Real Amiga vs Emulated Amiga

[Methanoid]

Whilst I am often tempted to go back to a real Amiga (which I do every year or so and then sell it cos I dont use it enough) I am curious to see some REAL WORLD comparisons on the speed front....

eg:

Real A500, A1200, A4000
Athlon XP xxxx mhz running WinUAE
Pentium 4 xxxx mhz running WinUAE
(and variations of above using RTG for example)...

I'm particularly curious to know what sort of speed P4 would produce A4000 speed, 060/50mhz speed and so on...

Anyone know of any tests done?

[Shoonay]

Yet another "strange" (Aki' probably would use a different word ) comparison thread

The main problem could be that WinUAE can "only" emulate up to 040 ...

But it would be nice to see how much it takes, and try to run SysInfo on an emulated Amiga 040 running on a 300MHz Celeron

[wlcina]

I think speed of emulation depends not only machine which is emulationg, but on emulated system/running processes/etc etc.

[Methanoid]

Sure, I know that it is not straightforward... I wonder if there were some sort of benchmark (not AIBB) but something real world (like frames per second on Frontier or something) that could give an idea. Something slightly less "woolly" than "My P4 1600mhz runs about at 040 speed I think"...

Hmmm I wonder..... 680x0 Quake Frame Rates ???? Would presumably show an emulated machine with RTG was quicker?

Any low end pc you buy today emulates cpu sensitive amiga programs faster than a 060 with JIT. My old 800mhz Athlon(non xp) did. It's quite pointless to compare. Speed is never an issue with WinUAE.

[dirkies]

I still prefer running stuff on my real amigas (got a 500 & 4000) than WinUAE, the nostalgia is just so strong when you hear the whirring floppy drive

[keropi]

...get the real thing.... nothing beats that.... OK, except when talking about PSX

[AMIGAZ]

Yeah, amiga software should be run on real amigas not on microsoft's lapdog machines.
Maybe if you didn't have a real amiga when you were young and felt that experience it doesn't matter because then the nostalgia isn't there.

[magnox]

yeh bit of a hardcore miggy fan 2 prefer running the games on the original, doesent feel the same otherwise, however I find that winuae runs quake (clickboom port) adoom and gloom perfectly and all run full speed on top quality even though the emulator is set for 020 processor + fpu, 2mb chip and 8mb fast ram - no rtg. But all in all if you know the amiga legacy and have come to love the machine as im sure well all do, original is still best (and doesent crash as much)

[spiff]

Hehe.. emulated amiga probably runs quake a lot faster.. not that I get the point of it since its a port from a system you're emulating your emumiga on.. :P

For real speed.. I've been wondering how fast/slow the original diskdrive was.. adf/caps emulated feels slower then what I remember.

All of the other speed, CPU, hd, gfx.. I just think of them as **** much faster then the amiga. I guess A64s have that side effect

[Firthy2002]

Nothing beats the real thing.

[Fred the Fop]

I emulate everything. There's no "feel" for me. It's fucking binary code and chips and shit.
I find my groove in authentic music or cuisine or fabric or something soulful, tangible, deep. I don't see this "Real thing" stuff applying to a machine.

[Methanoid]

FRed, does the emulation stretch into real life? Emulated wife? I wish....

[Akira]

Originally Posted by Fred the Duck

I don't see this "Real thing" stuff applying to a machine.

What can a necrophyliac gay duck know about the Real Thing??

[HOL2001]

Don't hesitate, just emulate !

[MacTO]

I rarely use emulators. More often than not, they are more difficult to setup than the real thing. A real Amiga, you just plug it and go. My A500 is also completely silent when the hard drive is removed, which is a whole other computing experience. Tracking down real hardware and software is part of the fun too. Boxed software is interesting too. Particularly from the era when the actually included manuals.

[buckrogers]

I find my groove in authentic music or cuisine or fabric or something soulful, tangible, deep.

Hey Fred, you mean like pieces of soggy hot dog bread buns?

OK everyone. That's enough bashing one little duck for one day.

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by buckrogers

little duck

little? a fat duck transvestite newyorker that uses indifferently Lawrence Olivier and Liberace and dead monkeys wearing lipstick' avatars, little? with the enphasis on the "fat" word.

[spiff]

so.. to bring things back to topic.

Akira, (or anyone else) who has a real miggy.
Why we don't you load up a couple of emulators and make shure we all run the same rom, like tetris on gameboy. Check the framrates.. they should be pretty stable. And post your real amiga config here..
Then the "rest of us" will try to emulate the same hardware, or at least as close as possible..and do the same.
Zophar has a couple of amiga emulators http://www.zophar.net/amiga/amiga.phtml

*edit*

So for a quick test I ran amimastergear on a emulated expanded a1200 (68020, AGA, z3 fast 32mb, JIT) And I maxed out around 399fps. Framerate drops to some 300 for short periods when the demo loops.. but there's probably some limit in the software as to why it wouldn't go higher.

amimastergear is pretty nice its free (since 2000?), a good gui, boots in WB with out any special settings, and runs wonderboy III dragonstrap

[Martin_L]

Amiga = works
Emu = meh, we'll see how i feel.

[buckrogers]

Easy now Marco. It seems you too also know the bite of the beak of a certain crazzy-ass duck.

Shoonay, I cannot speak for Aki in this instance, although I am sure she would insist on doing some research. Here is what I discovered when faced with the imposing threat of the phantom spirits. You need to isolate the phantom that is within using one of the seven spirits... oops sorry.

One of the main reasons I have been spending on a vintage system is display quality and fidelity. Using a PC display results in blocky graphics that remind me of why I used to hold my ground and sometimes win the school play ground battle of my Amiga kicks the crap out of your 186/286/386 POS. Because I play my old school consoles on a 28" RGB dedicated wall monitor, and am generally fussy, I cannot settle for this. Now, I forgot that you can adapt a VGA video card to give 15KhZ output to an RGB or SCART/RGB monitor/TV. So you can get true Amiga quality output from a PC running winUAE. If you are not as pedantic about display quality as me, then this is not an issue.

Or you can take the composite video out of your video card and run it to a TV for a display that is not as blocky, but not as "clean" as RGB. Or, stick with a CRT monitor that has flexible controls, add the scan lines in on UAE, compensate for the loss in colour by using the monitors color controls, reduce the display area to suit your taste, and it's not so bad.

I find using a PC to do both internet/office AND UAE to be a pain. I hate switching windoes - it takes too long, and the whole computer runs slower, and one time it crashed and froze I had to remove the battery from the notebook (its a P3 2Ghz so no, its not because I use a slower older notebook). If you are a casual user (every once in a while but not daily or weekly), then this point is not important.

OK. So you make a dedicated UAE box. Some guys have done this. I think pxscroll or Fred the duck has done this recently if I am not mistaken. The advantage is hardware failures are easily taken care of. Once vintage stuff dies, it is a hassle finding another accelerator board at the right price, for an example. But how much have you spent? pxscroll says an old athalon 800Mhz will even do the trick. So maybe this is a feasible way to go. It can even boot directly to Workbench.

Other issues: Some feel you lose a certain "feel". I think some of this may be related to the video display issues I have raised. Otherwise it is psychological (or psychologique for our French members). One is so conscious of the fact that there beloved miggy is being emulated, that the enjoyment of computing is spoiled, even if the emulation is setup to be as identical as possible (RGB display, boots directly). Some like the 1200/500/600 cases ratther than a PC case. Some claim the sound is not the same. Collecting Amiga hardware for some has an intrinsic value - they they take provide in the physical machine and accessories they have. WHDload is claimed to load games at quicker speeds than in UAE (perhaps when the amiga is fitted with an accelerator).

Bottom line: if you can enjoy amiga computing despite these issues, then save the money and hassle and emulate. However, after reading this post, you may now be conscious of all issues, and feel compelled to join Soulshaker, defend the amiga, and go nuts on ebay.

[Shoonay]

Originally Posted by buckrogers

Shoonay, I cannot speak for Aki in this instance, although I am sure she would insist on doing some research. Here is what I discovered when faced with the imposing threat of the phantom spirits. You need to isolate the phantom that is within using one of the seven spirits... oops sorry.

That's a good one, mate

...now me wonder's what Jue would do?

[Soulshaker]

Buck, you said it all perfectly, my esteemed Amiga colleague. I can run most games and other software perfectly in WinUAE on my work machine but I would much rather be using the actual Amiga itself than emulate. Same with old the Commodores.

[squirminator2k]

I'm quite happy to emulate. I'd rather not waste my time buying an Amiga on eBay or AmiBench or something only for it to not get used enough. I tend to use WinUAE for research more than anything else. Oh, and for those old PD games I used to love (Frontal Assault, Sneech, Tritus...).

[chocovla]

I'm still hesitating... Would like an Amiga around here, but the question is how much will I be using it. Especially now I can play SWOS on WinUAE with the Comp. Pro joystick... On the other hand an Amiga is beautiful machine just to look at

[Miggy2TheMax]

using the real thing is _the_ only way to go about it, the amiga has something to it that no other piece of hardware has captured, maybe I feel like that becuase I grew up on the miggies, but emulation is not the same... its got this 'souless' feel about it... anyhow, get an amiga NOW

[Doc Mindie]

well....for working applications (3d, wordprcessing, that kind) I don't think the emulated compie is too bad.....the added speed form the JIT makes a HUGE difference.

But for games......check out pinball dreams......the ball seems to always be two frames or something, even when still......

So, for me, personally, for gaming, nothing beats the real thing, but for "serious" applications, I could very well get used to the extra speed.

[squirminator2k]

Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies both tend to have Ball Physics problems in emulation ("Hmm, I'm rolling down this slight slant, how about I randomly pop up a little?" or "I'm falling! Let's increase the fall speed for no descernable reason whatsoever!")

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by squirminator2k

Pinball Dreams and Pinball Fantasies both tend to have Ball Physics problems in emulation ("Hmm, I'm rolling down this slight slant, how about I randomly pop up a little?" or "I'm falling! Let's increase the fall speed for no descernable reason whatsoever!")

Never seen this and I have played PD a lot when testing emulation...
(and this is in wrong thread..)

[Mr_Modem]

Yeah Toni is right, Pinball Dreams runs excellent in WinUAE.

[Turbo2Xs]

Originally Posted by Mr_Modem

Yeah Toni is right, Pinball Dreams runs excellent in WinUAE.

FWIW I played Pinball illusions last night under emu and hate to say it but it was a Completely different experiance. The false interlace made anything that moved look shreaded (Which is more a monitor issue I'd presume). The sound emulation is always suspect however (even after tweaking lag/buffer etc)

Originally Posted by Fred the Duck

I emulate everything. There's no "feel" for me. It's fucking binary code and chips and shit.
I find my groove in authentic music or cuisine or fabric or something soulful, tangible, deep. I don't see this "Real thing" stuff applying to a machine.

I know hes an old timer and I'm just a nOOb, but really. Something soulful? The Amiga is (arguably) the last computer to have any type of 'personallity'; from the clickity click of the diskdrive to the Guru Meditations to the "Replace disk xxx in dfo:!!!" (as opposed to "We're sorry this program has encountered an unknown error. Please sumbit a report to HA.HAHA.ha.HA")

Originally Posted by Chocovla

On the other hand an Amiga is beautiful machine just to look at

Then there that

Originally Posted by Methanoid

I am curious to see some REAL WORLD comparisons on the speed front....

This is the question at hand. What do you suggest we try and I'll try it.
I have an A1200/030(40) and WinUAE 9.92 on
PIV 2.66/1024/9700pro
PIV 3.20/640/Go5200
Lemme know!

[Stig]

If whatever Amiga emulator you may have in mind provides perfect functionality for everything your fav Amiga hardware had to offer plus can load/run stuff faster without losing compatibility, I'd go the emulator way.

[Phantasm]

Emulate definately. You can run everything from the fastest 4000/040 downto the most basic a500 all on the same pc hardware.

You can have all the compatibility you could ever need. Otherwise you would need an a500 and an a1200 at least to be able to run all the games you can easily run through winuae.

The action replay cartridge is also not available for the a1200 machine. With winuae you can easily swap to an a500 with action replay rom.

You can also run with whatever kickstart rom you choose without having to softkick or install a rom-switcher.

[Stig]

Even better than emulation would be an Amiga OS (preferably a tweaked 3.1, gotta luv this one ) capable of booting from any Intel/AMD machine, that would be a blast which, of course, will hardly happen (correction: will never happen )

[IFW]

It did happen.
It was called amithlon and was killed off by the infighting of the companies and not paying the developer.

[Duke]

And theres also AROS.

[EmuChicken]

You can have all the compatibility you could ever need. Otherwise you would need an a500 and an a1200 at least to be able to run all the games you can easily run through winuae.

Not if you have an A1200 w/harddrive n ram, and WHDLoad installs!

IMO you cant really beat the real thing- especially with some zipstiks hooked up :-D

[Stig]

Originally Posted by Duke

And theres also AROS.

Didn't know this one existed, I must have been hiding under a rock!. I'm however, specially interested in the "native" version, but as far as I've read it does still require alot of work. I'll check the forum and see if native AROS has been reviewed.

[7-Zark-7]

Originally Posted by Firthy2002

Nothing beats the real thing.

Oi, Akira mate, I'm surprised you didn't pick this one up-did they pay their royalty fee to use this quote?!
I sense a copyright violation here...or has Akira finally chucked those old doorstops & become a nice peaceful Windoze XP PC-loving lameulator like the rest of us!
Just kidding Akira m8, now calmly put down that chainsaw!

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by EmuChicken

Not if you have an A1200 w/harddrive n ram, and WHDLoad installs!

IMO you cant really beat the real thing- especially with some zipstiks hooked up :-D

Are there WHDLoad installs for every single A500 only game?

Can you run an action replay cartridge?