Atari v Commodore

[Crazyace]

I love the 8 bit tech - but it's stupid to ignore the fact that the C64 does some things better - After all, the MOS designers looked at the Atari when they designed the VICII chip - and they tried to improve on what they thought were the shortcomings..

I really like this image on the C64 - It's not the most technical, but it's displayed by the C64 without any software efforts at all. I expect it's possible to display it on the Atari, but that would need at lot more cpu time, ( and the use of PM graphics I guess )

[Oswald]

You can go debate that with someone who is familiar with speccy. I never heard of it. If you go by what software has been written for it, then you are not establishing the truth. It's subject to change. If you understand the underlying hardware of both, you can make certain conclusions that are objective.

 

oh, so do you think its possible to make better shmups on a8 than the turricans, creatures 1,2, armalyte, yaddayadda ? look at the previous post, how is a gfx chip more powerful which needs cpu interaction to display a poor pic from the other system? how is a gfx chip more powerful with almost unusable sprites? 3 times less bandwidth? I could do a 24bit color gfx chip with 3 char wide pixels, would it be better then 16 colors on 4 pixel wide ones ?

 

3 chars wide pixels are better because they have more color? I'd say 2 color would be much better! same amount of data but much more wisely used. but the c64 uses more data than the a8 to build a picture! only they not wanted to waste silicon space for so much unusable colors. instead there's 16 but they are freely usable (compared to a8's 128 its total freedom .

Edited November 22, 2008 by Oswald

[atariksi]

>The human eye is very lazy on chrominance. That's why chroma has such an extremely low resolution on PAL/NTSC and the luma has high resolution.

 

So Atari has edge even if you add chrominance-- not the original argument.

 

>Which leaves no CPU time for something else. Dude, the sound chips generate the waveforms because the CPU is busy with other things, like "running a game" etc.

 

We are looking at each aspect of hardware separately as I stated in the beginning of the thread. In fact, I can have the disk drive loading (through one joystick port) and playing 21Khz DAC audio.

 

>There are 114 CPU clock cycles per rasterline but 285 PAL color clock cycles.

 

>(4.43361875 MHz color carrier vs 1.77 MHz CPU)

 

Sorry, Atari is synced up with color clocks as well as timer as well as CPU cycles so that's better. I am sure PAL also has 228 color clocks/scanline, but that's not the main argument anyway.

 

>But to satisfy you: There are 40x25 color cells which are 8x8 (hires) or 4x8 (lores) pixel big. The height of those color cells can be modified down to 1 rasterline, so you get 40x200 color cells instead, which offers almost full 16 color mode at 160x200.

 

Let's be consistent as to how much CPU time is involved. And it's still not true 160*200*16 and should we forget about all the other Atari modes?

 

>It's just a color carrier phase, and if color X is displayed, phase Y is used. It is NOT moved with scrolling, because it has nothing to do with scrolling. Scrolling is done loooong before the output of colors.

 

I'll have to see it working as right now I don't see it retaining the color.

 

>>So it's not much better than SIO. Yeah, bus transfers would be faster than SIO speed on both machines.

So given Joystick I/O is > 2X faster on Atari, overall I/O is better on Atari.

 

>That was IEC bus. C64 has other busses too, like the 8 bit parallel port where you can ofcourse reach much higher transfer rates.

 

>EDIT: Ok I looked SIO bus speed up: It's 19200 bps, with start and stop bit that boils down to about 2 kB/s. Can you explain me how ten times more speed on IEC (20 kB/s) is "not much faster"?

 

That's how you argue-- just do random searches on the internet just to refute something. I have run SIO at >70Kbs and joystick port will easily go over 20kB/second while playing digitized audio in the background. See http://www.mpdos.com.

[Fröhn]

I really like this image on the C64 - It's not the most technical, but it's displayed by the C64 without any software efforts at all. I expect it's possible to display it on the Atari, but that would need at lot more cpu time, ( and the use of PM graphics I guess )

 

A few other examples (no interlace used):

 

Standard lores bitmap (4x8 pixel color cells)

 

Lores bitmap with reduced color cell height (4x1 pixels)

 

Standard hires bitmap (8x8 pixel color cells)

 

Hires bitmap with reduced color cell height (8x1 pixels)

 

Hires bitmap with reduced color cell height + sprite layer.

[atariksi]

>oh, so do you think its possible to make better shmups on a8 than the turricans, creatures 1,2, armalyte, yaddayadda ? look at the previous post, how is a gfx chip more powerful which needs cpu interaction to display a poor pic from the other system?

 

I don't need to look at a picture of a cartoon when I can have better graphics. I can use up 1/2 of CPU cycles and still have the CPU running at the same speed as that of C64. It all boils down to the same thing whenever someone starts threads like this-- they start posting cartoon pictures in their restricted 160*200*16 mode. It does NOT prove your gfx chip is superior. I don't see the proof. I believe last time we argued (last year) you stated ANTIC was superior. See how your "truth" changes.

 

I can show you a ton of pictures that you can't show on C64 and repaint the screen many times faster for most of the modes and w/more colors and use up less memory.

 

>only they not wanted to waste silicon space for so much unusable colors. instead there's 16 but they are freely usable (compared to a8's 128 its total freedom .

 

It's restricted. There's more choice on the Atari for graphics modes and colors.

[Fröhn]

Which leaves no CPU time for something else. Dude, the sound chips generate the waveforms because the CPU is busy with other things, like "running a game" etc.

We are looking at each aspect of hardware separately as I stated in the beginning of the thread. In fact, I can have the disk drive loading (through one joystick port) and playing 21Khz DAC audio.

You can do that on C64 too. But in most scenarios you cannot play samples because you don't have the memory and you don't have the free CPU time.

 

There are 114 CPU clock cycles per rasterline but 285 PAL color clock cycles.

(4.43361875 MHz color carrier vs 1.77 MHz CPU)

Sorry, Atari is synced up with color clocks as well as timer as well as CPU cycles so that's better. I am sure PAL also has 228 color clocks/scanline, but that's not the main argument anyway.

You mix things up. Atari NTSC has following setting: It has a clock which is divided to the color carrier frequency of 3.58 MHz, and that again is divided by 2 to get the 1.79 MHz.

 

Now for PAL you need a 4.43 MHz color carrier, but since Atari didn't want to go far away from the 1.79 MHz, they didn't divide 4.43 MHz by 2, but by 2.5 to get 1.77 MHz. This is why you can't do artefacting anymore on PAL Ataris (2.5 color clocks per lores pixel, not exactly 2) and also the scrolling doesnt shift exactly 2 color clocks but 2.5.

 

It's just a color carrier phase, and if color X is displayed, phase Y is used. It is NOT moved with scrolling, because it has nothing to do with scrolling. Scrolling is done loooong before the output of colors.

I'll have to see it working as right now I don't see it retaining the color.

Because the color carrier has absolutely nothing to do with the inner workings of the VIC-II or Antic or GTIA. It only matters at the output stage, loooooooooooooong after sprites/chars/scrolling etc etc have been interpreted. It's the final thing to be done: "Ok now we display chrominance X, so we have to add color carrier with phase Y to the output signal".

 

That's how you argue-- just do random searches on the internet just to refute something. I have run SIO at >70Kbs and joystick port will easily go over 20kB/second while playing digitized audio in the background. See http://www.mpdos.com.

So what? I could configure the C64 user port to high bps rates too, but at some point it doesn't work with long cables etc anymore. Also how does all of this matter? What matters is SIO and IEC, because that's the IO ports which are always used.

[Crazyace]

I quite like the Pacman / Cowboy picture

 

I cant find many 256 colour images on the web , this one comes from a standard jpeg convertor

[Crazyace]

Ok, that didn't work... trying again...

[Allas]

2 - AMAUROTE

 

Atari screenshot

 

I think, there is no necessary to write many words in this comparison. Clearly Atari have the best version with great ambient music, graphically exactly as the original version. C64 programmers found the best way to use his sprites creating a 2D version, with more colors and different music. Is hard to believe is an amaurote port.

 

C64 Screenshot

[Oswald]

It all boils down to the same thing whenever someone starts threads like this-- they start posting cartoon pictures in their restricted 160*200*16 mode. It does NOT prove your gfx chip is superior. I don't see the proof.

 

you just dont want to see it. I'm writing this for the ~4th time: VICII uses more bandwidth roughly 3 times as much as antic. but you keep ignoring it. you can make your pixels any wide to add more colors but it will not improve the gfx quality. the only thing that improves gfx quality is more bandwidth for more pixels with same amount of color, or more colors with same amount of pixels or both. VICII has 3 times the bandwidth of antic.

 

I can show you a ton of pictures that you can't show on C64 and repaint the screen many times faster for most of the modes and w/more colors and use up less memory.

 

I have asked if do you think A8 can make better shmups than the best of the c64 (for the ~4th time here again). Do you have an answer? answer to the question please. can you?

 

It's restricted. There's more choice on the Atari for graphics modes and colors.

 

atari modes has more restrictions, and one can do clearly better with a few less restricted modes, than with a lot of more restricted modes.

[Oswald]

"they start posting cartoon pictures in their restricted 160*200*16 mode"

 

any non cartoonish pictures here?

 

http://g2f.atari8.info/gallery.html

 

most of them uses less than 16 colors. and are poor c64 rippoffs, eventho these are the best examples of what antic can do in 160x200, thing is c64 can put up more colors even in 320x200 than antic in 160x200. its pretty bold from an atarian to call c64's gfx modes "restricted". restricted is when you have no color memory, and have to change regs on the fly and use pmgs for extra colors (wtf was jay miner thinking?)

Edited November 22, 2008 by Oswald

[Crazyace]

I think he was thinking about how to improve on the Atari VCS graphics.. and he succeeded there. He was probally also looking at the Apple II ( with a wierd, 6 colour high res based on 7 bits high res and artifacting, along with an 8 bit to push the phase further ) - but I'm glad he didn't go for that

 

Again it's 4 years , 1978 Atari 400/800 -> 1982 C64..... in 1986 the Amiga was out, and I think that made the C64 look way more dated than the c64 made the Atari

( It's funny, the Amiga startup began in 1982 )

[Allas]

Oswald,

 

Atarians feel that his 128/256 palette color looks better. Despite it can be used only 4 (or 13 with G2F technique) per line. There is no way that c64 16 colors looks better, because we recognized in every screen the "C64 palette". Let me explain, maybe you can feel the same thing about the ZX Spectrum screenshots, always is the same "ugly palette of colors", so you feel there is no way Spectrum reach C64 quality levels.

 

If only C64 have at least a free 32 color palette, those 16 colors are boring. Let me say C64 artists have doing great job on his own paintings, only if i could count with a couple from your people.

[Irgendwer]

...

http://g2f.atari8.info/gallery.html

 

most of them uses less than 16 colors. and are poor c64 rippoffs, eventho these are the best examples of what antic can do in 160x200, thing is c64 can put up more colors even in 320x200 than antic in 160x200. its pretty bold from an atarian to call c64's gfx modes "restricted". restricted is when you have no color memory, and have to change regs on the fly and use pmgs for extra colors (wtf was jay miner thinking?)

 

So you can rebuild this image on the c64 from the gallery?

 

Tribute to Thyness

 

CU

Irgendwer

[TMR]

So you can rebuild this image on the c64 from the gallery?

 

Well, not exactly - all the places where the players overlay black pixels and change them to a dark version of their colour would actually be black on the C64 so it'd be a bit cleaner around those edges... wouldn't that image artefact rather badly on the real hardware too?

[TMR]

Atarians feel that his 128/256 palette color looks better.

 

That's a subjective opinion, apparently we're trying to avoid those! =-)

[Irgendwer]

Well, not exactly - all the places where the players overlay black pixels and change them to a dark version of their colour would actually be black on the C64 so it'd be a bit cleaner around those edges... wouldn't that image artefact rather badly on the real hardware too?

 

No, it looks even better on an analogue TV set.

What about the vertical size?

 

CU

Irgendwer

 

PS.: The whole discussion is very strange. When the C64 users are so content with their machine, why they try to persuade the A800 users to think so too? And the argument with the 'best graphic mode' marks the capabilities of the machine is really antic . Lower resolutions are meaningful - where is the prove for Yoomp! on the C64 (a good example for the importance of lower resolutions)?

Edited November 23, 2008 by Irgendwer

[FastRobPlus]

I say it every year when this topic comes up.

The C64 is better until someone goes back in time and gives Ultima IV for the Atari some damn music!

After that I'm fine with the Atari being best.

[atarian63]

Well, not exactly - all the places where the players overlay black pixels and change them to a dark version of their colour would actually be black on the C64 so it'd be a bit cleaner around those edges... wouldn't that image artefact rather badly on the real hardware too?

 

No, it looks even better on an analogue TV set.

What about the vertical size?

 

CU

Irgendwer

 

PS.: The whole discussion is very strange. When the C64 users are so content with their machine, why they try to persuade the A800 users to think so too? And the argument with the 'best graphic mode' marks the capabilities of the machine is really antic . Lower resolutions are meaningful - where is the prove for Yoomp! on the C64 (a good example for the importance of lower resolutions)?

Doesn't work for me, I smashed a few recycled C64's this week, felt really good.

[stevelanc]

Guys / Gals

 

I posted the original question.

 

I have just taken delivery of a SIO2SD and a MMC64. I think the optimum solution is to fire them up, have a play, and make my own decision.

 

Steve

[TMR]

What about the vertical size?

 

i take it you think the height will be an issue...? Can't see why...

 

PS.: The whole discussion is very strange. When the C64 users are so content with their machine, why they try to persuade the A800 users to think so too?

 

If the Atari users are so satisfied with their machine, why do they feel the need to start threads like this in the first place?

 

Doesn't work for me, I smashed a few recycled C64's this week, felt really good.

 

Ah... so it is insecurity. =-)

Edited November 23, 2008 by TMR

[Garak]

After all, the MOS designers looked at the Atari when they designed the VICII chip

 

Not this again. Sorry, but they already had the original VIC I to look at for improvement.

 

 

Doesn't work for me, I smashed a few recycled C64's this week, felt really good.

 

Don't worry, I have some perfectly good and working 800XLs which I can do the same to.

 

Garak

[atariksi]

>Now for PAL you need a 4.43 MHz color carrier, but since Atari didn't want to go far away from the 1.79 MHz, they didn't divide 4.43 MHz by 2, but by 2.5 to get 1.77 MHz. This is why you can't do artefacting anymore on PAL Ataris (2.5 color clocks per lores pixel, not exactly 2) and also the scrolling doesnt shift exactly 2 color clocks but 2.5...

 

Give a link to source of your information. I don't accept random searches of internet as all containing correct information or taking Atari/C64 to the limit. You can't have two unique colors on consecutive pixels in NTSC at 3.58Mhz.

 

>That's how you argue-- just do random searches on the internet just to refute something. I have run SIO at >70Kbs and joystick port will easily go over 20kB/second while playing digitized audio in the background. See

 

>So what?

 

It makes a big difference. It points out that you are just trying to find fault without actually knowing the hardware's limits. I am trying to show potential of Atari. Some random search won't cut it.

 

>What matters is SIO and IEC, because that's the IO ports which are always used.

 

What matters is everything in the machine. Don't limit it.

[atariksi]

>you just dont want to see it. I'm writing this for the ~4th time: VICII uses more bandwidth roughly 3 times as much as antic. but you keep ignoring it. you can make your pixels any wide to add more colors but it will not improve the gfx quality. the only thing that improves gfx quality is more bandwidth for more pixels with same amount of color, or more colors with same amount of pixels or both. VICII has 3 times the bandwidth of antic.

 

So what. How the hardware is implemented into the machine is more significant. You have less choice for modes and colors even at 12-bit bandwidth. And that 12-bits does not make it a superior chip if it's functionality is overall less. There's no support for WSYNC. There's no variety of text modes. The graphics modes are like text modes on the C64. At least the chunky modes exist on Atari even at 80*200*16.

 

>I have asked if do you think A8 can make better shmups than the best of the c64 (for the ~4th time here again). Do you have an answer? answer to the question please. can you?

 

I don't know what a "speccy" is nor an shmups. It doesn't sound like an English word to me. Overall ANTIC is more powerful-- even if you can show some cartoons with 16 colors.

 

>atari modes has more restrictions, and one can do clearly better with a few less restricted modes, than with a lot of more restricted modes.

 

Huh, the more choices you have at various depths and colors, the better. Remember, we are not targetting your application here-- but all possible uses for the computer. Some uses DO NOT require 160*200*16.

[atariksi]

Atarians feel that his 128/256 palette color looks better.

 

That's a subjective opinion, apparently we're trying to avoid those! =-)

 

That is not subjective. More colors is definitely a feature people looked at when buying a machine until now when they all are TRUE color. 256 color palette is a superset of your palette (period).