16 replies to this topic

[dirtboy69]

how powerful in say contrast to the other 8bits like sega and nintendo was this system and how much would one cost with a few games and a pair of controllers and would someone trade one to me for my 2600 or maybe a sega genesis

[DracIsBack]

Define "powerful".

In terms of straight technical specs, there isn't really a lot of difference between the 7800 and NES. The NES has much sharper sound, the 7800 has five times as many colours. The NES is more suited to tile graphics, the 7800 is better at manipulating large numbers of objects. In terms of RAM, they're similar. In terms processor power, they both have 1.79 mhz 6502 processors running the show.

That being said, you need to look at the games. Regardless of what the 7800 is physically capable of doing, it didn't typically have the best developers pushing it the way that developers pushed the NES. Even if the 7800 was capable of displaying sharp graphics (and it was ... as witnessed by the underwater sequence in TOWER TOPPLER more than proves this), that didn't mean developers made use of its capabilities. Many 7800 games were quickly updated early arcade games or quick ports of Commodore 64 titles (games programmed for a 16 colour palette brought over to a console with 256 colours). The games often don't look as colourful as detailed as the best NES games.

A bigger problem with the 7800 is that the Tramiels (the family that owned Atari at the time) were a cheap lot. They didn't like spending much money on licenses, development or memory. Hence, most 7800 games are shorter, less well-known or less complicated than NES games. Not really the 7800's fault - it could play long, detailed games but the Tramiel's didn't usually want to pay to develop them or build the carts. NES games are anywhere from (usually) 64K to 640K in size. Nintendo came out with memory management chips to make games like Super Mario brothers that were 384K.

The Tramiels were cheap. The first 7800 games were 16K, 32K or 48K long. In 1988, when they realized that Nintendo was kicking their ass, they started releasing 128K and even two 144K games but by then Nintendo had taken over. In theory, the 7800 would be able to play 640K games too ... if someone wanted to program and build them.

[yodan]

dirtboy69 said:

how powerful in say contrast to the other 8bits like sega and nintendo was this system and how much would one cost with a few games and a pair of controllers and would someone trade one to me for my 2600 or maybe a sega genesis

If it's your only 2600 don't trade it. Also, since I noticed from your other post that you don't have a 5200 either, I would go for the 5200 first. The 5200 has more style and some of the best classic arcade ports.

[dirtboy69]

i have three 2600s so that's not the problem and well over a hundred games in doubles and stuff so trading isn't a problem and i've been checking out the game lists on the 7800 and it appeals more to me i like collecting a system that's got a small libary cause i don't have much money

[Curt Vendel]

@Drac...

The Marie Graphics processor in the 7800 ran at 7.16 MHz

Curt

[dirtboy69]

7.16mhz ? wasn't the sega genesis only 9 and the snes only 7 ? that seems pretty fast for a low end 8bit i guess it isn't as low end as i always thought

[Curt Vendel]

Actually it takes a 14.? Mhz crystal to run as well, yes its spec'd out at 7.16mhz, I wonder if its fast speed also contributes to its lockup issue, the Maria tends to lockup after long periods of use, most likely an overheat issue that was never addressed later on. Although I'm sure a simple heatsink attached to it would certain do the trick, anybody ever try that???



Curt

[dirtboy69]

anyway back to me getting a system here

[DanBoris]

The 7.16Mhz clock speed on the Maria chip gave the ability to move a lot of data to the screen very quickly. Under ideal conditions it would be possible for the chip to move over 500 4-color pixels into each line of the display. This is pretty impressive considering it only have a resolution of 160 pixels wide in 4 color modes.

Dan

[Video]

Wow, I didn't know that about the 7800. I hope some people start dabeling in homebrew stuff on it sometime. It'd be nice to see it really pushed. Seeing what is possible on the 2600 now, it would be amazing to see the 7800 whip out some serious stuff.

[A2600]

So if played at full potential and if it where to be released in time ('84) it would have wooped the NES?

Right??

[DracIsBack]

The two systems are fairly similar in terms of "power" though each obviously has strengths.

The NES has far superior sound and is better at tile graphics. The "normal" resolution (read everyday useage) is also higher.

The 7800 has a much larger colour palette, higher overall resolution (though most games used the lower res modes), and is better at manipulating objects without flicker.

At the end of the day, they're both powered by 8-bit processors running at less than 2 mhz and both have under 5K of onboard RAM.

[dirtboy69]

can anyone help me in getting one then

[Big Player]

DanBoris said:

The 7.16Mhz clock speed on the Maria chip gave the ability to move a lot of data to the screen very quickly. Under ideal conditions it would be possible for the chip to move over 500 4-color pixels into each line of the display. This is pretty impressive considering it only have a resolution of 160 pixels wide in 4 color modes.  

Dan

Wow. So this explains how they were able to make a great 7800 version of Robotron.

[desiv]

>The NES has far superior sound and is better at tile graphics.

I've heard this alot...

Is there a technical reason for this???

Or is it just that the NES programmers concentrated on tile based games so they were better at it??

I mean, is there a technical reason that the NES is better suited to Zelda than the 7800??

desiv

P.S. I meant the tile based graphics.. We all know there's a technical reason the NES has better sound..

[DanBoris]

[quote="desiv"]>The NES has far superior sound and is better at tile graphics.


Or is it just that the NES programmers concentrated on tile based games so they were better at it??

I mean, is there a technical reason that the NES is better suited to Zelda than the 7800??

[quote]

There is no technical reason that you couldn't do tile based game on the 7800 that where just as good at the ones on the NES. The major difference is that the NES hardware is setup to automatically handle tile based displays. On the 7800 you would have to write a display engine to create the tile display.

As I have mentioned in other discussions, the 7800 has very unusual graphics hardware. The Maria graphics chip reads data structures in memory and based on these structures moves graphics data from speciifc locations in memory to specific locations on each scanline of the screen. So the 7800 doesn't inhernantly have sprite cabilities, or tile graphic cabilitiies, but you can write a software display engine that mimics almost any other type of graphics hardware.

Dan

[DracIsBack]

Dan - wasn't that the way they did SCRAPYARD DOG? Seemed to me that was largely composed of tile components (ala SUPER MARIO BROTHERS) and worked well.