In what ways SNES is more capaable than an A500?

[Retroplay]

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

Funny, then why do have ALOT of SNES Games major slowdowns ?

Many games use SlowROM (2.68mhz) instead of FastROM (3.58mhz), these issues could have been prevented as the recent batch of slow to fast patches have proved.
https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=oc5_BZjZtzs

Of course there's also the SA-1 patches but they require additional hardware in the game carts.

[Marce]

another little point to the Amiga is that the
snes resoluion is just 256x224
A500 resolution in pal is 320x256, and add to this that same games makes uses of the overlay, ie assasin, project x etc

anyways most snes games are generally better than the Amiga, excepting a few cases as cannon fodder or desert strike where the Amiga versions wins by far

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Originally Posted by Retroplay

Many games use SlowROM (2.68mhz) instead of FastROM (3.58mhz), these issues could have been prevented as the recent batch of slow to fast patches have proved.
https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=oc5_BZjZtzs

Of course there's also the SA-1 patches but they require additional hardware in the game carts.

Sure - that means less slowdowns

Hihi , i still love the Snes

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Steril707

On Paula vs the SNES sound chip, I'd reckon you'd be hard pressed to get something like "Aquatic Ambiance" out of an Amiga 500.

A more fair comparison would be a A1200/CD32 vs the SNES, though.

And I think you could get games in the quality of most SNES games done there without bigger problems.

I do feel SNES audio can sound very nice (nicer than the Amiga even), but it does IMHO have a certain muffled quality to it - kind of like the Amiga with the low pass filter on all the time.

That said, some of the SNES stuff is great. Some of the later Amiga stuff is great too, love both sound chips really

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by roondar

I do feel SNES audio can sound very nice (nicer than the Amiga even), but it does IMHO have a certain muffled quality to it - kind of like the Amiga with the low pass filter on all the time.

That said, some of the SNES stuff is great. Some of the later Amiga stuff is great too, love both sound chips really

That's a good description for its sound texture...

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by Steril707

But how? It's still only an ECS machine, if I am not mistaken?

I figured... Vanilla A3000 have an default 030 proc at 16 or 25Mhz, and 2MB Chip Ram by default.
All above should be way more power (and memory) to move stuff on the screen way faster, then A500 (even expanded with 512), and therefore way more comparable with Snes.
Did I get that wrong?
(sure.. it will still have max 64 colors (as opposed to 256 SNES... but we've seen so much beautiful games with 32 colors... )

You're waaay more knowledgeable them me in this part, both in hardware and software, but is 030 with such speed and 2MB of Ram means nothing?

[c0dehunter]

Originally Posted by S0ulA55a551n

And it wasn't just the custom chips in the Snes itself. A lot of cartridges has extra chips in them, expanding and improving ion the capabilities of the base snes.

Aha! That is an *excellent* point. I wish Commodore would release games in forms of insert-able Cartridges for A500 (on the left expansion port maybe?)

[Retro1234]

The SNES is a games console it only plays games.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

You're waaay more knowledgeable them me in this part, both in hardware and software, but is 030 with such speed and 2MB of Ram means nothing?

I might be able to help out here a bit. The following shows some small part of why the SNES GFX system is so fast compared to the Amiga and why the A3000 won't be able to really compete with it (purely from a GFX level - if we're looking at 3D/math performance for instance the situation dramatically changes unless the SNES uses something like a Super FX).

On the Amiga, the CPU has a speed limit when accessing Chip Memory. For the A3000 and AGA systems this limit is 7 MB/sec assuming no other Chip Memory activity such as having displaying a screen, displaying Sprites, using the Blitter, etc (all of which lower this number, in some cases by a hefty amount - merely displaying a 640x256x16 colour hires screen slows down CPU access to chip memory in the A3000 down to a maximum of ~4MB/sec).

The 68030 in the A3000 can access memory much, much faster than 7MB/sec, so anything it does in Chip RAM slows it down quite significantly. You can use Fast RAM as an intermediate to help speed up GFX (for instance, by storing all the GFX there and merely writing the end result to screen), but even so this last step will still be limited to at most 7MB/sec.

By comparison, the SNES's video chip accesses video memory at up to 10,5MB/sec and is normally not slowed down from that rate even when displaying more Sprites or a more colourful screen. Plus, the way the SNES displays Sprites requires far less memory bandwidth (just the cost of reading the Sprite data) than the 68030/Blitter need to display CPU/Blitter Objects (reading object, reading object mask, reading background and writing result to background).

Note that this is just part of the whole story. The SNES for instance does have a significantly lower amount of VRAM than the Amiga has Chip RAM and getting new data into VRAM, while not slowing down it's video chip, is usually not free. Unlike the Blitter/CPU in the Amiga it also has a hard object limit (meaning it can simply not display more than a certain amount of objects per frame, while the Amiga is more flexible here as it can more easily exchange speed for object size). But as a basic overview, it'll do.

[Pyromania]

A lot of SNES games have really crappy sound.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by roondar

I might be able to help out here a bit. The following shows some small part of why the SNES GFX system is so fast compared to the Amiga and why the A3000 won't be able to really compete with it (purely from a GFX level - if we're looking at 3D/math performance for instance the situation dramatically changes unless the SNES uses something like a Super FX).

Tnx bro for such detailed response.

Is that math for Ecs A3000 chipset also apply on Aga chipset, or Aga chipset have much faster access to memory, and therefore more comparable to Snes?

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Tnx bro for such detailed response.

Is that math for Ecs A3000 chipset also apply on Aga chipset, or Aga chipset have much faster access to memory, and therefore more comparable to Snes?

Thinking a bit more in categories like "how does it look like in the end" than raw math, I'd say a 1200 can put out games that look nearly as good as the SNES does.

Where it falls short is real parallax, imo.

Originally Posted by Pyromania

A lot of SNES games have really crappy sound.

A lot of Amiga games as well...

[kremiso]

just audio talking, despite the less channels i still prefer Paula

on average, imo the output yeld is better and cleaner, despite the snes with a lower volume and most of the time a bit 'dirty'

to be clear i love the snes too, just a reasoning of which audio i prefer between them

[roondar]

Originally Posted by d4rk3lf

Tnx bro for such detailed response.

Is that math for Ecs A3000 chipset also apply on Aga chipset, or Aga chipset have much faster access to memory, and therefore more comparable to Snes?

AGA has a few advantages over OCS that help it get quite a bit closer to what the SNES puts out graphically (still purely talking 2D stuff here, so no Mode-7/SuperFX stuff).

First, it has a better memory controller which allows one of the biggest cycle eaters on OCS (the bitplane display) to use far fewer cycles. This in turn makes the Blitter and CPU more efficient at reading/writing to Chip Memory. The top speed is still 7 MB/sec, but on AGA system you can actually get quite close to reaching this 7MB/seconds with the Blitter/CPU under many circumstances. On OCS/ECS machines this was much harder, in particular if you wanted more than 16 colours on screen.

Second, it has 64 pixel wide Hardware Sprites, which makes a pretty big difference in how you can use them. You're still limited to 8 of them, but you can use AGA to cover large areas of the screen quite easily using Hardware Sprites and those are very, very fast compared to using the Blitter or CPU to draw. Commodore even made it possible on AGA to have a fully Sprite based background layer without requiring line-by-line Copper Programming (by automatically repeating the Sprites 256 pixels from their starting position you can have a 256-pixel wide, repeating, 16 colour parallax layer using just HW Sprites for a minimal DMA overhead)

Third, it has improved Dual Playfield mode can display twice the number of colours for each of the two layers as OCS/ECS systems could. This means that games using Parallax can look a lot better.

Fourth, it has a wider colour palette (16 million colours vs 4096) and it can use more of them at the same time.

IMHO these things are not enough to make, say, the A1200 outdo the SNES for action games, but you can get quite close to making games that look similar - if the SNES doesn't use too many of it's colour blending or mode-7 tricks. I'd still say it's a stretch to get as many objects of the same size as the SNES can put out on screen though.

Originally Posted by Steril707

Thinking a bit more in categories like "how does it look like in the end" than raw math, I'd say a 1200 can put out games that look nearly as good as the SNES does.

Where it falls short is real parallax, imo.

I agree with the Parallax point. The SNES can easily display 3 layers of Parallax. The other real big differences (IMHO anyway) are Mode-7, which can be used quite cleverly and it's 'colour math' abilities to transparently mix colours together. Games like Donkey Kong Country use that quite nicely. It also can probably still outdo AGA systems in terms of objects on screen and object sizes, but that difference will be a lot closer than on OCS if AGA is programmed well.

A lot of Amiga games as well...

100% true, there was quite a bit of low-effort stuff on the system. That said, both systems can have excellent music and SFX if used well. Plus, the Amiga can - with some extra effort - close the gap in terms of channels somewhat because it's CPU (especially on AGA systems) is fast enough to consider real time software sample mixing.

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Standard A500

[ Show youtube player ]

SNes with an SuperFX2 21 Mhz Cpu

[ Show youtube player ]


ohhh and here is a fully expanded A500

[ Show youtube player ]

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by roondar

Plus, the Amiga can - with some extra effort - close the gap in terms of channels somewhat because it's CPU (especially on AGA systems) is fast enough to consider real time software sample mixing.

And you don't have that 64k limit on samples.

One other thing that AGA has over the SNES (and also Neo Geo btw) is that you can use the whole palette space on one object. If you have non DPF 5 BPL (64 colors), you can use all of these everywhere, where as on the consoles, you are usually limited to one 16 color palette per object and layer.

At least that's how I understand it on the SNES and MD. On the Neo Geo, you can use one 16 color palette per 16x16 tile, but it's not that easy to use that dynamically for parallax layers, so most games only use 16 colors for one background layer.

[kremiso]

due the fact that this is posted on support games...
it would be great to see the Obitus colorful snes port... go back to where it was born
but in AGA vest ofc

[freehand]

Never saw an amiga come even close to a full on snes action game.

Check out something like "Contra III" on snes mode7 goodness.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Steril707

One other thing that AGA has over the SNES (and also Neo Geo btw) is that you can use the whole palette space on one object. If you have non DPF 5 BPL (64 colors), you can use all of these everywhere, where as on the consoles, you are usually limited to one 16 color palette per object and layer.

At least that's how I understand it on the SNES and MD. On the Neo Geo, you can use one 16 color palette per 16x16 tile, but it's not that easy to use that dynamically for parallax layers, so most games only use 16 colors for one background layer.

I don't know about the SNES (though I expect it'll also allow this), but on the MD you can definitely choose one of the 16 colour palettes per 8x8 tile - this goes for both layers, the Sprites and the window 'layer'.

Originally Posted by freehand

Never saw an amiga come even close to a full on snes action game.

Check out something like "Contra III" on snes mode7 goodness.

Yup, that's more or less what I mean - the SNES will outdo the Amiga. AGA just made the gap smaller, it didn't close it

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by freehand

Never saw an amiga come even close to a full on snes action game.

Check out something like "Contra III" on snes mode7 goodness.

What about Dangerous Streets or Frankos Revenge?