Frontier: Elite II framerate comparison

Comparing the performance of Frontier: Elite II on the computers of the day.
The PC version pulls ahead because it is running at NTSC framerates (30fps) compared to the 25fps of the PAL Amiga.

[@OpenGL4ever]

The PC version supported textures, the Amiga version did not. And a 486 @ 33 MHz was faster than an Amiga 1200 anyway.
But the game was unplayable for other reasons. It owes this to its realistic Newtonian physics. At high speeds, you had practically no chance against the AI ​​with laser weapons. We therefore have Elite Frontier to thank for things like in-system drive in modern space games. These effectively prevent you from having to fight with enemies at high speeds.
At that time, I was happy to be able to exchange the game.
It also caused me to change the game review magazine I was reading. The previous magazine praised the game to the skies and gave it top ratings, which enticed me to buy the game. The other magazine had heavily criticized the game and given it a justifiably poor rating. In retrospect, changing the gaming magazine was a good choice. Without Elite 2, it might have taken longer.

[@madcommodore]

Did you use an A1200 with or without FAST RAM? This is quite important as the 14mhz 68020 can only access CHIP RAM half the time so you lose a lot of CPU speed for 3D games without FAST RAM ie a 4mb A1200 vs a 2MB A1200. Also the A1200 had the option on PAL machines to run at 60hz or PAL-60 as it's called via the boot menu on power up.

[@cooperfeld]

Interesting question! To me it looks like fast ram, since framerate seems about triple A500 speed. I remember a friend's A1200 with slow ram running Frontier, at best about 75% faster than the Amiga 500, which still felt quite slow to painfully slow (if all details ramped up:). Right side of the following clip shows this very well: th-cam.com/video/nq-1MF8mHNA/w-d-xo.html

[@madcommodore]

@@cooperfeld Fast RAM on A1200 seems to make quite a difference on the planet scene in that clip.

[@cooperfeld]

@@madcommodore Yah right, the framerate seems to be fluctuating in a pretty wide range. Seeking for a halfway decent explanation, I had to look some things up^: Chipram (also called Slow RAM) seems to seriously limit the pixel output rate to somewere below 1 Megapixel/s, since it had to share RAM with the custom chips (Agnus, Denise, Paula, ...), adding a bunch of wait cycles to CPU memory access instructions. Fast RAM however was exclusively dedicated to the CPU (but not the custom chips), allowing for an expected 3 to 4 MP/s of "renderspeed" to memory. 1 MP/s seems quite fine for games like Elite for example, but it's really poor for handling the detail level of Frontier in City Scenes, with estimated hundreds to a thousand polygons to render. Fastram with 16bit bandwidth more than doubled the speed, 32bit almost quadrupled it (the CPU also worked faster). According to the semi-fluid framerate, I'd guess the shown A1200 could have 2MB Chipram and 8MB-32bit of Fastram. I used to play Frontier on a 486 DX-40 btw).

[@madcommodore]

@@cooperfeld Yeah, the AGA chipset used for the A4000 prototype wasn't designed to be used in this Tesco Value sort of way with just Chip RAM. As I understand it you effectively get a 7mhz 68020 sort of spec in the A1200 sold in the shops until you add Fast RAM via an expensive third party trapdoor card. Older versions of WinUAE emulator didn't always give a true picture. I also did a video for Gloom or Fears Doom clone with/without Fast RAM. If I had stuck with Amiga in 1995 I would have got the Blizzard 1220/4 bargain priced accelerator with a 28mhz 020 and 4mb RAM. I got fed up of little UK software houses and their crap conversions long before that card came out and had a Pentium PC for my university course and a launch day PS1 for Ridge Racer by then. Never had much interest in 3D games before PS1 to be honest.

[@bluepatch11]

i had the Atari st version, looking at your comparison i don't know how i enjoyed playing it now.

[@dna9838]

can’t believe it was deemed fit to release on the A500, even by the standards of the day, that was awful and unplayable.

[@BinaryReader]

Interesting comparison. Are you looking forward to Elite Dangerous ?