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