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Originally Posted by AnimaInCorpore
Well, using an emulator it's easy just to "activate" 16 MB of RAM (2 MB overlapped by the ROM) but on the hardware side 4 MB RAM is the maximum without any soldering/modifications (AFAIK).
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Ah, I didn't know that. Still, 4MB is more than 2MB of the ECS/AGA machines. Also, I would honestly consider soldering/modding a machine to get to the higher numbers kind of 'cheating' when it comes to comparisons, but meh - it doesn't really matter I suppose.
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Actually the current approach hits a sweet spot on the Atari ST Blitter with 32 pixels wide sprites. Also line strips without any gaps are very effective.
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Ah, right. I thought it was multiples of 32 pixels, but in fact it's specifically 32 pixels wide objects. Good to know.
To be fair, line strips without gaps can probably be done quicker on Amiga Blitter as well than standard blits. Though it would be a pain to set up (blit both edges @ 4 DMA cycles per word, then the rest as a copy blit @2 DMA cycles per word).
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In fact there's more to consider: having 4 MB "Chip-RAM" you can also store some DMA samples permanently. Also since the upper and lower screen borders can be removed as well the resolution can be increased from 320 x 200 to 320 x 272 without being a DMA cycle stealer. So even with some tricks the Amiga 500 cannot beat the Atari STE in this (very special) case. 
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I did not know you could have that high overscan without losing DMA cycles on the STe, nice.
As for DMA samples. It's an advantage, sure. But then again, streaming samples from Fast or Slow RAM in real time is not that much of an issue. Can be done for a quite low CPU overhead. GFX from Fast or Slow RAM is more complicated, for sure, as the data rate tends to be far higher.