Atari v Commodore

[atariksi]

I think the Atari was a much more powerful computer but just didn't have the level of development that the c=64 got, so the c=64 ended up appearing as the superior system in the long run (imho.) This is also something that happens a lot (again imho, 7800 v nes, saturn v psx, dreamcast v ps2, xbox v ps2, lynx v gameboy, etc.)

Define "more powerful" in a universally accepted way.

 

It's a subjective term. Dependant on many things. Cost/perfomance ratio being one of many. Raw numbers vs practical use is another.

 

They both had their strong points and weaknesses. Neither is more powerfull then the other unless one wants to pick and choose specific points to argue meaningless numbers with no real-world worth over. In that case, then both are more powerfull then each other depending on which side of the fence you want to be.

 

It's been like 25+ years people, can't we let it go already.

 

"More powerful" is not a subjective term. When people don't know and they are guessing (speculating) or not sticking to a standard, it seems subjective. A 1Ghz PC is faster than an Atari is NOT subjective. It's a fact. If you took into account all possible uses for a computer and then see what percentage is better on Atari's side, what percentage is better on C64's side, what percentage is better on Apple's side, etc., you can determine which computer is "more powerful". Since it's hard to do that, another way to look at it is to compare the hardware programmability at lowest possible level since all software eventually has to go through the target machine's hardware. Thus, you can compute the potentially more powerful machine. Of course, if you take into account hardware add-ons then it does become subjective since some person may have some hardware that another may not have or built himself that no one knows about. This issue can be resolved by sticking to the standard stock machine comparisons.

[TMR]

Since it's hard to do that, another way to look at it is to compare the hardware programmability at lowest possible level since all software eventually has to go through the target machine's hardware. Thus, you can compute the potentially more powerful machine.

 

That's the point, you can't because the people making the comparison are always going to have subjective opinions; Atari programmers prefer the ease of use with DLIs whilst C64 coders like the ability to do kick in a raster split on whatever scanline they feel like, one camp likes having 128 colours and the other only 16 but all on the same scanline, faster CPU versus more hardware sprites and a colour RAM (and if you can even compare the two in that way is a difficult question in itself) and so forth. i'd say the C64 was the more powerful overall but my bias and therefore subjectivity on the subject is well known - but should those opinions carry more weight because i've coded games and demos on both?

 

And this isn't really on topic, so to drag it kicking and screaming back to what the original poster asked; Pastfinder is pretty much the same one both (yes, it's the only thing i could think of at short notice...!)

[TMR]

Here is some game comparing on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcbdNxsB7DA

 

This video raises a few interesting questions; for example is it fair to compare games written recently with all the advances in assembler technology and open-ended deadlines to ones written around twenty years ago for example? Or games using memory expansions? And i'd never noticed the how slow the movement speed of the Commando sprites on the A8 were until that video...

[atariksi]

Since it's hard to do that, another way to look at it is to compare the hardware programmability at lowest possible level since all software eventually has to go through the target machine's hardware. Thus, you can compute the potentially more powerful machine.

 

That's the point, you can't because the people making the comparison are always going to have subjective opinions; Atari programmers prefer the ease of use with DLIs whilst C64 coders like the ability to do kick in a raster split on whatever scanline they feel like, one camp likes having 128 colours and the other only 16 but all on the same scanline, faster CPU versus more hardware sprites and a colour RAM (and if you can even compare the two in that way is a difficult question in itself) and so forth. i'd say the C64 was the more powerful overall but my bias and therefore subjectivity on the subject is well known - but should those opinions carry more weight because i've coded games and demos on both?

 

And this isn't really on topic, so to drag it kicking and screaming back to what the original poster asked; Pastfinder is pretty much the same one both (yes, it's the only thing i could think of at short notice...!)

 

I would state that it is on topic as long as you don't get emotionally biased over it since giving machine potentials/upper bounds can be used in game comparisons (as to which games use it). Some people have already pointed that out in regards to some games mentioned.

 

In regards to # of hardware sprites, yes C64 > Atari 8-bit.

In regards to colors, 128/256 > 16 so Atari > C64.

In regards to CPU speed, Atari > C64.

In regards to various graphics/text modes, Atari > C64.

In regards to I/O speed, Atari > C64.

etc.

 

Your creativity obviously plays a role since you can mix the above in various combinations (as allowed by the machine) but there's nothing subjective about the hardware specs. Some people are just users so they are making it subjective by defining "more powerful" to mean the software base or user base. However, a more powerful machine is just that-- more powerful hardware.

[atariksi]

Here is some game comparing on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcbdNxsB7DA

 

This video raises a few interesting questions; for example is it fair to compare games written recently with all the advances in assembler technology and open-ended deadlines to ones written around twenty years ago for example? Or games using memory expansions? And i'd never noticed the how slow the movement speed of the Commando sprites on the A8 were until that video...

 

Good point-- that's why I stated you need to pick a standard to compare. Most Atari games work on 16K machines so they are under-achievers when compared to games targetted on a 64K C64. Sure you can have open-ended deadlines on software since we are looking at machine potential not how long it took before someone realized how to use it to it's full potential or close to full potential.

[Fröhn]

In regards to colors, 128/256 > 16 so Atari > C64.

Depends. 128 color palette but in an average game only 4 or 5 on a scanline while the C64 can use all 16 on a scanline easily.

 

In regards to CPU speed, Atari > C64.

Can't be argued against

 

In regards to various graphics/text modes, Atari > C64.

Ignores the fact that there are countless possibilities of software driven modes (not counting any interlace crap, i hate the flicker), and the sprites are big enough to display 192x280 pixels additionally to the normal background graphics.

 

Three typical software driven modes are FLI which has a color cell size of 4x1 pixels (lores, 160x200 pixels) or 8x1 pixels (hires, 320x200 pixels). Another mode based on color cell size modification is the big pixels @ 16 colors mode seen in demos. And then there is any combination of those modes with sprite layers which gives a hell lot of possibilities.

 

In regards to I/O speed, Atari > C64.

Only with default ROM routines. You can easily upload own code to the 1541 disk drive which makes it way faster than the 1050 over SIO bus.

 

Here's my extension to the list:

 

Number of sound channels: Atari > C64

What you can do with those channels: C64 > Atari

Smooth scroll: C64 > Atari (C64 has twice the scroll resolution)

CPU overhead for scrolling: Atari > C64

I/O flexibility: C64 > Atari (completely programmable on C64 + doesn't waste sound channels while SIO access + has four 16 bit timers)

Expandability: C64 > Atari (bus completely available at the expansion port, allows for DMA and external CPU/sound/gfx stuff without even opening the C64)

 

can go on forever...

[Heaven/TQA]

TMR is right...depends on the view and which side you prefer...

 

I touched c64, too... and I have to admit...not bad baby at all... so I am missing my ANTIC... but in games? what is the real advantage of the display list? honestly? you can have split screens, score panels etc by ease but you can have raster interrupts on the c64 side to compensate...

 

so here is my list (didn't I wanted to avoid the discussion?)

 

Antic - VIC: the 4096 byte scanlines plus scrolling window --> Atari > c64

sprites --> c64 > Atari

Colour ram --> c64 > Atari

i/o programming --> atari > c64

track loaders/Hypra load --> c64 > atari

file structure (multiple segments per file) --> atari > c64

standard disc space --> c64 (180k) > atari (80k / 127k)

available ram --> c64 > atari (64k+2k vs 56k)

access of ram --> c64 > atari (writes to ROM area are put "through to RAM below)

[Rybags]

Advantage of Display List? You already covered it.

 

4096 byte scrolling, individually per line.

RAM should be 62K available vs 64K available. Thanks to being able to swap out the I/O space via the 6510.

 

Another one - recent game releases. I might be wrong here, but there seems to be torrents of games for the Atari, whereas the C-64 scene seems to be concentrating on demos.

[atariksi]

'Fröhn':

>Depends. 128 color palette but in an average game only 4 or 5 on a scanline while the C64 can use all 16 on a scanline easily.

 

No, 256 > 16. Keep it simple. Hardware has more colors; gives you more choice. How many you get in various graphics modes is different.

 

>Ignores the fact that there are countless possibilities of software driven modes (not counting any interlace crap, i hate the flicker), and the sprites are big enough to display 192x280 pixels additionally to the normal background graphics.

 

Yes, the interlace is crap when colors are far apart but Atari has shades that so that shade 2 interlaced with shade 3 produces shade 2.5 which is perfectly useable. Software driven modes are essentially something the hardware is allowing you to do.

 

>Three typical software driven modes are FLI which has a color cell size of 4x1 pixels (lores, 160x200 pixels) or 8x1 pixels (hires, 320x200 pixels). Another mode based on color cell size modification is the big pixels @ 16 colors mode seen in demos. And then there is any combination of those modes with sprite layers which gives a hell lot of possibilities.

 

Don't combine sprites with modes yet. That's another hardware feature. Just compare the graphics modes and text modes, there's more choices again on Atari.

 

>>In regards to I/O speed, Atari > C64.

>Only with default ROM routines. You can easily upload own code to the 1541 disk drive which makes it way faster than the 1050 over SIO bus.

 

No, I am talking all I/O not just the SIO port. SIO is the slowest port on the Atari, but good for booting.

 

Number of sound channels: Atari > C64

 

>What you can do with those channels: C64 > Atari

 

Err, that's not a hardware feature. You need to specify the hardware registers of C64 sound hardware that don't exist on Atari and show that Atari's sound registers all are subset of C64's.

 

>Smooth scroll: C64 > Atari (C64 has twice the scroll resolution)

 

I guess you mean in X-direction. If so, then good, perhaps someone else wants to comment on C64/Atari HScroll. I can't see the difference on my TV.

 

>CPU overhead for scrolling: Atari > C64

 

Err, that's not a hardware feature.

 

>I/O flexibility: C64 > Atari (completely programmable on C64 + doesn't waste sound channels while SIO access + has four 16 bit timers)

 

Ah, the 8 POTs are also useable as timers, there are four AUDF timers (3 with IRQs) with higher accuracy than C64, you can time the DLI itself and use CPU as a timer at higher accuracy than C64 along with VBI. In fact, you can cause in IRQ to occur on certain color clocks midscreen.

 

>Expandability: C64 > Atari (bus completely available at the expansion port, allows for DMA and external CPU/sound/gfx stuff without even opening the C64)

 

We need to stick to standard hardware so only thing that matters with I/O is the speed of transfers for standard peripherals like disk drives, joysticks, trackballs, etc. Joystick port is faster on Atari.

 

>can go on forever...

 

No, you can't. Hardware is limited by number of chips and the functions they support. If you start listing how to combine various hardware features, yeah you can probably spend your lifetime.

[carmel_andrews]

I dunno why we keep having this discussion, it must be the 5th or 6th this year this kind of thread has cropped up

 

I respect the fact that the internet (and these forums) are a democracy much like most of the countries most of us live in and therefore people are entitled to express an opinion or thought, but please people (incl. the original poster) lets not start yet another thread of atari v this or atari v that...it's just way too boring and i thought we'd left that stuff alone at the school playground... just do a forum search for similar threads and continue on with those....I beleive this website has such a feature

 

if you want the facts here is a couple

 

Atari= 1970's technology (development on from or based on the vcs)

c64 =1980's technology (development on from or based on the vic 20)

 

unless someone can come up with a new angle or wrinkle that no one else has thought of...can we please stop this ultra boring thread

[atariksi]

Advantage of Display List? You already covered it.

 

4096 byte scrolling, individually per line.

RAM should be 62K available vs 64K available. Thanks to being able to swap out the I/O space via the 6510.

 

Another one - recent game releases. I might be wrong here, but there seems to be torrents of games for the Atari, whereas the C-64 scene seems to be concentrating on demos.

 

Also, you can speed up screen refresh rate by mixing modes using display list. Yeah, you can use some of the higher resolution modes to emulate the lower resolutions and text modes but gain in memory usage/speed makes a difference. I think we can still compare the 800XL w/62K with a C64 w/64K. 2K is not a big difference.

 

Scrolling looks better with overscan and I have not found a way to do that on C64 yet. Any link to simple source code?

[Heaven/TQA]

i guess you can not kill the c64 borders but get sprites there at least but well... I love overscan but at the end it does not make a huge difference (atari st vs amiga is the same)

[emkay]

Yesterday I saw a tv show on the german game TV "GIGA". The TV Moderator read a Mail from some viewer.

He wrote something like this:

 

Wars between different Systems were ther everytime. Today it is a war between XBOX 360 and Playstation 3.

Earlier it was a war between ATARI and AMIGA. Going further back in time, the war happened between the Commodore 64 and the 800 XL....

 

The moderator stopped reading , looked like this: , and said:

 

What is an 800 XL

 

...........................................

 

The really and only reason why the C64 is "better" is the spread and the marketing of this machine.

 

Both are too different to compare.

If ATARI had a better marketing back in those days, the ATARI was sold much more and, possibly, we would had have a real 1st generation of good 3D games instead of 1000s of different sidescrollers which the C64 easily could handle.

Edited November 22, 2008 by emkay

[TMR]

No, 256 > 16. Keep it simple. Hardware has more colors; gives you more choice. How many you get in various graphics modes is different.

 

Only on the Atari, the C64 is always 16 colours a scanline regardless of mode (without using hardware sprites) so despite having less of them it's C64 > Atari.

 

If so, then good, perhaps someone else wants to comment on C64/Atari HScroll. I can't see the difference on my TV.

 

It's twice the resolution, regardless of mode being used the scrolling will always move one high resolution pixel at a time; the C64 always "thinks" at 320x200 regardless of mode and the horizontal positioning of hardware sprites is twice the resolution for the same reason. Again, C64 > Atari - X2 in fact.

 

We need to stick to standard hardware so only thing that matters with I/O is the speed of transfers for standard peripherals like disk drives, joysticks, trackballs, etc.

 

Standard disk drives and tape decks running on SIO you mean... in which case, C64 > Atari since both the standard tape and disk systems can be heavily accellerated from software.

 

See? Even straight number comparisons are subjective and there is no way to nail it down so both sides agree.

[TMR]

the moderator stopped reading , looked like this: , and said:

 

What is an 800 XL

 

And if i were a huge cynic i'd say "that answers the question of which machine won" but i'd never do that... =-)

[Crazyace]

In HW terms the C64 is way more powerful than the Atari 8 bit - but it did come out four years later ( 1982 vs 1978 ) . In modern terms that's the difference between the Xbox and the Xbox360

You cant argue with the 12 bit character format ( 8+4bit colour ram ) and the far superior sprites. But the Atari does seem to hold it's own quite well - and it trashes the Vic20 ( which was introduced 2 years later ) and still wins out on colour range and 'hires' scrolling.

 

I was thinking that it would have been a 'tiny' change to make the Atari missiles 8 bits wide rather than 2 , and that would have made a major difference to the sprite capabilities.

[atariksi]

No, 256 > 16. Keep it simple. Hardware has more colors; gives you more choice. How many you get in various graphics modes is different.

 

Only on the Atari, the C64 is always 16 colours a scanline regardless of mode (without using hardware sprites) so despite having less of them it's C64 > Atari.

 

If so, then good, perhaps someone else wants to comment on C64/Atari HScroll. I can't see the difference on my TV.

 

It's twice the resolution, regardless of mode being used the scrolling will always move one high resolution pixel at a time; the C64 always "thinks" at 320x200 regardless of mode and the horizontal positioning of hardware sprites is twice the resolution for the same reason. Again, C64 > Atari - X2 in fact.

 

We need to stick to standard hardware so only thing that matters with I/O is the speed of transfers for standard peripherals like disk drives, joysticks, trackballs, etc.

 

Standard disk drives and tape decks running on SIO you mean... in which case, C64 > Atari since both the standard tape and disk systems can be heavily accellerated from software.

 

See? Even straight number comparisons are subjective and there is no way to nail it down so both sides agree.

 

There's nothing subjective in comparing hardware specs. Atari has more colors. You are mixing up graphics modes with Atari colors. You want to state that there is a 16-color higher resolution graphics mode on C64 NOT that there are more C64 colors. You have to state HIGH resolution since 160*200*30 gray-scale is available on Atari (or 80*200*16 color at least). And even if I give you that mode, you still have more choices on Atari as far as graphics/text modes go.

 

Having 1/320 Hscroll does not mean scrolling hardware is superior on C64. It would only make sense in a luminance only mode since the colors would get shifted on a TV which uses a color clock of 1/160 pixel. You are picking one aspect of the scrolling. I never mentioned which machine's scrolling was superior-- your "friend" did and he hasn't proven it.

 

In general I/O is superior on Atari. If you go by bootable devices then you would be restricted to SIO at standard rate. If you go by software driven I/O, you can also accelerate SIO or use joystick ports in conjunction with SIO. Your "friend" was mentioning CPU cards and sound cards which I was claiming would make the comparison non-standard. Take it at it's lowest level, LDA Port is faster on Atari than LDA Port on C64 for software drivers.

[Oswald]

I think c64 has better compromises while using roughly the same chip technology. (roughly same amount of gates/transistors per chip)

 

atari:

 

- 128 colors

- copper precursor, DLI

- many screen modes with flexible size and layout.

- HW scrolling

- simple sprites

- faster cpu

 

c64:

 

- 16 colors, but you can use all of them on the same scanline without problems, thats about 4x the colors the atari can display on a line.(without sprites)

- no copper stuff, but you can do all the "regular" copper jobs easily with raster interrupts

- few modes with hardwired size&layout, but offering more: 256 chars vs 128, selecting multicolor / hires on char basis including 1 own color in char mode, 16 color hires/multi bitmap, and finally 16 fore and 4 background color charmode in hires.

- no HW scrolling, but you can do it with the cpu, while emulating c64's sprites is impossible for the atari see next point.

- sprites: 8 on a scanline, own color, multi/hires, 24x21 pixels, transparency, x/y hw stretch, can be multiplexed, atari can not compensate these with its faster cpu.

- sid: I hope no comment needed.

 

 

about performance:

 

- when maxxed out the VICII does read 80 bytes + 40x4bit (color ram)+8*4 (sprites) bytes on a scanline. the antic doesnt do half of that on its "best case" iirc. so despite the always cited 16vs 128 colors topic it does display more than twice information on a scanline. and if you want to be _objective_ thats the measure you have to take: how much bits does it need to display a screen? the more bits the better your picture. end of story.

 

- I bet SID uses also more than twice the registers to setup a sound as pokey.

 

- CPU: atari wins out here. same cpu but faster.

 

- IO chips: I bet c64's 2 cia chip outperforms whatever the atari has. anyone can post a link with the specs?

 

 

so when it comes to gfx/sound/2d games the c64 can perform better. when its all about cpu power atari wins.

[atariksi]

In HW terms the C64 is way more powerful than the Atari 8 bit - but it did come out four years later ( 1982 vs 1978 ) . In modern terms that's the difference between the Xbox and the Xbox360

You cant argue with the 12 bit character format ( 8+4bit colour ram ) and the far superior sprites. But the Atari does seem to hold it's own quite well - and it trashes the Vic20 ( which was introduced 2 years later ) and still wins out on colour range and 'hires' scrolling.

 

I was thinking that it would have been a 'tiny' change to make the Atari missiles 8 bits wide rather than 2 , and that would have made a major difference to the sprite capabilities.

 

12-bit character is just one mode. I can keep repeating GTIA but that's not the point. In general you have more choices on Atari with graphics modes. We are not only looking at some applications that may take advantage of 12-bit characters but everything that can possibly be done on each machine so all choices have to be taken into account.

 

Just looking at sprite hardware, C64 is superior. Now if you start mixing things up like some are trying to do by claiming C64 has more colors per scanline so it has more colors then I can start mixing DLIs and timer IRQs and claim Atari has more sprites per scanline as well.

 

Why are you claiming C64 HW is way more powerful?

[Oswald]

Having 1/320 Hscroll does not mean scrolling hardware is superior on C64. It would only make sense in a luminance only mode since the colors would get shifted on a TV which uses a color clock of 1/160 pixel. You are picking one aspect of the scrolling. I never mentioned which machine's scrolling was superior-- your "friend" did and he hasn't proven it.

 

 

wow for that alone it was worth it to join this discussion so 1/320 hscroll doesnt make sense

[Oswald]

In general you have more choices on Atari with graphics modes.

 

"I have 16 channels of shit on my TV to choose from"

 

Pink Floyd - The Wall

[atariksi]

Having 1/320 Hscroll does not mean scrolling hardware is superior on C64. It would only make sense in a luminance only mode since the colors would get shifted on a TV which uses a color clock of 1/160 pixel. You are picking one aspect of the scrolling. I never mentioned which machine's scrolling was superior-- your "friend" did and he hasn't proven it.

 

 

wow for that alone it was worth it to join this discussion so 1/320 hscroll doesnt make sense

 

I already said it looks like crap on my TV so usually have to do 2/320 scroll anyway. Why did you state for C64:

 

"- no HW scrolling, but you can do it with the cpu"

[atariksi]

In general you have more choices on Atari with graphics modes.

 

"I have 16 channels of shit on my TV to choose from"

 

Pink Floyd - The Wall

 

That's subjective. You don't know what everyone on the planet likes. Some applications can get away with simpler graphics modes which can be refreshed faster and use less memory.

[Oswald]

That's subjective. You don't know what everyone on the planet likes. Some applications can get away with simpler graphics modes which can be refreshed faster and use less memory.

 

ah, so a 1 bit screen is the best. the worse the better, awesome point really

[Oswald]

I already said it looks like crap on my TV so usually have to do 2/320 scroll anyway. Why did you state for C64:

 

"- no HW scrolling, but you can do it with the cpu"

 

my tv has a very big afterglow, so I usually dont scroll at all anyway, because scrolling looks like crap it makes no sense, so speccy is better because it cant

 

2nd part: I meant the >1 char HW scrolling.