Vampire discourse, keep it civil (was: Vampire 1200 V2 waiting times)

[Promilus]

@hammer

Cache enabled 68060 doesn't like self-modifying code e.g. Dread

There are quite a lot games which doesn't that's why there was an option to disable cache. It was used more widely on Amiga than it was on PC.
My point was to actually compare "apples to apples" as much as possible when it comes to software emulation. Comparing 060 (physical) to 060-JIT-Emulation isn't actually that since with JIT enabled you turn off MMU (And with MMU you don't have JIT and emulated 060 even on most powerful desktop x86 CPU is rather slow). And that's one argument many ppl (like Thomas) had against Vampire so why the hell shouldn't I use it against JIT as well? My whole point was about software emulation. Which is either fast or most compatible. Never fast AND most compatible. Do you disagree?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Haha, a classic. Hold that though next time you and yours whine about the haters being rude and/or unreasonable.

I'm being rude because you were 'just asking questions'? You said you would like to "finally see a new game that actually matters for Vampire", but apparently not badly enough to find out what games are actually available or in development. Then you 'seriously' ask me to do the work for you? But you aren't being serious because the question is obviously rhetorical.

I see you mentioned Tomb Raider. I would dearly love to see Tomb Raider on the Vampire (actually on any Amiga that could possibly run it). However I didn't just sit on my hands waiting for it to be delivered on a silver platter. I researched various options and even managed to obtain the source code for Tomb Raider 2. Unfortunately I don't have the skill to port it or the time and energy to learn how right now. Am I bitter about that? Of course not. The Vampire is a piece of hardware that makes my A600 go twice as fast as the A3000 I had which cost NZ$15,000 in 1997 money. It's not the Apollo Team's fault if I don't use it to capacity.

I wish Amiga fans would stop being butthurt and full of snark because their world isn't perfect. Yes yes I know, it's an Amiga tradition which is a part of the retro experience etc. etc., but I don't like it any more than I did back then. So much amazing stuff is being produced and/or in development for the Amiga now - from many different accelerator cards and useful gizmos to the restarting of OS 3 development, several ground-breaking new A500 games in the wings, thousands of legacy games and applications available for free download, lots of commercial code being open-sourced etc. - can't we be more positive about it?

But, even if you hate my guts

I don't 'hate your guts', I hate the attitude you are engendering.

You said "Right, this is what keeps me awake at night - I'm a Vamp hater, hate-blocked from ever acquiring one" implying that I accused you of being a Vamp hater. But I didn't. You just assumed that when I mentioned 'Vampire haters' I was talking about you. But now I don't know what to think. You ask 'seriously' about what games 'that actually matter' are available or coming to the Vampire, strongly implying there aren't any (because otherwise you would know already) and that this is a big problem for you. Yet at the same time you imply that you don't even have one. What am I to think? That you really are a Vamp hater who would never have one? That you do have one and are upset about the lack of games for it?

These threads are mostly pointless because it's the same usual suspects trading well worn out arguments, but occasionally somebody from outside could gleam some actual info.

True. In this thread I have been called 'daft' for agreeing with experts, and a 'shitty coder' for using period development tools on my retro computers. My Vampire is described as 'pointless' either because there are or are not enough dedicated titles for it, or because 'several other solutions' are faster, or it's too expensive even though a basic 060 card costs more, and anyway Gunnar is a bad person. Honest questions and answers are met with insults, while loaded questions are laid down to trap the unwary.

All this leads to the obvious conclusion that people aren't coming here to become more informed or help others, but to wave their dicks around. It's like being in the 90's again!

Not so with this helpful attitude. Not to mention that such obstinacy does make one wonder whether there actually are any games for the Vampire.

Trap sprung! Too bad the prey didn't go for the bait.

I don't know what was the point of linking that particular unit,

If people want to make a valid argument they should link to the right product, or at least identify it in their post.

the only one with some relation to this thread is MiSTer, hence my comment (although MiSter is not in competition with the V at all, as a I said not long ago replying to nonarkitten).

The impression I got was that DE10 was cheaper than the V and therefore better value somehow.

Yes, it's showing pre order but also shipping date as 30 September, and furthermore if you email them you will be most likely told it's actually in stock, like I was. Similar with Digikey, the zero stock atm doesn't mean they wont get a shipment next week. This market is extremely fluid at the moment, seems the worst shortage regarding these particular chips is over now. One would thought somebody with your pedigree would have known how all this works.

Wow, moar snark!

You don't even know what my 'pedigree' is, but that doesn't stop you from insulting me about it.

I have ordered stuff from major suppliers in the past with shipping dates that keep slipping into the future, and that was before Covid. I never said that someone who wants one shouldn't pre-order it if they are willing to wait - just like I never said someone shouldn't pre-order a Vampire. But since that was originally the subject of this thread and a point against the Vampire, it's only fair to point out that other solutions have similar issues.

Now what do you notice about the paragraph above? That's right - no snark. If only everybody could keep the discourse civil it might not be completely pointless - and we might feel better.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Promilus

My whole point was about software emulation. Which is either fast or most compatible. Never fast AND most compatible. Do you disagree?

Not targeted at me, ok, but i bite.
Yes, software emulation is either fast or most compatible. But actual hardware also is ! Have you noticed that the faster your cpu is, the more incompatible software you find ?
The emulator has at least the possibility to give the choice. But stay real : if you want compatibility, then it's usually for running older programs that used to run on a much slower machine than yours, therefore you don't need all that speed.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

You don't even know what my 'pedigree' is, but that doesn't stop you from insulting me about it.

This sounds familiar...

[malko]

Originally Posted by meynaf

[...] This sounds familiar...

Like we say in FR : " le train de la bêtise roule sur les rails de mon indifférence (the train of stupidity runs on the rails of my indifference). So, no worries .

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Promilus

@hammer

There are quite a lot games which doesn't that's why there was an option to disable cache. It was used more widely on Amiga than it was on PC.
My point was to actually compare "apples to apples" as much as possible when it comes to software emulation. Comparing 060 (physical) to 060-JIT-Emulation isn't actually that since with JIT enabled you turn off MMU (And with MMU you don't have JIT and emulated 060 even on most powerful desktop x86 CPU is rather slow). And that's one argument many ppl (like Thomas) had against Vampire so why the hell shouldn't I use it against JIT as well? My whole point was about software emulation. Which is either fast or most compatible. Never fast AND most compatible. Do you disagree?

PearPC has JIT with MMU, but the MMU JIT improvements were aided by X86 MMU.

UAE was designed to be platform agnostic as much as possible.

Emu68's 68K MMU emulation is incoming and it's designed for ARM Hypervisor. https://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb...140&151#854603

On Ryzen 9 3900X, WinUAE's 68060 with MMU, host-FP64 and disabled JIT yields 71.44 MIPS and 19 MFLOPS from SysInfo 4.4. The end user can trade between fast JIT 68060 without MMU or slower non-JIT 68060. WinUAE is not limited to just stock Amigas since Warp3D acceleration support (PC video cards such as 3DFX Voodoo 3 3000), Blizard PPC, CyberStorm PPC, X86 Bridgeboards, Zorro/PCI sound cards and 'etc'. PAL 50 hz is supported via FreeSync/G-Sync/ HDMI 2.1 VRR.

TF1260 with 68060 rev 1 at @ 62.5 Mhz yields 49.50 MIPS and 35.31 MFLOPS from SysInfo 4.4. [ Show youtube player ]

[Promilus]

@hammer - so Zen2 is nearly as fast as Warp1260 @ 100MHz in integer and nearly 3x worse in floating point. My point exactly (I know, I have Ryzen 3600, I know what to expect). I know all (well, most of) the riches of WinUAE. And as for PiStorm - once they indeed make that reality that will be the moment I just might start considering this to my second a500.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

On Ryzen 9 3900X,

Current price of a Ryzen 9 3900X CPU in New Zealand is NZ$898. TF1260 with 128 MB RAM, IDE, and MC68XC060RC50 is only NZ$853 delivered from Vesalia.

I don't have a modern PC with motherboard that can take a Ryzen 9 CPU, but even if I did it would be cheaper for me to buy a TF1260 - and since I have a spare A1200 motherboard to put it in...

The Vampire V2 in my A600 only cost NZ$630. It's significantly faster than an 80MHz 68060, which makes it faster than WinUAE on your Ryzen 9 3900X for both integer and fp. V4 is supposed to be twice as fast as V2, and has lots of other useful additions such as SuperAGA, fast IDE and 100Mb Ethernet. At around the same price as that AMD CPU without the required PC motherboard, Windows 10 etc., I know which one I would rather have!

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Current price of a Ryzen 9 3900X CPU in New Zealand is NZ$898. TF1260 with 128 MB RAM, IDE, and MC68XC060RC50 is only NZ$853 delivered from Vesalia.

I don't have a modern PC with motherboard that can take a Ryzen 9 CPU, but even if I did it would be cheaper for me to buy a TF1260 - and since I have a spare A1200 motherboard to put it in...

The Vampire V2 in my A600 only cost NZ$630. It's significantly faster than an 80MHz 68060, which makes it faster than WinUAE on your Ryzen 9 3900X for both integer and fp. V4 is supposed to be twice as fast as V2, and has lots of other useful additions such as SuperAGA, fast IDE and 100Mb Ethernet. At around the same price as that AMD CPU without the required PC motherboard, Windows 10 etc., I know which one I would rather have!

For apple-to-apple comparison, both AC68EC080 and WinUAE-JIT do NOT have a working 68K MMU. Don't pretend AC68EC080 has a working 68K MMU.

For WinUAE, single core performance has higher importance over multiple core counts.

From https://nz.pcpartpicker.com/products...t=price&page=1
Ryzen 9 5900X 's price has reached $649.00 NZD.

Ryzen 5 5600X would do a better WinUAE job when compared to Zen 2-based Ryzen 9 3900X. Ryzen 5 5600X has $355.00 NZD cost.

For WinUAE, I wouldn't recommend Zen 2 when Zen 3 has superior single-core performance. For WinUAE emulation, I prefer Intel "Alder-lake" Core i5-12600K due to superior single-core performance as an example.

I plan to ditch my Ryzen 9 3900X for Zen 4-based Ryzen 9 7900X or Ryzen 7 7700X.

[Promilus]

@Bruce
Yeah, but that's non-JIT emulation. And as I mentioned it only makes sense when we want to emulate 68030, 68040 or 68060 (non EC, LC) as accurately as possible. So... with MMU. Without MMU and with JIT you can expect figures around 4500MIPS and 450MFLOPS (or more). And WinUAE also allows you to use PC drives as well (so, yeah, nvme speed yay!) and WAN adapters (10g ethernet, wifi6). So in my humble opinion even in ASIC Vampire would be just barely able to keep up with JIT emulation on hardware which isn't actually newest and best one currently. There's Zen3 series already and Zen4 around the corner. So 2 generations above what has been shown here.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Promilus

@hammer - so Zen2 is nearly as fast as Warp1260 @ 100MHz in integer and nearly 3x worse in floating point. My point exactly (I know, I have Ryzen 3600, I know what to expect). I know all (well, most of) the riches of WinUAE. And as for PiStorm - once they indeed make that reality that will be the moment I just might start considering this to my second a500.

WinUAE without JIT with Ryzen 7 5800X (Zen 3, 8C/16T), it scored 116 MIPS and 36.19 MFLOPS in SysInfo 4.4. Single-core performance matters for WinUAE.

WinUAE without JIT with Ryzen 9 3900X (Zen 2, 12C/24T), it scored 75.79 MIPS and 20.19 MFLOPS in SysInfo 4.4.

I have both Ryzen 7 5800X (Zen 3, 8C/16T) and Ryzen 9 3900X(Zen 2, 12C/24T).

Ryzen 7 5800X has a lower price when compared to Ryzen 9 3900X. Zen 2's emulation performance is something I dislike about this design.

Ryzen 9 3900X has replaced my SkyLake-X Core i7-7820X.
Ryzen 7 5800X has replaced my CoffeeLake-R Core i9-9900K.

I have my other views about PiStorm/Emu68 when compared to WinUAE-JIT behavior.

----

With WinUAE-JIT on Ryzen 7 5800X, it scored 4837 MIPS and 1330 MFLOPS in SysInfo 4.4. Ryzen 7 5800X's single thread performance is very good and it was beaten by Intel Adlerlake.

With WinUAE-JIT on Ryzen 9 3900X, it scored 4764 MIPS and 828 MFLOPS in SysInfo 4.4.