit databus, with a memory bandwidth of approx 4mb/s.

What happened to 14bit Paula audio modes for the Amigas?

Well, that's more of a trick. For example, clever programming made the YM chip in the ST output 6bit sound - but that's not something you usually put in the hardware specs.

I'd say the original article has a certain bias towards the Falcon:) (huge understatement).

Even though based on the same CPU family, I'd say it's very difficult to compare these machines. It all depends on which aspects you compare.

[shoggoth]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:

Darth_X wrote:
The A3000 was supposed to be released with AGA and a DSP, but you know C= always trying to mess around with their R&D dept, cutting funding, delaying projects, etc..

Damn, that would have blown everyones socks off back in the day. Too bad it didn't happen :-(

The Atari story in this case is not much different from that of the A1200. Atari had some really cool machines in the pipeline, but for cost reasons they decided to release a patched and souped up STE (i.e. the Falcon).

[shoggoth]

The Falcon seems to trounce the A1200 in quite a few areas but the A1200 beats it to a pulp when it comes to video and graphics.

The Falcon did have a 16-bit chunky mode though.

[TjLaZer]

I own a Falcon030 and it is a nice machine.  It can only be upgraded to 14MB RAM and that is 16-bit.  You can get 3rd party CPU upgrades, even a 100MHz 68060!  But the OS is really bad IMHO, Amiga OS is so much better, even 3.1 shines over TOS 4.04 and MagiC IMHO...

[shoggoth]

TjLaZer wrote:
I own a Falcon030 and it is a nice machine.  It can only be upgraded to 14MB RAM and that is 16-bit.  You can get 3rd party CPU upgrades, even a 100MHz 68060!  But the OS is really bad IMHO, Amiga OS is so much better, even 3.1 shines over TOS 4.04 and MagiC IMHO...

Back in the days, AmigaOS was certantly lightyears ahead of TOS.  TOS didn't evolve at all until MultiTOS, and that wasn't even ready when it was released. Getting of topic - the OS went opensource after MultiTOS. FreeMiNT + a recent AES (XaAES) is a pretty nice posix like OS. MagiC is, and always was, crap.

[motrucker]

AmigaHeretic wrote:
I'll admit that many years ago, about the time the A1200 came out and I got mine ( I think I paid around $599 US dollars) and that was around 1994. .

I bought my A1200 before that. It was the 6th 1200 The Arundel Computers got in (in Glen Burnie Maryland)
That is the A1200 I still use today!