From: papresco@cantor.math.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: HELP--AMIGA OR IBM PC CLONE?
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 03:00:15 GMT

>That's just it, there is no SVGA standard.  There are so many different
>chips that supporting all of them can be difficult.  VESA attempts to 
>provide a standard, but it is usually very slow and isn't guaranteed to
>work on all systems.  

Who needs a standard?  That's what drivers are for.  As long as they
all write to the driver standard, the actual hardware can be as bizarre
(and powerful) as the electrical engineers can make it.

>SVGA is equivalent in terms of resolution, but it lacks the flexibility
>of AGA.  Here's a little comparison of my A4000 versus my ET4000 486-50
>at work:
>
>                            AGA                      SVGA
>
>memory                      2M                       1-2M

SVGA can be 1-3MB.  That's the most I've seen, but there could be some
with more.

>palette                     24 bit                   18/24 bit

SVGA can have a 32 bit palette.  Not 32 bit actual colours on the
screen but all that mask crap that Amiga users and other graphical
types like to talk about.

>max colors:
>            320x200         256/HAM8                 256
>            640x480         256/HAM8                 256/32k/64k/24bit
>            800x600         256/HAM8                 256/32k/64k
>           1024x768         --------                 256

Or 32k, or 64k, or full 24 bit.  I was just reading a review of a board
that goes up to 24 bit at 1024X768, does it relatively quickly too.  I
guess the point is a little moot since AGA can't even go this high...

>           1280x512         256/HAM8                 ---

Hmm, now there's an interesting mode...I'd like to see that some day.

>           1280x768         --------                  16

or more...depending on the board.

># sprites                     8                        0
>15kHz support               yes                      no

I don't read Hz specs too much because I have a standard SVGA monitor,
not a multiscan, but I would suspect that I can find a board to do any
mode you want.

>31kHz support               yes                      yes
>overscan support            yes                      no
>NTSC support                yes                      no
>PAL support                 yes                      no
>genlock support             yes                      no
>multi-res support           yes                      no
>graphics bus                16 bit direct            16 bit ISA

Why only 16 bit ISA?  As you know, there are VESA spec, local,
accelerated 32 bit, 33Mhz video boards.

>bandwidth                   ~7M/sec                  ~3M/sec

Vesa spec bandwith is much higher then EITHER of these.  Byte says
150Mps sec...that's 19M/sec.  They also say: "Few of today's
applications require more then 100Mbs"...Vesa spec local bus has
bandwith to spare.

>bit-blitting                custom chip              CPU driven

or custom chip.  This board I was looking at uses a 68008 CPU.  Is that
a newer version of the chip that powers the A600?

>line-drawing                custom chip              CPU driven

Or coprocessed.  Same deal...it depends on the board you buy.  And this
one was $250.00.

>video-effects               custom chip              CPU driven (if possible)

Once again, you have made a sweeping statement.
>
>>>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.
>>
>>Give me a BREAK.  What total CRAP.  A 66MHZ 486DX is "close" to the
>>speed of a 33MHZ 040, unless you have to do floating poing.   Come
>>on...what colour is the sky in your world?
>
>It is not a DX, it is a DX2, which uses Intel's clock-doubling scam.
>If Motorola had better marketing folks and if the people who buy the
>Motorola machines were as ignorant as those who buy Intel machines,
>the could have called the 040-25 a 50Mhz chip.  The motherboard of the
>Gateway is only running at 33MHz, not the full 66MHz, and the machines
>are not much faster than the regular 33MHz models.

Bull.  I know exactly how the DX2 works.   And if you knew as much as
you pretend to know about computers, you wouldn't think there is a scam
involved here at all.  The Alpha can run faster then 100Mhz, and it
will.  Do you think the MOTHERBOARD is going to run that fast?  Not
unless it's liquid cooled...

The next generation of CPUs will START at 66Mhz.  IT's not a scam, it's
the future.  Running the CPU faster then the motherboard is inevitable.
Why should Intel slow down their 66Mhz CPUs to go as slow as a 50Mhz
bus?  I say, let the CPU go as fast as they can make it.  Sure the bus
is a bottleneck for SOME (even most) applications.  A bottleneck does
not mean that there is not a performance enhacement.  Some people put
386 chips in ISA slots to run their computer.  THAT's a bottleneck.
But they still get a performance enhancement. 


>  For some operations,
>the 50MHz DX machines are faster than the kludged 66Mhz models.

For some...not most.  The 486DX CPU cache has a >90% hit rate.  That
means that 9 out of ten times it doesn't have to go to the mother board
at all.  Back that with EXTERNAL cache, and mother board speed isn't
crucial.  Indeed, a 33Mhz motherboard is superior, in my view to a
50Mhz one.  Performace is greater with the DX2, and you can have more
Vesa slots without having major timing difficulties.  Besides which,
your computer doesn't become a radio broadcast centre.

>Okay, my A4000 is faster than my 486 at work in overall system performance.
>As for the CPU speed, perhaps you need to learn a bit more about the scam
>which Intel has pulled regarding the DX2 chips.
>
There IS NO SCAM.  This is how tomorrows chips are going to run.  We
can't wait for the motherboard to catch up...it never will.  Alphas
will be running at 200Mhz, probably on a 50Mhz board...are you going to
call this a scam?

>And by buying an "industry standard" computer, you have helped to insure
>that personal computers will be held back for years to come.

No, by demanding a high quality clone, with a good operating system, I
have helped to advance the state of the art in "industry standard"
instead of being a sideline player like Amiga users.

Think of it as a vote...I voted for OS/2, ATI and Intel.  Leaders in
their respective fields.

You withheld your vote by casting it for someone who will never amount
to anything.  It's like voting for Ross Perot.
  
And because
>the Clones are such pieces of hacked together junk, you'll need that 
>support line to get the damn thing running.  "Oh, just set this jumper to
>R7 and then reboot, go into CMOS setup, select DF32 OFF, save it to CMOS
>RAM and exit.  Edit the autoexec.bat file to include the line C:\DOS\KLUDGE
>and the config.sys file to say KLUDGE=3.  Now, reboot again and then run
>the MSD program to be sure that there are no memory conflicts.  When done,
>go into Windows and edit the Kludge .pif file with ..."

I've never had any of these problems...but then I dont' use windows.

>That's what I call total bullshit, yet Clone owners will often come across
>things like that when installing new hardware or software.  It is truly a
>pity that the world got suckered in by IBM and Microsoft's deceptions.
>

The world didn't get sucked in.  The world was smart...we said we
wanted an open standard, an industry wide standard, and we wanted
software compatibility across busses, video cards, sound cards,
motherboards and even processors.  We wanted freedome from vendor
dominance.

If we all bought Amiga's we'd be at Commodore's mercy, and everything,
from full systems, down to the smallest peripheral would be an order of
magnitude more expensive.

If you dont' believe that, then you dont' believe commodore is a "real"
company in a capitalist world.  Their only job is to make what they can
get and distribute to their shareholders.  IT's the clone competition
that keeps them innovating and slashing prices.

Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy