pat@pro-shop.cts.com (Pat Regan) (03/17/91)
i saw that a 33mhz 386 is about 40 times faster than an apple iigs. how much faster is a mac comparred to a iigs, or even a mac compared to a 33mhz 386. or maybe even compared to a slow 486? pat ---- ProLine: pat@pro-shop Internet: pat@pro-shop.cts.com UUCP: crash!pro-shop!pat ARPA: crash!pro-shop!pat@nosc.mil
gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) (03/17/91)
In article <8053@crash.cts.com> pat@pro-shop.cts.com (Pat Regan) writes: >i saw that a 33mhz 386 is about 40 times faster than an apple iigs. how >much faster is a mac comparred to a iigs, or even a mac compared to a 33mhz >386. or maybe even compared to a slow 486? Such speed comparisons are overly simplistic; actual speed of operation depends very much on the application. For the kinds of applications that I use, there is NOT a factor of 40 discrepancy in speed. (I have used both a 33MHz 386 and my IIGS.) The best C compilers for the 386 seem to generate better code than the available IIGS C compilers, which has an impact for applications written in C. Processor speed of the 33MHz 386 runs around 3 times that of a TWGS-equipped IIGS, for comparable applications coded in assembly language. The 486 processor is roughly twice as fast as a 386 using the same clock rate; 25MHz 486s are the best that are currently available, and can be expected to compute about 5 times faster than the TWGS. Floating-point speeds are dramatically affected by the use of hardware FPUs; the 68881 in the Innovative Systems FPE for the IIGS is pretty good, if the application uses it directly rather than via the SANE tools. However, as a II bus peripheral there is an inherent bottleneck in accessing the FPE that makes this slower than a comparable IBM PC/AT clone setup with an 80387 or comparable coprocessor. The problem with comparing desktop-oriented systems such as the IIGS or Mac against IBM PC/AT clones is that the latter often have been used in the generally cruftier text-screen mode, which is inherently faster. A good comparison should use Windows 3.0 in extended mode on the PC/AT clone. (By the way, that is a much nicer environment than the IIGS Finder; I haven't used the Mac MultiFinder enough to know how it compares.) Bitmap graphics operations take a lot of CPU cycles, and the use of color makes it much worse.