2 ms·

The never released AAA, unlike AGA, had non-planar aka packed aka chunky modes. CD32, unlike A1200/A4000, had an extra chip handling many tasks specific to tha

by snvzz 4y ago

The never released AAA, unlike AGA, had non-planar aka packed aka chunky modes. CD32, unlike A1200/A4000, had an extra chip handling many tasks specific to that console, and that chip also had specific hardware for planar to packed conversion.

actionfromafar 4y ago
Commodore biz decisions were, to steal an expression, a Fractal of Bad Biz Design. Even the tragically underpowered CD32 and Amiga 1200 machines would have been twice as fast for gaming if they had 64 kilobytes of extra RAM. Why? They had 2 megs, of "slow" RAM, slow because it shared bus cycles with the graphics and because CPU caches had to be turned off. It they had just a sliver of dedicated CPU RAM, games could have put inner loops in that RAM and achieved 2 to 4 times the speed in many calculations. You could buy expansion RAM (2 megs or 4 megs were common) which did that, but very few customers did, and almost no games took advantage. This was at the tail end of Commodore life, but it's such an obvious example of penny wise, pound foolish decision.
- icedchai 4y ago
  They could've also gone with a different configuration: 1 meg chip, 1 meg fast. Or even have spent a couple bucks more and made it hardware configurable! Few Amiga games needed 2 megs chip. Remember, the original systems only had 512K chip RAM.
  - snvzz 4y ago
    >Few Amiga games needed 2 megs chip. Can you name any? Non-AGA that is. (As AGA machines all came with 2MB chip) I can't even name any that require 1MB chip. There were machines like the A500+ and A600 that shipped 1MB chip, but they didn't sell anywhere as much as the a500. Some A500 (like mine) have an Agnus that supports 1MB chip but unfortunately, unless the board is modified (a trace needs to be cut and replaced by another, a "solder jumper"), trapdoor expansion will show up as slow rather than extra chip.
    - icedchai 4y ago
      I really can't. I was being optimistic, assuming there were some late-stage Amiga games that required more chip RAM. Seems unlikely, I agree.

by snvzz 4y ago

actionfromafar 4y ago

Commodore biz decisions were, to steal an expression, a Fractal of Bad Biz Design. Even the tragically underpowered CD32 and Amiga 1200 machines would have been twice as fast for gaming if they had 64 kilobytes of extra RAM. Why? They had 2 megs, of "slow" RAM, slow because it shared bus cycles with the graphics and because CPU caches had to be turned off. It they had just a sliver of dedicated CPU RAM, games could have put inner loops in that RAM and achieved 2 to 4 times the speed in many calculations. You could buy expansion RAM (2 megs or 4 megs were common) which did that, but very few customers did, and almost no games took advantage. This was at the tail end of Commodore life, but it's such an obvious example of penny wise, pound foolish decision.

icedchai 4y ago
They could've also gone with a different configuration: 1 meg chip, 1 meg fast. Or even have spent a couple bucks more and made it hardware configurable! Few Amiga games needed 2 megs chip. Remember, the original systems only had 512K chip RAM.
- snvzz 4y ago
  >Few Amiga games needed 2 megs chip. Can you name any? Non-AGA that is. (As AGA machines all came with 2MB chip) I can't even name any that require 1MB chip. There were machines like the A500+ and A600 that shipped 1MB chip, but they didn't sell anywhere as much as the a500. Some A500 (like mine) have an Agnus that supports 1MB chip but unfortunately, unless the board is modified (a trace needs to be cut and replaced by another, a "solder jumper"), trapdoor expansion will show up as slow rather than extra chip.
  - icedchai 4y ago
    I really can't. I was being optimistic, assuming there were some late-stage Amiga games that required more chip RAM. Seems unlikely, I agree.