[comp.sys.mac] mac se/30 vs. 386/387 fortran floating point performance

gsk@khaki.asd.sgi.com (George S. Kong) (06/10/90)

can anyone out there help me compare a mac to a 386 clone
w.r.t. floating point performance in fortran?

i have a friend who's a grad student in physics and would
like to buy a machine to run simulations written in fortran.

because of the student discounts available to him, he can
purchase a mac se/30 or a similarly-configured 33 Mhz 386
clone with a 387 math coprocessor for roughly the same price.

i have two sets of questions:

1) what fortran compilers are available for these two machines
   at fairly low cost?

   how do they perform on the above-mentioned hardware?

2) the 33MHz 386 machine is closest to the se/30 in price,
   but slower ones are available. some of these models are
   available with and without caches. does presence or absence
   of a cache affect math coprocessor performance the same way
   it affects performance of other cpu operations?

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thanks.

George S. Kong,  Silicon Graphics, Inc.,  (415)962-3281
gsk@sgi.com
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