From: pdunlap@cs.utexas.edu (Peter Dunlap)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Macintosh bigots
Date: 20 Nov 92 15:18:05 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: ar-rimal.cs.utexas.edu

In article <BxzwF6.As0@news.cso.uiuc.edu> rvenkate@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu (Ravikuma Venkateswar) writes:

>>Actually, I've done tests with my Quadra 700 - 25 MHz 68040 against a 50
>>MHz
>>486 DX.  I wrote a simple program in C that did 2 sin calls and 2 cos
>>calls,
>>1 million times.  The 486 was only 25% faster than my Quadra.  Even though
>>it should be at least twice as fast.  So that shows how Motorola is ahead
>>of 
>>Intel.  (Note: don't forget IBM went to Motorola to fabricate their RS/6000
>>chips for the new PowerPCs.  Why would they drop Intel? )
>
>Not quite an accurate comparison. Clock speeds are irrelevant on chips
>with totally different instruction sets. And the execution time with
>the C program depends a lot on the compiler. Especially with the 486, you
>can't compare a program that uses an 8086 instruction set running in Dos
>with the Quadra. And you didn't mention whether the Quadra has a coprocessor
>(which would mean that if it wasn't there, the speed difference would
>be even less). Incidentally, what was the price comparison on the two
>computers?
>

The Quadra uses a 68040 which is more or less in the same boat as the 486
when it comes to math functions -- it has an on-chip math coprocessor with
a subset of the math functions that used to come on a seperate chip.  The
point about the 8086 instruction set is a good one though.. I seriously 
doubt that a 32 bit compiler was used on the 486 machine in the comparison,
and if not, it was saddled with 16 bit instructions, fewer registers (doesn't
the 486 have more registers?), and probably a few other restrictions.  Also
the 68040 came out nearly a year after the 486, and you would certainly hope
that with that extra time they could make it a little bit faster!  

The price question is also an excellent consideration.  I work at a mail order
company and we are currently selling the Quadra 700 with 4mb of RAM and no
hard drive (and no keyboard, monitor, etc) for $3499.  I don't have any 
magazines handy to check PC pricing but I suspect 486/50s can be had in the
$2500 range from Dell and Gateway, and probably even cheaper elsewhere.. and
these would include harddrives.  Just to quell the predictable Mac advocate
response, they also include supervga which is large monitor support, although
not as colorful as the Quadra's, an ethernet adapter (built in on the quadra)
would cost about $150 dollars for an ISA, and SCSI support (not necessary 
since both machines include IDE adapters) can be had for about $200.

Oh, and to bring this into relevance to the OS/2 newsgroup, a GUI that is
better than the Mac's (in my opinion of course) and certainly multitasks better
can be had for $150, even if you are upgrading :-) from a Mac and you don't
have a copy of Windoze to show to IBM.


Peter Dunlap
CS Dept. University of Texas at Austin

Gonna have to write a .signature file one of these days
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy