Fixation on HEUOGE Memory Counts?

[LordCrass]

Don't know if I've ever used more than 16MB of RAM on any of my Amigas. Maybe once or twice due to preload on a large WHDLoad game, but that's it.

[Tchucolate]

We'll I can see how 16MB - 32MB IS useful, in come heavy use cases. Also, I guess I left the Amiga scene in 1993 or so when I had to sell my Amiga 4000 for work reasons. Maybe later in the 90s, with new Os's it would required more ram?

I have a Pentium 90, released in 1997 and that came with 64mb of RAM, and could max out at 128, so maybe by that point these more mem WAS a requirement. On Windows, i would have used NT and later Window2000 and those DO use a LOT more RAM of caching and larger code.

But yeah, 256mb of RAM in 1993 would have been nutso? Unless maybe it was used on Babylon 5 for rendering the real hero VFX. And even then, I think 32-64mb would have handled that fine, as I used to do VFX back in 93, and that was the mem pool needed for decent quality back then.

[Daedalus]

The new versions of Amiga OS needed more RAM, but not dozens of MB. OS3.9 lists 6MB of fast RAM in its requirements, though it will boot with less than that. The increase in requirements was due to the increase in capabilities that new peripherals added, and the size and complexity of tasks that were available later times. In 1993, 32MB of RAM would've cost a small fortune, so tasks requiring it were limited to extremely specialist stuff; there was no point in writing consumer software that needed lots of RAM when practically no consumer could afford it. By the late '90s, 32MB was commonplace, and 128MB wasn't out of reach for people also spending money on things like CD burners, graphics cards, sound cards etc., so software that could use massive amounts of RAM was then feasible, and people could do things on their Amiga that were impossible in 1993.

[Karlos]

As soon as you started dealing with PC game ports, more RAM was increasingly helpful. Most of them tended to make as much use of additional memory for assets as possible.

[Tchucolate]

Originally Posted by Karlos

As soon as you started dealing with PC game ports, more RAM was increasingly helpful. Most of them tended to make as much use of additional memory for assets as possible.

I can see that PC ports would need more RAM. Im not really sure I want to play PC ports on an Amiga, especially when we move into late 90s. The PC by that point was chugging along with Pentium IIs and discreet 3D. Something the Amiga could not compete with.

Anyone who lived it remembers it perfectly well. Its why the Amiga died off, and we (mostly) moved to the PC. In the 90s, THE period defining titles were released on the Amiga. But by the early to mid 90s it was on the PC. The 68030 and 040 was NOT mass market on the Amiga, and AGA was too little to late.

Don't get me wrong I loved my Amiga 4000, but games that actually USED it back when released. Well, there werent any, not really.

Now, back to huge memory lust.

I understand that providing 8mb of RAM on a modern accelerator is not practical, its too tiny for modern cheap off the shelf chips. But I quite often see people with OLD accelerators lusting to max it out.

For instance I have a fastlane Z3, and it can do 256mb if moded AND if I buy £200+ of memory for it. But why?

For what I want it for, games from back then, software from back then, well, 32mb is more than enough, and thats if I even do power user stuff with it.

But anyway, the post has educated me, I know now why SOME people want 512mb on an Amiga. Its to play modern demoes, play multiple videos at the same time, mp3s etc.