Even then, the Commodore Plus/4 could do some pretty sophisticated gaming, even without the dedicated sprites of the VIC-II -- simply because the CPU was about twice as fast as the C64's. An example: https://psytronik.itch.io/pets-rescue
Anyway, that's blasphemy to a Commodore fan, especially an Amiga fan, to whom good system design consists of having amazing custom silicon for which the CPU is a mere mediator. After all, if a faster CPU were really all you needed, the PC wouldn't suck as much as it does!
This school of thought won out in the end, as most of the compute in today's high-performance applications (like AI) is done on the GPU, the CPU's role being to transfer programs and data to the GPU, basically a front-end processor to the actual computer which is made by NVIDIA.
Anyway, that's blasphemy to a Commodore fan, especially an Amiga fan, to whom good system design consists of having amazing custom silicon for which the CPU is a mere mediator. After all, if a faster CPU were really all you needed, the PC wouldn't suck as much as it does!
This school of thought won out in the end, as most of the compute in today's high-performance applications (like AI) is done on the GPU, the CPU's role being to transfer programs and data to the GPU, basically a front-end processor to the actual computer which is made by NVIDIA.