Ben Hermans still staunchly against x86

[kolla]

artificially kept alive by a little community and two heroic companies.

Hm, which companies would that be? Individual Computers and... m3b? Elbox?

[desiv]

Thanks for saying what many of us have been wanting to say for quite a while.  Watch out though.  Now you can expect to be flamed by the lunatic fringe you've just attacked.....or the moderators who will censor you for "trolling" because you're not "politically correct" in regard to "Amiga-speak".

Censorship?
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.  :roflmao:

The fact that you can post that, kind of implies that they aren't censoring you...

While I disagree with the above, he's allowed his opinion.
I'd prefer it be done without the condescension, but let's just call it hyperbole..

It's obvious not everyone who preferred Motorolla at the time was a silly kid.  The "oversize loser" comment was (IMHO) put there just to get people upset.  Could be wrong.  I'm sure he had a valid sampling methodology to justify his claim.

I do wonder, what were the JPEG times for those 2 systems?
How did they compare at the time?

Does anyone have a 486 anymore to be able to run a test?
Of course, without the same software on both machines, it might be more a test of the software.
I would think a 68030 might hold it's own against a 486/25, but I could be wrong..

desiv

[tone007]

Bit of quick research..

486 had a MIPS (million instructions per second) rating of 20 (at 25 MHz) to 54 (66 MHz).

Motorola 68030 11 MIPS at 33 MHz, 18 MIPS @ 50MHz

50mhz might be able to keep up.

[the_leander]

I do wonder, what were the JPEG times for those 2 systems?
How did they compare at the time?

The major issue with such a test is the fact that even if the Amiga's CPU wins out, it'll still get smooshed at the point it attempts to display it by any 486 by virtue of the fact that the 486 will be using a graphics card almost certainly superior to either ECS or AGA.

In none compute intensive tasks, my A3000 030'25 with a CV64 was significantly more fluid to use verses my A1200 AGA with an 040'28.

[Tension]

I would love to be able to turn on my laptop and boot AmigaOS natively, without any other operating systems required.  If this was possible, the Amiga community would expand exponentially.

It would, of course, have to be totally free and easy to install on a huge variety of hardware.

But as has been mentioned here before, that would be such a mammoth task that it is just unrealistic.

Until that moment arrives, we're always gonna be stuck with hardware that is outdated before it is even released.

What a bloody shame.

[desiv]

.. by virtue of the fact that the 486 will be using a graphics card almost certainly superior to either ECS or AGA.

True.  Not only was Intel pulling ahead based on shear power about that time, but the graphics cards on the PCs were just starting to come into their own a bit.

Although, sheer power can't be totally written off...
Some of the AGA 060 demos by The Black Lotus are just amazing...

Or so they appear on youtube.  No 060 to test them..  

desiv

[the_leander]

True.  Not only was Intel pulling ahead based on shear power about that time, but the graphics cards on the PCs were just starting to come into their own a bit.

Although, sheer power can't be totally written off...
Some of the AGA 060 demos by The Black Lotus are just amazing...

Or so they appear on youtube.  No 060 to test them..  

desiv

TBL senseless and starstruck run quite well on an 040 if you're running oxypatcher. Dunno about later ones.

--edit--

AFAIK they also work under UAE too, since that was the environment they were developed under.

[ferrellsl]

@desiv

Censorship?
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.  :roflmao:

The fact that you can post that, kind of implies that they aren't censoring you...

While I disagree with the above, he's allowed his opinion.
I'd prefer it be done without the condescension, but let's just call it hyperbole..

It's obvious not everyone who preferred Motorolla at the time was a silly kid.  The "oversize loser" comment was (IMHO) put there just to get people upset.  Could be wrong.  I'm sure he had a valid sampling methodology to justify his claim.

I do wonder, what were the JPEG times for those 2 systems?
How did they compare at the time?

Does anyone have a 486 anymore to be able to run a test?
Of course, without the same software on both machines, it might be more a test of the software.
I would think a 68030 might hold it's own against a 486/25, but I could be wrong..

desiv

I wasn't implying that I was being censored nor was I trying to be condescending to paolone.  I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise.  I was clearly agreeing with paolone and I was suggesting that HE would be censored/banned for not falling in line with all the 68k/PPC-only fanatics here (AKA Cult of the 68K).  And yes, the correct word is censorship.  Moderators on this forum just in the past 2 days have threatened to ban anyone who makes posts that they deem to be trolling or anti (Amiga, AROS, OS4, etc....).  Can't get them to define trolling though....

As for 486 vs 68k performance, I have an A1200 with a 68030 accelerator (CSA 1250 12-Gauge) clocked at 50 Mhz and ran benchmarks against a 486DX 33.  Performance is about equal even with the huge difference in clock speed.  So paolone's remarks are spot-on in spite of all the irrational remarks that will be made about the 68k family and how it's "superior".  It certainly is NOT superior.

[desiv]

I wasn't implying that I was being censored nor was I trying to be condescending to paolone.  I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise.

No, I meant that paolone's tone was (IMHO) condescending, not yours.
I mixed my pronouns, sorry...  :confused:

And my comment about censoring was aimed at your post, but it was also including paolone's post as well, as I don't believe either will garnish a censor from the MODs.
My personal opinion; there was a lot of over-reaction about the "censorship" card.  I could be wrong, who knows?  :biglaugh:

As for 486 vs 68k performance, I have an A1200 with a 68030 accelerator (CSA 1250 12-Gauge) clocked at 50 Mhz and ran benchmarks against a 486DX 33.  Performance is about equal even with the huge difference in clock speed.  So paolone's remarks are spot-on in spite of all the irrational remarks that will be made about the 68k family and how it's "superior".  It certainly is NOT superior.

I haven't yet seen any "irrational remarks."  I tend to wait until something actually happens before I react to it...  Takes the fun out of it sometimes tho.  :laugh1:

I do think there are some aspects of the Motorola line that were superior personally.  But I'm not really a CPU guy.  Most of the advantages I felt might well have just been the Amiga's design.
As for benchmarks, they are tricky.  I'm willing to be that for any benchmark you find that shows Intel's were better, there will be benchmarks that show just the opposite.
It's not that either is wrong.  It's just that there are so many possible things to benchmark.
Benchmarks are kind of like statistics in that respect.

Personally, I go way back.
I had an Amiga and I had PCs.  My Amiga 500 "felt" much faster to me than the PCs I had/worked on.  But it was tricky because I was always doing different things on them.  So, it's a very personal performance metric. :rofl:

I do know that for me, about the time I was using my Amiga 1200, I could feel the PCs outpacing the Amiga, especially in the applications side.  Doom type games, graphic crunching apps, etc..  
But I would use my Workbench on my A1200 and then at work, I would use Windows 3.1..  
I much preferred the feel of Workbench.  It "felt" much faster to me.  So, to me at the time, the Amiga with the slower processor was faster than the PC with the much higher clockrate.

Now, much of this was actually Workbench and the Amiga's hardware design.

But that's how I viewed the Intel/Motorola comparison at the time.

Irrational?  Maybe..  

Now, for pure crunching numbers, the Intel could probably beat the Motorola.  But it just felt so much faster on the Amiga..

Then again, I also used Mac's really early, and they felt really slow to me.
(Again, MY OPINION at the time)
So, I should have probably stopped and said "it's more about what you're doing with the CHIP than the CHIP itself."

and... er..  Wow.. WAY off topic here.. ummm..  and..
that's why I think Ben is against the x86!!  :biglaugh::biglaugh::biglaugh:
(Wow, back to topic at the last second.)

desiv

[Piru]

Bit of quick research..

You should know better than comparing MIPS values from two different CPUs, let alone architectures.

[ElPolloDiabl]

Workbench should feel faster because it is partially in ROM. Windows having to run off the hard drive and shared RAM makes it a slug for snappiness.

[runequester]

from my experiences with windows 3.1 and 95 back in the day, the difference between workbench and those is that workbench generally doesn't crash when you have the misfortune of wanting to launch an application :madashell:

[takemehomegrandma]

Moving OS4 to x86 would be a large undertaking, I estimate that it would take $1M. The kind of money that hasn't been invested in the Amiga for a long time. The kind of money that people immediately understand to be serious, beyond the mere vanity and hobby interest. At $75 a pop Mr Hermans would need 13,333 buyers to make the investment back.

Oh, come on! OS4 has been a pure pro bono development project for years. A hobby. So don't suddenly try to add money to the equation; since those doing the developments are doing it free of charge anyway, it's more a matter of what they spend their time doing. They could work on PPC, or they could work on something else, and the cost would still be $0. But the thing is, on x86 they would at least have *a chance* of reaching 13,000 sales (but still highly doubtful). With "X1000" I'd be surprised if they reached 130. Cheap, mainstream hardware that's easily obtainable is the key. Amiga is a hobby, it's not a market, it's not commerce. Only very few people are prepared to take out a second mortgage on their house in order to pay the money A-cube and A-eon are asking, for that level of hardware they are offering, just to run OS4. Cheap and easily available HW would change the picture. MorphOS 2 (also a hobby OS) has had 1,000 sales (I'd guess OS4.1.x has 1/3-1/2 of that in total), and porting the OS to Mac computers really helped. OK, still PPC, but at least high volume, mainstream HW. You have the ultra cheap e-mac, with everything built-in (even the monitor). You have the ultra-small mac mini. You have the cheap yet powerful and expandable Powermac. Laptop support for powerbook is probably imminent now (laptop support for the first time in Amiga history). All these machines runs in circles around anything A-cube has to offer at 5x-10x the money, and puts up a good fight against what A-eon is about to offer at 10x-50x the money (which will by all means still be 2007 level performance hardware). The MorphOS team soon has the whole flora of PPC mainstream machines covered, and when they do, they have *fully* leveraged whatever the PPC *had* to offer. And I said "had" because PPC has been dead for all purposes we Amigans would consider interesting ever since Apple dropped out of the game. Is it three years now?  So by now, two questions are key, and this goes for both the hyperion brothers and the MorphOS Team: 1) Shall we pull the plug and call it a day within a year or two, or shall we migrate to greener pastures where life is still flourishing and where there is a future? And 2) If we have our minds set to continue instead of dropping it, where to go, ARM or x86? So if they want to continue, it's not a question of "if". It's a question of "when" and "where".

[paolone]

Hm, which companies would that be? Individual Computers and... m3b? Elbox?

Well, actually ACube and Vesalia...

There's something really good Hyperion and A-Eon are doing, but there are also some aspects of their behavior I feel controversial. Nothing against them, anyway.

[paolone]

@desiv
I wasn't implying that I was being censored nor was I trying to be condescending to paolone.  I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise.  I was clearly agreeing with paolone and I was suggesting that HE would be censored/banned for not falling in line with all the 68k/PPC-only fanatics here (AKA Cult of the 68K).  And yes, the correct word is censorship.  Moderators on this forum just in the past 2 days have threatened to ban anyone who makes posts that they deem to be trolling or anti (Amiga, AROS, OS4, etc....).  Can't get them to define trolling though...

Thanks, but I frankly doubt I will be moderated or even censored for this.

Let me be a little more verbose.

I just got sick of listening the same anti-x86 rants for 20 years by the same people who can't simply understand that processors are just like engines. They don't have a soul and are made of silicon. The best processor is not the most optimized/alternative, but the most popular, eve better if this means it's also the cheapest in the cost/performance ratio. A 2,8 GHz 64-bit quad-core CPU like the Phenom II X4 630 from AMD costs (here in Italy, for the END USER) less than 80 euros! Which should mean little more than 100 dollars. How much does ANY hi-performance (with hi-end meaning up to 2 GHz) multicore PPC processor cost? And how much will cost the motherboards to support them?

68K was choosen at the time because it was already popular and reasonably cheap, and able to bring the necessary degree of performance the original Amiga models required. It wasn't chosen because 80286 were scary, plagued or weirdly ill. Nor Intel was seen by original Amiga engineers like an alien devil from the 8th dimension! Would Commodore be alive today, they'd use x86 for the very same reasons (well, now that I think about it... Commodore does exist today... and they are using x86... ;-) ). Or maybe ARM, but surely no PPC. This anti-x86 crusade from Amigans is something that came up from Amigans themselves, and while most people just grown up and understood that's plain stupid, others are still fighting for... what reason exactly? To have a "different product" on the market nobody needs or cares about? Do these clever people really think x86 prices are low thanks to a few PPC processors still surviving on the market?

Please try to understand me: I have nothing against alternatives, I am always happy when some alternatives exist (I'm happy for ARM's success, to be clear), but not if their adoption acts like a boomerang, and becomes counter productive for adopters. There's a boundary between "being different" and "being masochistics" amigans have surpassed long ago.

[Fransexy_]

@desiv

As for 486 vs 68k performance, I have an A1200 with a 68030 accelerator (CSA 1250 12-Gauge) clocked at 50 Mhz and ran benchmarks against a 486DX 33.  Performance is about equal even with the huge difference in clock speed.  So paolone's remarks are spot-on in spite of all the irrational remarks that will be made about the 68k family and how it's "superior".  It certainly is NOT superior.

It's fair compare an 386 against 486? because 030 was made to compete with 386.and you are comparing with an 486. 040 is the competitor of the 486, and i suspect that if the 030 is almost in par with the 486 then 040 is faster than 486 at the same clock speed.The 060 was made to compete with pentium when the fastest pentium was 100 mhz.I do not have benchmarks but i think that 060 50-66 mhz is as fast as pentium 100 or more in some operations.Of course we are talking abot raw CPU power because overall speed of the system the Amiga sweeps common PC of the era.What made me decide definitely for an Amiga was look a 486 in action,  it was in ridiculous compared to the unexpanded Amiga 500 so i definitely bought an Amiga 1200