Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!pyrdc!netxcom!jallen
From: jallen@netxcom.UUCP (John Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Norton SI vs Reality
Message-ID: <580@netxcom.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 87 19:44:01 GMT
References: <1098@quacky.UUCP>
Reply-To: jallen@netxcom.UUCP (John Allen)
Lines: 34
Keywords: norton,SI

In article <1098@quacky.UUCP> vaso@mips.UUCP (Vaso Bovan) writes:
>Norton's SI is getting to be a public embarrassment,  [....]
>
>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
						      ----
Is this any better than showing a LARGE difference?

>the author has stated to me that most real-life applications will not show
>more than a 2% improvement.

In point of fact, the V20/V30 can be MUCH faster given any application
which makes extensive use of 186 enhancements.  When I upgraded my PC Clone
from an 8088 to a V20, I was literally awed by how much faster Windows ran.
PC-Paint also looked a lot faster.

Whether the V20 gets better gas mileage for you or not depends on what
type of driving you do.  If you use multiply or divide a lot, it helps.

>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.

Sysinfo may not be the best standard, but isn't it better to leave it
consistent, than to make subsequent versions incompatible, and therefore
incomparable?

John Allen
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