[comp.sys.hp] "Demo" 720's vs. real ones.

rjg@umnstat.stat.umn.edu (Robert J. Granvin) (06/13/91)

Has anyone had the opportunity to demo an HP 720 and then use a "Real"
one?  

My area of interest is in what differences may have been noticed.  It
appears that a number of demo machines are running pre-release (beta)
versions of HP/UX 8.0 and do not include the good optimizer compilers.

With only about 48 hours to work with a unit, we did some benchmark
testing.  While we found the machine impressive, it did seem that the
graphics performance _should_ have been better.  (Certainly we can 
overlook the obvious bugs in a pre-release OS :-).  The 2-D acceleration
seemed to give us a 3x boost in performance which can be explained, at
least in part, by a much faster CPU.  A question of curiosity is whether
the accelerator was actually being used to its full extend by the pre-
release system (or at all).

Until we can get to a "real" 720 with released software, it would be
interesting to hear if anyone has had the opportunity to compare...
Does the release OS/compilers make any real difference on performance
(in any categories, graphics specifically...)  Any HP techs online
that can assist?

email, please.

-- 
Robert J. Granvin                                       School of Statistics
rjg@umnstat.stat.umn.edu                             University of Minnesota