🚀 go-pugleaf

Just for my own curiosity, I downloaded the QuickST 1.6 demo and
checked its speed with QuickIndex 1.5 (geeze. Sorry Darek, I've
used this QuickIndex a number of times and still haven't registered
with you. A check is on its way tho, honest!). So, some numbers from
my Mega 4 with TOS 1.4 in EPROMs, in case anyone else is curious...

Abbreviations:
	A  - no accelerators
	B  - BLiTTER only
	T  - Turbo ST 1.6 only
	TB - Turbo ST 1.6 + BLiTTER
	Q  - QuickST 1.6 demo only
	QB - QuickST 1.6 demo + BLiTTER

For monochrome resolution:

		A	B	T	TB	Q	QB
BIOS text	91	99	298	298	307	307
BIOS string	86	91	1210	1210	1081	1081
BIOS scroll	98	129	136	142	132	132
GEM draw	100	135	211	233	158	177
____________________________________________________________

For medium resolution:

		A	B	T	TB	Q	QB
BIOS text	92	98	320	320	246	246
BIOS string	87	90	1364	1364	1373	1373
BIOS scroll	98	126	132	138	129	129
GEM draw	99	130	175	211	115	156
____________________________________________________________

For low resolution:

		A	B	T	TB	Q	QB
BIOS text	94	106	415	416	221	221
BIOS string	89	97	851	856	443	443
BIOS scroll	98	125	133	133	128	128
GEM draw	99	149	182	235	101	151

Dunno why column A doesn't just say "100" all the way down the line.
Oh well. Also interesting to note that when the blitter makes a
difference with Turbo-ST, the difference depends on order of
activation. If you turn on the blitter first, and then TurboST,
you'll get about 6% more speed than vice versa. (Turn TurboST on
first, then the blitter...) [This quirk isn't visible above,
obviously.]

Kind of interesting... Makes ya wonder how you could put up with
text operations on an ST just out of the box. Things really do look
real real slow, until you use one of these add-ons. Pretty hard to
judge which one to use, though.

I'm kinda bummed, myself. Neither of these two programs work with
non-standard screen sizes, so my Overscan switch is idling in the
normal position. Oh well. QuickST1.4 worked OK with Overscan. I
wonder why the restriction now? Also TurboST doesn't seem to like
PinHead. My system freezes when PinHead is in my AUTO folder, if
TurboST is loaded.

I s'pose I wanna comment on the numbers themselves, since I've
gone to all the trouble of typing them in. Interesting to note
that the BIOS text operations (Bconout, Cconws) done by both
programs completely ignore the blitter. Also interesting that
TurboST gains a few percent in scrolling when the blitter is
active, but QuickST ignores it there as well. (Interesting, but
not a very significant difference, to be sure.) Also odd how the
different resolutions alter the speedups. Like, in monochrome,
the blitter accelerates GEM draws by 35% all by itself. But, it
only speeds up both TurboST and QuickST by about 20%. Then, in
medium, the blitter accounts for only 30% by itself, but speeds
up both TurboST and QuickST by about 40%. Funky Stuff there...

Hm. Does anyone else out there really care about this stuff?
I'm pretty curious to see some numbers for the various hardware
accelerators now...
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