Why is some memory faster than others?

There are two types of memory on the Amiga- chip and fast. Chip memory is shared between the CPU, graphics, and sound hardware, making it considerably slower. Fast ram on the other hand is only used by the CPU for storage, and so is faster. At present the Amiga only has 2Mb of chip ram to use for the display. Any graphical data has to be moved into chip ram for it to be displayed, as the graphics processor cannot access fast ram.

If you want to use more than the 2MB limit for graphics you will either need to buy a graphics card (only for Amiga users with Zorro slots), or buy one of the new art packages, such as Personal Paint which has a custom routine to load from fast memory.

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