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Author Topic: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?  (Read 11581 times)

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Offline KesaTopic starter

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Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« on: December 27, 2010, 12:05:48 PM »
There's been a lot of talk on A.org in the last few days about AGA. I  was just wondering how did the Atari Falcon stand up against the Amiga  1200?

I know quite well that the A500 was superior to the Atari ST (mainly in sound) but what  about the Falcon and the A1200? Until today i knew virtually nothing  about the Falcon except maybe it was a wedge case computer! Maybe...

A quick comparison seems to put the Falcon in the lead with a 16mhz cpu. What else can it do above the AGA chipset?
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Offline nomore

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2010, 12:12:54 PM »
I remember back when they first were announced/released, there was a comparison on Games Master (I think) between the Amiga A1200, Atari Falcon and Acorn A3010.

From what I remember, they had a representative for each company answering the questions.

If you can find it on YouTube, it might be an interesting insight.
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Offline Jiffy

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #2 on: December 27, 2010, 12:33:41 PM »
Quote from: Kesa;602150
A quick comparison seems to put the Falcon in the lead with a 16mhz cpu.

...on a 16 bits bus. Which severely cripples performance.

Overall, in a standard configuration, they were more or less comparable. Falcon was better on some parts, A1200 better on other parts.

Because of the 16 bit databus, the Falcon was much harder to expand, though, something which was not made better by the rather short time it was available in shops and the therefore rather small amount of machines sold.

I find the Atari Mega STe to be a better deal overall compared to the Falcon. Slower, sure, but a more balanced design in its day.
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Offline qwerty40001

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #3 on: December 27, 2010, 01:35:01 PM »
Atari Falcon compared to Amiga 1200 has also:

- processor with MMU

- chunky 16bit truecolor mode,

- Multitos - Unix based operating system with memory protection.

The graphics capabilities of the Atari Falcon, classic Amiga reached only with an additional graphics card.

Atari Falcon was a much better computer than the Amiga 1200, but also was a much better computer than the Amiga 4000.
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Offline yssing

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #4 on: December 27, 2010, 04:06:03 PM »
http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/falcon030/falcon030.html

The Falcon had a SCSI II built in, and some sort of network thingy, don't know what type though.

But 16 bit, and far from as easily expandable as the A1200 and I guess not as sold either.
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Offline Digiman

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #5 on: December 27, 2010, 04:22:55 PM »
Quote from: nomore;602154
I remember back when they first were announced/released, there was a comparison on Games Master (I think) between the Amiga A1200, Atari Falcon and Acorn A3010.

From what I remember, they had a representative for each company answering the questions.

If you can find it on YouTube, it might be an interesting insight.


There are only two episodes of Games Master from all 7 series still missing and those are from Season 2 so I should have it somewhere. Who has the time to watch 140 episodes of Games Master though...most of it was console based games played by little kids or reviews of rubbish console games like Mario (*puke*). Got bored VERY quickly :)

Anyway...Falcon had a DSP and superior sound playback via 16bit DACs, that was about it really as far as what was better. The Falcon 16mhz 030 is barely faster than the 14mhz 020 in AGA (because 030 is only to be used if you need MMU or FPU) when you add fast ram and certainly slower than 16mhz 030 in Amiga 3000. Memory access on Falcon is identical speed to an ST on the Falcon for compatibility reasons and so it is crippled design overall. Look at most Falcon games and they look nowhere near as good as the whole DSP hype would have you believe. Also Silk Cut by The Black Lotus is on 060 AGA and 060 Falcon and looks and sounds very much the same, but better palette on AGA helps a bit.

Falcon was quite expensive compared to an A1200. I think base 1mb model was £600 on launch day and 4mb upgrade cost a lot as did their internal 2.5" hard drives too.

Now the Jaguar chipset inside a home computer....that would be something special. Just look at Doom on a Jaguar, using a 14mhz 68000 and custom chips, it runs as fast as a Pentium 66/75mhz PC in true colour.
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Offline Digiman

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #6 on: December 27, 2010, 04:26:08 PM »
Quote from: qwerty40001;602161
Atari Falcon compared to Amiga 1200 has also:

- processor with MMU

- chunky 16bit truecolor mode,

- Multitos - Unix based operating system with memory protection.

The graphics capabilities of the Atari Falcon, classic Amiga reached only with an additional graphics card.

Atari Falcon was a much better computer than the Amiga 1200, but also was a much better computer than the Amiga 4000.

And yet the memory access to RAM was slower than the Amiga A1200 so the CPU was crippled even more because on the A1200 you can choose to buy Fast ram and get full speed 32bit performance....Falcon was stuck forever in 16bit unless you spent £800 on an 040 or 060 upgrade card.

Falcon games look worse than the best AGA had to offer (like Super Stardust) so technically means nothing, only musicians bought it for the 16bit direct to disk sampling and running Cubase in colour :)

I'm pretty sure max resolution was 800x600 certainly nowhere near super hi-res lace overscan of 1400x576 possible on a lowly 2mb A1200 either. And in this mode HAM8 was untouchable in 92, even on Mac and PCs costing £2000.
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Offline Tension

Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #7 on: December 27, 2010, 05:00:27 PM »
Quote from: qwerty40001;602161

atari falcon was a much better computer than the amiga 1200, but also was a much better computer than the amiga 4000.


lol
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Offline warpdesign

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #8 on: December 27, 2010, 05:07:46 PM »
Quote
1400x576
Yeah... and what did you do with this resolution since it was so slow it couldn't be usable... Not to mention about the fact there's no monitor to handle it, and it sucks as a resolution... much like 640x200 2:1 aspect. It's true AGA offered higher resolutions but most of them were completely unusable because too slow or of a bad aspect ratio... And if you want VGA display, it's even slower.

The Falcon had truecolor (yeah, not blurry ham8, but true thousand of colors mode) chunky modes.

The DSP blows away the 7 years old Paula. You could easily play MP3 with it... which required a 040 or even 060 with the A1200.

Plus it had a MMU and FPU socket which isn't present on the A1200.

If you add memory and/or accelerator, some kind of graphics card, a sound card,... you end up with something very expensive when compared with the Falcon.

And yes, even the A4000 can't compete with the 16bit truecolor mode and the DSP. It is has of course much more horsepower, is expandable... but out of the box, it's quite unusable too.
« Last Edit: December 27, 2010, 05:15:16 PM by warpdesign »
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Offline save2600

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #9 on: December 27, 2010, 05:19:31 PM »
Quote from:
Jiffy = Falcon was better on some parts, A1200 better on other parts.

Yeah, not the least of which: the massive difference in available software! lol
« Last Edit: December 27, 2010, 05:23:48 PM by save2600 »
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Offline save2600

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #10 on: December 27, 2010, 05:23:10 PM »
Quote from: warpdesign;602183
The DSP blows away the 7 years old Paula. You could easily play MP3 with it... which required a 040 or even 060 with the A1200.

One could argue the point of playing mp3's at all though. So to many of us, that's quite a useless feature to expect of a computer right there. Any old computer with a CD-ROM can play music. With much better quality of course AND you can truly multi-task while listening :)
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Offline crawff

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #11 on: December 27, 2010, 05:27:45 PM »
@qwerty40001

Lol, Clown.
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Offline spihunter

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #12 on: December 27, 2010, 05:43:11 PM »
1993 called...It wants it's Amiga -vs- Atari thread back. :)
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Offline tone007

Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #13 on: December 27, 2010, 05:45:56 PM »
Huh? Atari Failcon?

;)
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Offline Xanxi

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Re: Amiga 1200 versus Atari Falcon?
« Reply #14 on: December 27, 2010, 05:53:37 PM »
Have you been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past to bring up those more than 15 years old question? :D :D

My advice is the Falcon is better than the plain A1200, but the OS is crap, it has no software, it was too expensive, and it is beated by any expended A1200 except for the sound.
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