🚀 go-pugleaf

kellcrai@cwis.isu.edu (Inconnu) writes:

>In article <3vbqku$i4b@noc2.drexel.edu>,
>James Ianni <sg928ah5@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu> wrote:

>>The main reason for hardware sprites is that require 0 percent (Yes, read
>>that again..0%) CPU time or graphics copressor time. Hardware Sprites DO
>>NOT exist on a BITMAP, that's why they're called Sprites (GHOSTS)...
>>Arrrrgghhhh!!!

>(and btw, hardware sprites _do_ take up CPU time with definitions, and at
>least in sending commands to the sprite "engine")

But most of all, they take up valuable video memory bandwidth. And they make
the graphics chipset a lot more complicated internally, thus making it
either more expensive to produce or slower to operate. When, for each single
pixel, you have to find out whether you want to display the bitmap, or maybe
sprite 0, or maybe sprite 1, or maybe sprite 2, or ..... you need one hell
of a priority decoder that has to work _fast_. 

Sprites may be relatively easy when all you want to do is video frequencies
(with a typical pixel clock around 4 MHz), which is why just about every
home computer of the early 80 had them  (excluding the no-fancy-stuff-added
ZX Spectrum). It even made sense to have sprites on these machines --- the
CPU was way too slow to provide that functionality in software. But these
days, the majority of the computer world is working with pixel clocks of
50 to 100 MHz, with CPUs that have absolutely no problem doing a little
extra work, and with graphic cards that support the CPUs with superfast
blitters.

So where does this leave the Amiga? Somewhere in the 80s?

Tell me, how many of the 24 bit cards for the Amiga provide sprites? 

Bernie
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