Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!b.gp.cs.cmu.edu!Ralf.Brown@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU From: Ralf.Brown@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Norton Si Message-ID: <24eac6d6@ralf> Date: 17 Aug 89 14:08:22 GMT Organization: Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science Lines: 18 In-Reply-To: <478@v7fs1.UUCP> In article <478@v7fs1.UUCP>, sv@v7fs1.UUCP (Steve Verity) wrote: } Anyone out there know just what the heck Norton's SI }measures? The utility tells us that it is measuring performance }relitive to the PC. Still, what does *that* mean? SI basically measures the performance of the multiply instruction.... The numbers have meaning for comparison only when comparing systems with identical processors, as different CPU types take different numbers of clock cycles for multiplication, and those different clock cycles are not representative of overall performance. SI overstates V20/V30 performance by about 60%, and 80286 performance by about 100% (i.e. a 286 with a 10.1 rating is really about five times as fast as a 4.77 8088 overall). -- UUCP: {ucbvax,harvard}!cs.cmu.edu!ralf -=-=-=-=- Voice: (412) 268-3053 (school) ARPA: ralf@cs.cmu.edu BIT: ralf%cs.cmu.edu@CMUCCVMA FIDO: Ralf Brown 1:129/46 FAX: available on request Disclaimer? I claimed something? "Drama is life with the dull bits left out." -- Alfred Hitchcock