Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!mimsy!umd5!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!cbosgd!mandrill!neoucom!wtm From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Norton SI vs Reality Message-ID: <853@neoucom.UUCP> Date: 16 Dec 87 18:59:59 GMT References: <1098@quacky.UUCP> <580@netxcom.UUCP> Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Lines: 33 Keywords: norton,SI Summary: Use PC Labs' _Bench_ program I heartly recommend the use of PC Magazine's PC Labs' _Bench_ IBM compatible computer test suite. I forgot just how we obtained our copy. I think it was gotten from one of the software offerings from the back of PC Magazine. Bench is a pretty good test suite and can be used to test quite a few aspects of system performance. CPU relevent feautures including instructions, FPU and regular as well as (E)EMS memory timings are tested. Hard disk and video apators can also be spec.'ed. The CPU oriented items tested are: 1. 128K NOP Loop 2. Do-nothing Loop 3. Integer Add Loop 4. Integer Multiply Loop 5. String Sort and Move 6. Prime Number Sieve The times are given as %of 4.77 MHz XT and 8.00 MHz AT Before I put a V-30 in my AT&T 6300, the integer Multiply was about 0.3 of an AT. After the V-30, the Mults went up to about 0.6 AT. String Sort and Move also showed noticable improvement. The other CPU operations were not so dramatic. I don't remember the exact figure difference for 8086 vs V30 as reported by si, version 4.0; it was something like the performance of the V30 was 2.5 times the 8086. Just watching the computer run, it was obvious that the Norton Index was over-rating the V30. --Bill