Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!belltec!jim From: jim@belltec.UUCP (Mr. Jim's Own Logon) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Intel 386SX chip & its applications Summary: P9 (386SX) What it is, and isn't. . Message-ID: <234@belltec.UUCP> Date: 22 Jun 88 14:28:52 GMT References: <206900116@prism> Organization: Bell Technologies, Fremont, CA Lines: 26 The 386SX (formerly leaked as the P9) is not a 286 compatible at all. The internals and the timings are very similar to the 386. It cannot be added to a 286 socket directly (although a simple daughter board can be built that will allow this, you'll see these available soon enough). The 386SX is slightly faster than a 386 with the BS16 line tied low because of some changes to the pipelining, but not much faster. For comperable speeds, the 386SX will be 55% to 70% as fast as a real 386. This still raises the question: why design a new machine around the 386SX? A system cost is based on (in order of most $ to least) the memory, the hard disk, the chassis and power supply, the controllers,monitor, and keyboard, the support logic, and finally the CPU. So what if you can save $100 on the CPU, it is a small percentage of the system cost. And you are going to settle for 60% of the performance? Not me. Watch what Compaq does, its new 386SX machine will not be a apples to apples comparison. When you price out the machine do it for an equal 386 machine: 1 meg of RAM, same size hard disk, no cache, same size power supply. For a end user price of $3000 there should be only $300 or so difference in parts (and that includes the mark up). Sorry, I got carried away. -Jim Wall Bell Technologies Inc.