3 ms·

It's interesting, I split my childhood between Hungary and South Africa, and pretty much along the timeline of the 486. During the late 80s in Hungary, the Amig

It's interesting, I split my childhood between Hungary and South Africa, and pretty much along the timeline of the 486. During the late 80s in Hungary, the Amiga certainly was a big thing, even in schools. I suspect it was due to the price; even an Amiga was considered super expensive, and if you ran into a PC it was either at your parents' work or similar, and it would have been a 286 or worse. Although I suppose the 486 came out in '89, it was rare to see it in the schools that I went to, or in my friends' homes. Similarly with VGA and SVGA (and decent sound cards!), it took several years to become affordable and mainstream. But when they did, and when Pentiums started coming out, it was pretty much the death knell for the Amiga. I recall somberly looking at benchmarks of 486s, and comparing it to our pride and joy, a 68030-upgraded A1200, and realising that it was a losing game. So you are absolutely right, though I think the timeline is probably a bit shifted depending on the country / economic conditions.

cyberdrunk 6y ago
Even 386 was absolutely crushing A1200 in some respects. In Amigas, you had to set every bit of a pixel separately, which didn't hurt for 2D games with static art assets (which you just copied from memory onto the screen), but it was a killer for anything 3D based. In result, you could have a 386 run Doom IIRC, whereas 3d shooters on Amiga 1200 were much worse than even Wolfenstein 3D.
- danielbarla 6y ago
  Oh yes, and Wolfenstein actually ran quite well even on a 286. Higher res and framerate than same time period Amiga titles. Aside from the additional inefficiency you mentioned, I think 3D is an area where none of the Amiga's specialised hardware chipsets helped (or at least, nowhere near enough / as much as they did with 2D), and the CPU performance disparity started to really show.
  - tibbydudeza 6y ago
    Amiga stopped investing/improving their unique hardware chipset and PC's simply overcame that deficiency by sheer CPU power and improved graphics output standards (EGA->VGA).

cyberdrunk 6y ago

Even 386 was absolutely crushing A1200 in some respects. In Amigas, you had to set every bit of a pixel separately, which didn't hurt for 2D games with static art assets (which you just copied from memory onto the screen), but it was a killer for anything 3D based. In result, you could have a 386 run Doom IIRC, whereas 3d shooters on Amiga 1200 were much worse than even Wolfenstein 3D.

danielbarla 6y ago
Oh yes, and Wolfenstein actually ran quite well even on a 286. Higher res and framerate than same time period Amiga titles. Aside from the additional inefficiency you mentioned, I think 3D is an area where none of the Amiga's specialised hardware chipsets helped (or at least, nowhere near enough / as much as they did with 2D), and the CPU performance disparity started to really show.
- tibbydudeza 6y ago
  Amiga stopped investing/improving their unique hardware chipset and PC's simply overcame that deficiency by sheer CPU power and improved graphics output standards (EGA->VGA).