7800 vs.....

[Atari2008]

But for my money, I'll take the 2600s higher color pallete and tons of 60fps games over just about anything comparable on the low-color coleco. So, if I think the 2600 is better than the cv...

 

I think the 2600 is better than most classic consoles.

[microprocessor]

The biggest issue with the TMS9918 and most of its deriatives (including the NES/SNES PPU, Master System/Genesis VDP, and the YAMAHA V9938/V9958, but NOT the PC-Engine VDP!) is that you can only write to VRAM in either VBLANK or forced blanking time, which kind of forces you to restrict yourself on how much video data can be manipulated per frame

 

About this, you are wrong,Vigo,

the speed you can output data to vdp depends on various factors as described on tms datasheet.

The factors are, the VBLANK time, the video mode. the worst case requires 8us between each data read/write. in vblack time there is pratically no delay.

Of course you can output at maximum speed during vblank time to the tms, but you can also write during active display area even if at lower speed.

 

Plus, on derivative YAMAHA V99x8 the delay is more short than on tms vdp, even in active area (and not only n vblank). In this situation the bottleneck is not the vdp instead the z80cpu if clocked at the msx or coleco speed.