Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!pyramid!prls!mips!vaso
From: vaso@mips.UUCP (Vaso Bovan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Norton SI vs Reality
Message-ID: <1098@quacky.UUCP>
Date: 11 Dec 87 18:26:33 GMT
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 33
Keywords: norton,si


Norton's SI is getting to be a public embarrassment, especially when used
to tout 8088 and 8086 machines containing V20 and V30 uPs. Often an ad will
say "1.8 times IBM-PC speed" or "twice IBM-PC speed" "by N.I. SysInfo". It
amounts to a fraud on the public to sell a V-series computer on the basis of
its S.I. rating.

I've spoken to the authors of two other benchmarks, the Landmark and the
P.I. Both benchmarks show little improvement in performance for the V-series
over 80XX series uPs. The Landmark benchmark assigns ZERO improvement, and
the author has stated to me that most real-life applications will not show
more than a 2% improvement. Incidentally, the V40 and V50 show slight (10%)
improvement in throughput. The JC LIPS and the Packard-Bell VX88 are two
interesting 8 MHz V40 machines.

There is an article in the third Special IBM-PC BYTE Magazine, which discusses
the role of speedups and performance improvements. In it the author gives a
rough "rule of thumb" that the 8086 has 50% more throughput than the 8088, due
to the larger data path. It appears also that straight clock-speed tweeks are
strictly linear. Putting the two effects together, it appears that the 8 MHz
PS/2, Model 30 is about 2.5 times the performance of the original IBM-PC. The
new Ogivar System III machine, from Canada, which runs an 8086 at 10 MHz is
about 3.1 times the performance of the IBM-PC. Now, considering Landmark's
rule of thumb that a 2 MHz AT is approximately equal in performance to a
PC, then it appears the Ogivar 10 MHz 8086 is faster than the original 6 MHz
IBM-AT !

Incidentally, Norton wrote back to me to say that they had no intention of
changing S.I. to remove the distortion in the V-Series performance figures.
Their decision smacks of high-handed arrogance.

Comments ?

-Vaso