Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-tis!oodis01!uplherc!esunix!sedwards
From: sedwards@esunix.UUCP (Scott Edwards)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: 80386 vs. 68030
Message-ID: <1146@esunix.UUCP>
Date: 7 Dec 88 21:01:33 GMT
References: <788@stolaf.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Evans & Sutherland, Salt Lake City, Utah
Lines: 34

In article <5375@cbmvax.UUCP> daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) writes:
>Going all out, I'd expect a 68020 to be slower than an 80386 system, a
>68030 to be faster.

What does it matter?  What if one is 25% faster than the other one?
His program takes 5 seconds to run instead of 4?  I'll bet that your
average user (assuming there's only one user on the system) couldn't
tell the difference if one CPU was 2X the other one.  How many
programs do you run on a personal computer that are CPU intensive?

For example:  I wrote a program to solve a problem by doing an
exhaustive search on my pc at home (NS32016 @ 6Mhz), it took a little
over 5 minutes to find the solution (about 30 minutes to write and
debug).  Just for curiosity (and a slack moment) I put the program
on the Sun 3 at work the next day to see how much faster it could
solve the problem, after fooling around for a while I got it down
to about a minute and a half, but it took more time to write and
debug.  TOTAL time to get a solution was less for a much slower CPU!

I would decide based on factors like: what am I going to do with it,
what kind of programs are you going to run on it, are you going to
write your own or buy them, how much are they going to cost?

I've also found that faster disks, make a BIG difference in
performance when you are doing things like program development.


From article <788@stolaf.UUCP>, by mike@stolaf.UUCP (Mike Haertel):
> 			In Hell they run VMS.

Hmmm.  Last time I was there they were using UNIX :-).


-- Scott