English Amiga Board - View Single Post - 256 Colours, Chunky Vs Planar, what was better?

coder76 · 14 October 2017, 14:23

Both chunky and planar modes have their own advantages. But there exists chunky to planar routines (c2p's), which converts a chunky screen held in fast ram to chip ram planar format. On a 68040/68060 its copyspeed, so this conversion does not slow down copy speed to chip ram. With Doom, you really see that planar format does not slow down faster Amigas. A 68030/50 MHz even outperforms a 386/40 MHz running Doom in benchmarks by a frame or two, despite doing the c2p. Also, a 68040 outperforms a 486 PC running Doom at same clockspeed. The chip ram access speed is more of a bottleneck on the Amigas, rather than the planar format.

14 October 2017, 14:23	#5
coder76 Registered User Join Date: Dec 2016 Location: Finland Posts: 168	Both chunky and planar modes have their own advantages. But there exists chunky to planar routines (c2p's), which converts a chunky screen held in fast ram to chip ram planar format. On a 68040/68060 its copyspeed, so this conversion does not slow down copy speed to chip ram. With Doom, you really see that planar format does not slow down faster Amigas. A 68030/50 MHz even outperforms a 386/40 MHz running Doom in benchmarks by a frame or two, despite doing the c2p. Also, a 68040 outperforms a 486 PC running Doom at same clockspeed. The chip ram access speed is more of a bottleneck on the Amigas, rather than the planar format.