Crappy comparison of Amiga 1200 vs Atari Falcon

[Drummerboy]

Even the C64 graphics looked better than the DOS (CGA) version

Yeah, Much Better!!.

[stefcep2]

On paper, and for specific audio workloads, the Falcon was better. But for all intents and purposes, in real world applications across a broad spectrum of workloads, the A1200 was better.
The article does not take into account the TCO of each system. Bang for buck the A1200 was a much better investment. The market dynamics proved it to be so.

As a floppy-only 2 Mb system?  What real world apps and broad spectrum of workloads would be possible?

[Thorham]

The Falcon is more powerful, of course. Only a raging fanboi would say otherwise. And no, I'm not an Atari fan (the horror!).

[raddude9]

With the standard 68EC020 cpu onboard the A1200, the bus is 24 not 32-bit. Adding a cpu upgrade with fastram gives 32-bit. Unless he was referring to AGA? If he was then the falcon bus width should have been listed as 16 not 32.

Nope, the standard A1200 bad a full 32bit bus, although one that was shared with the AGA chipset (if you didn't have a FastRam card). The 24-bit thing is just the size of the address space, this is what limited the size of A1200 memory expansion (the ones that lacked a CPU) cards to just 8MB.

Adding a full 68020 or '030 would give you the full 32bit address space and let you install more than 8MB of RAM.

[psxphill]

An extremely fair and balanced article. The Flacon was horribly crippled by its memory bus, but other than that it has the chunky gfx mode, the 16bit audio, a DSP and a 68030 which were all features missing from the Amiga 1200.

The only thing Falcon feature that was truly missing from the A1200 was the chunky video modes.

The 68030 on a 16 bit data bus was a terrible idea. It doesn't appeal to the low end or the high end customer, although it is better than an Atari ST.

Both computers were less than perfect because of the companies collapsing around them. Atari shipped Tos and a beta of MultiTos with the Falcon as proof. The A1000 got away with shipping a beta OS because the computer had more potential than others, but in 1992 neither the Amiga or Falcon had any long term potential.

I've not seen any development nightmares from Atari, but that is expected because Jacks sons Sam, Leonard and Gary were integral to the business. While commodores primary business was infighting and politics, they just happened to make computers as a side line. We at least know why AGA was cobbled together in haste and (the AA3000 at least) didn't end up with DSP and 16 bit sound.

p.s. The falcon case looks truly horrible.

[Thorham]

The Falcon is more powerful, period. Don't be a bunch of fanbois, guys.

[skolman]

For Amiga long ago should build 030/040/060/PPC processor card with DSP and 16-bit audio codec with mixer Paula and Line output and input and microphone/headphones/CD-input/Digital etc.

Cards on the clock port / Zorro is nothing special, inefficient.

[vince_6]

I always read that a 030 on a 16bit bus is not a good idea.
This might be true, although I did my tests on an A500+ with an ACA500 and my blizz030.
AIBB gave me the exact same results as on my A1200 except some results like Line test because of AGA.

Propably a 50MHz 030 is not fast enough to bottleneck a 16bit bus?

[psxphill]

I always read that a 030 on a 16bit bus is not a good idea.
This might be true, although I did my tests on an A500+ with an ACA500 and my blizz030.
AIBB gave me the exact same results as on my A1200 except some results like Line test because of AGA.

It's not the same thing, in both cases the 68030 in your blizzard 030 is connected to a 32 bit bus. Only chip ram access will be 16 bit and most of the tests won't be touching it at all. I assume you left the 32 bit memory attached to the blizzard 030, remove that and you'll see the speed difference.

The 68030 in a falcon has no way of accessing any memory at 32 bit. In the Atari world ST-RAM is equivalent to 16 bit chip ram and TT-RAM is 32 bit fast ram, the falcon (without an accelerator) only supports ST-RAM.

So to get good performance you have to pay just as much for as an accelerator as you do on the A1200. Which makes the choice of 68030 rather strange. It's obviously a 68000 design with a 68030 shoe horned in as they only connect 24 address lines. The A1200 on the other hand can get 32 bit fast ram with just a cheap trapdoor ram upgrade. Although the A1200 is limited to 24 address lines unless you buy an accelerator.

[Motormouth]

I always read that a 030 on a 16bit bus is not a good idea.
This might be true, although I did my tests on an A500+ with an ACA500 and my blizz030.
AIBB gave me the exact same results as on my A1200 except some results like Line test because of AGA.

Probably a 50MHz 030 is not fast enough to bottleneck a 16bit bus?

Just try running a VXL*30 without a ram32.  Or any other a500 or a2000 68030 accelerator without 32 bit ram.

The integer math and even the floating point go way up but all the custom chip transfers, the graphics and all the ram transfers stay slow.
You only get a 10-20% increase in speed from an 68030 without 32bit ram over a stock 7 mhz 68000.   The upside is you can run more things (requiring 68020+).

The Graphics in a500 or a2000 even with an accelerator stay slower than the A3000s graphics.  Check out AIBB tests over at amiga hardware database.

[Motormouth]

... although I did my tests on an A500+ with an ACA500 and my blizz030. ....

That's a nice configuration!!!!!

[paul1981]

The Falcon is more powerful, of course. Only a raging fanboi would say otherwise. And no, I'm not an Atari fan (the horror!).

Stock yes on paper. But their OS is just a load of Tosh. What's all this I read about:

While the Falcon has its operating system in ROM, the multi-tasking version ships on floppy. There is a good reason for this (Other than it wasn't ready when the Falcon first shipped!), many professional applications would not work well with this new system, especially timing critical programs like Cubase and Logic. For these to run properly, the more common ROM based operating system was used while power users who needed the new functions could install the new operating systems on their hard drives. Even with this installed, there was always the option to boot into the single tasking OS with the use of a control panel applet, which could also configure other options on the machine, like the advanced sound system and the new high speed serial port.

Sounds like a compatibility nightmare to me.

[Kronos]

An extremely fair and balanced article. The Flacon was horribly crippled by its memory bus,

Don't forget that the Falcon was also horribly crippled by it's SW (read TOS) which allready was in legacy hell as it wasn't really planned for multitasking or HW expansion.

[Thorham]

Stock yes on paper.

Not on paper, it really is more powerful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpwlZgQPCpk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjgWx3DE1CY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTxwfRl_I0U

No Amiga can do that with a 16 mhz 68030.

But their OS is just a load of Tosh.

That's software, not hardware. Doesn't count.

The A1200 is still the cooler machine, of course, but it's not more powerful.

Guys, don't be fanbois, please, it makes us look bad.

[Kronos]

@Thorham

Lack of chunky mode meant that the A1200 sucked donkey-balls in 3D.

But to your suprise there actually were other uses for computers in 1992 except FPS games !!

Plenty other fields were a stock Falcon was utterly useless compared to a stock A1200.

[Thorham]

Lack of chunky mode meant that the A1200 sucked donkey-balls in 3D.

Lack of chunky modes is the least of your concerns when dealing with real 3D.

Plenty other fields were a stock Falcon was utterly useless compared to a stock A1200.

Didn't I say that the A1200 is the cooler machine of the two?