[manossg]

@Promilus

I think I better understand your viewpoint now, mate, and the core of our disagreement. You are concerned about the fragmentation that the Vampire innovations might bring. I, on the other hand, find these additions very true to the Amiga spirit and I am very excited with this new and upcoming software that takes advantage of them. For example, the Jake and Peppy game looks and feels very modern, while at the same time being an Amiga title.

That's what I mean in my original post:

Originally Posted by manossg

the Vampire experience is not only about acceleration (although the Vamp is unbelievably fast!), but about improving/enhancing the Amiga experience in ways that the original Amigas could not deliver.

It is not just a matter of raw speed. And that is why, although I do not doubt that PiStorm will improve a lot given enough time, I highly doubt that it will threaten, let alone 'kill' the Vampire, as the OP claims. That's also why I stopped using emulation (UAE/PiMiga) for NG Amiga stuff (and because, as already mentioned, Vampire is/feels smoother), although the emulation route has better scores on SysInfo.

The way I see it, again, we are spoilt for choice and there are great options for everyone. All this thing about past and future Vampire-killers might be a bit juvenile and makes for some nice, fun conversation, but the actual end result is lots of fantastic hardware choices and my guess is that this friendly (and sometimes not so friendly ) competition inspires the Apollo team to continue innovating and pushing the hw even more, so everybody's a winner.

Originally Posted by Promilus

to what kind of use you need AC68080 level of performance in Amiga? I mean processor-wise, not the whole subsystem.
Either you need something way faster than 060/50MHz or you don't. If you don't then PiMiga will eventually give everything typical amiga user need for less money (and with more availability) than Apollo Team products.

Again, 'need' is a weird term to use, regarding a hobby computer. I would say that I enjoy using my Vampire for luxuriating in the wonderful Workbench, some light productivity (milkytracker and word processing), NG games (especially the great ports by Arti/BSZili ), 060 demos, some -amazing- Mac emulation and a few classic games. Although I could do most of these on the PiMiga, for example, I couldn't do everything and not with the same amount of smoothness. So, again, it's not only a matter of raw speed.

Originally Posted by Promilus

When it comes to amiga software (actually games) there are 4 categories:
1. Designed and working well on either stock or commonly expanded Amiga
2. Designed for moderately expanded amiga for full speed but working ok on commonly expanded or stock
3. Designed for heavily expanded amiga with RTG for full experience but working ok on AGA and moderately expanded amiga (e.g. Napalm)
4. Designed for extremely heavily expanded amiga with 3D RTG - those usually require both hw acceleration of graphic card (voodoo, bvision) and PPC.

Vampire handles 1-3 and kind of overlaps part of 4, PiStorm should handle 1-2 (especially if chip ram access is fixed) and in the future 1-3. And when it comes to #4 most practical approach would be to copy and improve the way Phase5 did that.
Even their on-going effort in 3D core won't change that simple fact - it will still be too slow to port more power hungry games but games designed strictly for Vampire won't run on non-vampire classic amiga rigs fully capable of running either segment 3 or segment 4 titles. Yes, 604e@300MHz with 060/50MHz won't run application designed with AMMX in mind despite being capable of running Quake 2 better (it's ppc version against vampire's 68k).

I am not so sure I fully agree with your assessment. Vampire atm is actually so-so regarding classic games (those in the category 1 you mentioned) and I wouldn't recommend the Vampire if you only want to play WHDLoad games. Vampire truly shines and kicks ass in categories 2-3 and, naturally, in Vamp specific games.
For games like Quake 2, performance is quite decent and unbeatable in this price level for real hw.

Also, I have yet to see the new 3d improvements in action and it is still too early, so I cannot refute or confirm your claim/prediction that it will be too slow but I also don't know what kind of expectations you have.