From: skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu (Skip Sauls)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Date: 10 Jan 93 16:31:54 GMT
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science

In article <1993Jan10.043322.7254@src4src.linet.org> scottw@src4src.linet.org (Scott Weintraub) writes:
>First off, I want to say that about a week ago, I ordered my Gateway after
>being a loyal Amiga advocate for many years.  Guys, they've caught up.  A

Funny that it has taken so long...

>few months ago, we all agreed that HAM didn't cut it anymore and were pretty
>excited about the AGA chipset which I can now say *STILL* doesn't cut it.

As an owner of an A4000 who uses very nice SVGA systems at work, I can say
that AGA certainly does cut it.  Commodore wanted to upgrade the custom
chips to SVGA levels, and they have done so with AGA.  

>Now, let's make a reasonable comparison.  We'll compare the basic Gateway
>4DX2-66V to a 4000.  The Gateway is $2995 and the 4000, powered up is 
>$2700.  The 4DX2-66V comes with a 15" MAG (it has a Gateway case but is
>internally a MAG which I may add is considered by many equal to the 3FGX
>and the 4FG.  It recently got monitor of the year from PC World and is
>completely and utterly FLAT).  Uh oh!  The A4000 doesn't come with a monitor.

Good.  I hate being forced to buy a monitor with a system.  If the A4000
had come with an A1960, I'd have sold the beast before unpacking it.

>Hmmmm... that NEC looks nice but unfortunately, we need a monitor that can
>do 15KHz.  Oh well.  We'll settle for a 1960 which definately wasn't our
>first choice.  It's about $550 (don't quote me please) so let's tack that
>onto the price of the A4000.  $2700 + $550 = $3250.  Wow, that's more than

Why not go for a 17" IDEK 5017LP?  It syncs from 15kHz up to > 31kHz and
is very nice.  I just bought one from IDEK Direct for $795 and look forward
to its arrival tomorrow.

>the Gateway.  As we all know, the Gateway is a 486DX2 processor running
>at 66MHz and the A4000 is run off an 040 operating at 25MHz.  They're both
>incredibly fast machines and while the 4000 could be faster, it'll have to
>do.  The A4000 comes with 6 megs of RAM and the Gateway comes with 8.

So, the Gateway's CPU should come close to the speed of the 33MHz 040, 
unless you need to do a lot of floating point.  The A4000 could have been
faster with a better memory system, but 33MHz would also be nice.  As for
memory, you'll certainly need at least 8M for the Gateway, while 6M is
plenty for most apps on the Amiga.

>The 4000 has one 3.5" high density drive.  The Gateway comes with two: a
>3.5" and a 5.25".  Since a 5.25" drive is useless in an Amiga, we can't 
>really rank on CBM for not including a second drive.  The Amiga 4000 comes

The Amiga's drive is also dog-slow.  I don't use floppies at all except for
installing software, so it doesn't bother me much.  But if a network was not
available, the floppy could become very annoying.

>with a 120MB IDE of which I'm unsure of access time.  Gateway includes

It's a fairly quick little drive.  I get over 1M/sec using the various
benchmarks and real-world speed is very good.  I have a couple of 12.5ms
245M IDE drives in my 486 at work that are comparable in speed to the 
A4000's drive.

>a beautiful 340MB IDE sitting right on the motherboard so it's not connected
>to an ISA slot.  I'm very unfamiliar with this technology but I do know it
>runs at 13ms and says it has a local bus controller in the ad but doesn't

I'm not positive, but I'd bet that the A4000 IDE interface is "local bus" by
the Clone world's definition. 

>take up one of the local bus slots.  As far as graphics go, the Gateway
>includes a local bus ATI Ultra Pro which happens to be an extremely fast
>card.  Windows does *NOT* run slowly with this baby in your machine.  It's
>basically a "real-time" OS and is comparable with the Amiga's Workbench.
>The ATI does 640 x 480 and 800 x 600 in 24-bit and then drops down to 65k
>colors in 1024 x 768 and finally, 256 colors in 1280 x 1024.  According to

Does it have 2M VRAM?  It must, because a 1M board cannot.  A $99 ET4000
board can do 24bit in 640x480 (slowly), 32/64k in up to 800x600, 256 in
1024x768, and 16 in 1280x1024.  It is very fast compared to stock VGA, but
it doesn't do so well against the accelerated SVGA boards available now.

>the January '93 issue of BYTE, the ATI card can play back Video for Windows
>movies which reportedly can animate 1024 x 768 at 30fps.  I am yet to test
>this because my Gateway is in the mail but this is coming from a 3rd party
>and I doubt is fictional.  The Amiga comes with the fabulous new AGA chipset.

You better get something bigger than 340M if you are going to play back
animations of that size...

I notice that the price of the ATI board is $799, it had better be fast for
8x the price of stock 24bit SVGA...

>It can do 256k colors out of a 24-bit palette in 640 x 480.  It can do those
>same colors in 800 x 600 and the ever-so-awkward 1280 x 400 but in 15KHz mode.

Which brings up a good point.  That wonderful ATI board doesn't do much for
you if you need to go to videotape, and many Amiga owners do use video.

>The increased bandwith on the A4000 enables it approach 30fps in 640 x 480.

I wish.  30fps might be possible in 640x400 interlaced, but I'm still not
so sure that even that can be done.

>The 4000 has 7 slots when everything's over and the Gateway has 9.  8 being
>ISA an one local bus.  Both are desktops but for $100, you can upgrade

7 slots?  It has 4 Zorro III, 3 AT slots inline, 1 video slot inline, and
a CPU slot (filled), but saying 7 slots is misleading.  The ISA bus is a 
big negative and it is a shame to cripple such a machine with it.  There
is a 4DX2-66E which has EISA which is a better comparison with Zorro III,
but it is $3795.  Of course that includes a 500M SCSI drive also, so we'll
have to wait on Commodore's SCSI-II ZIII board to make a better comparison.

>the Gateway to a tower case.  The A4000 comes with a 101-key keyboard which
>I find slightly annoying and the Gateway has a 124-key AnyKey keyboard
>which happens to be a joy to use.  Both include mice which are both medicore.

Does the Gateway keyboard have the [Ctrl] key in the wrong place?  I hate
the damn AT101 keyboard layout due to the ridiculous placement of certain
keys.  Does it click?  If so, you can keep it.  My A4000 keyboard is much
nicer than any I've used on any platform, with the possible exception of
the A1000 keyboard.  The A4000 mouse works better than the old ones, but
it feels "slippery" due to the lack of a texture.  I prefer the C= pregnant
mouse.

>The Gateway comes with MS-DOS and Windows and of course the A4000 comes with
>WB 3.0.  Gateway then enables you to choose from a small assortment of   

Here is where the A4000 kills the Gateway.  MS-DOS and Windows simulate an
OS, but they don't compare to AmigaDOS 3.0.  The current PowerUp ships with
DeluxePaint AGA and ADPro, so it does have a few apps.

>software.  I choose Paradox 4.0 (considered the best piece of database
>software) and Borland C++ 3.1 (considered by many the best C compiler).

I agree.  I make a living using Borland C++ and wish that there were an
equivalent for the Amiga.

>Gateway's cache is small.  It's only 64k but for a mere $45 you can jack that
>up to 256k which is more than enough.  After that, the leftover money that

Nothing is ever more than enough.  :-)

>you save can be put towards a variety of stuff including RAM at $45/meg,

Hmm, I bought 4M for my A4000 at less than $150, so the Gateway price is
actually a bit high.

>an upgrade to the ATI card to give it an extra meg of VRAM which is
>necessary for the higher resolutions and 24-bit color.  It's $125.  I know,

Ah, they don't exactly advertise that, do they?

>I know, I know.  There's no sound.  Well, the extra money can be put toward's
>Gravis's Ultra Sound.  It's a 16-bit soundboard and costs about $130.  I've
>probably forgot something so feel free to correct/add/subtract this post.

Well, there is one thing that I'd want in a Clone that no Clone offers and
probably will never be able to offer: Amiga emulation.  Add $1000 for an
A1200 with hard drive to get a minimal Amiga system to enhance the Clone.

>Oh yes.  If you want tech support, Gateway's tech support hotline is open
>weekdays from 6AM to midnight EST and on Saturday from 8AM to 5PM.  I can't
>say the same for CBM who would rather our problems to be in the hands of 
>it's dealers but sometimes offers help.

Gold Service is comparable and has satisfied me on both my A3000 and A4000.

Do Gateway engineers post on the Internet?  The free advice and info from
the C= engineers on the c.s.amiga.* groups is invaluable, IMHO.

>-- 
>     /// AMIGA:            * Scott Weintraub - Long Island, NY     *   In
>    ///  the computer for  * e-mail: scottw@src4src.linet.org      *DreAms i
>\\\///   the blah blah     *                                       *  WalK
> \\X/    blah blah blah    * Letterman is the king of latenight!!! *WiTh yOu

Skip Sauls, Amiga Advocate
skip@tacky.cs.olemiss.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy