From: J056600@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM
Subject: Re: 486 vs. Mac Benchmarks
Organization: Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc.
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 17:51:40 GMT

In <1992Dec17.224200.22219@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>, Michael C Merrifield writes:

>Anyone seen the Motorola adds about an Ingram Laboratory performance study?
>Look on page 22 & 23 of the July 92 issue of Byte, for example.

Fine.  A Motorola ad.  They'll certainly give us an unbiased benchmark.  What
if the ads were produced by Intel?  Certainly they'd cook the books and run
other tests with differently configured '040 and 486 systems which would make
the 486 look like the blazer.

The tests probably aren't falsified, but should be taken with a grain of salt
since the people promoting the test results are certainly not unbiased.

>---------------------------------------------------------------------------

>        "Recent Studies Reveal 25MHz Is Now Faster Than 50MHz"

>"Ingram Benchmark Results, March 1992 - 25 and 33 MHz 040 Macintosh Quadra
>Outruns the 486 at 33 and 50 MHz."

>"This revelation is brought to you by the Apple Macintosh and the Motorola
>68040."  The add goes on to say that Ingram Labs (an independent PC testing
>firm) compared the newest 040 Macs (Quadra 950 and 700) to several of the
>quickest 486 Windows PCs running the most popular applications for both
>Macintosh and Windows 3.0 (such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Wingz, PageMaker,
>Persuasion and Illustrator) and measured the performance of "real world
>functions" (such as opening a file, scrolling, running a macro, performing
>calculations, etc.).

>The results are shown below...

>* Performance Index
>0------1------2------3------4------5------6------7------8------9------10

>33MHz 040
>Mac Quadra 950 ----------------------------------------------------9.7

>25MHz 040
>Mac Quadra 700 ---------------------------------------------------9.3

>ALR Business Veisa
>486/50 -------------------------------------------------8.1

>Compaq Deskpro
>486/33 -------------------------------------6.5

>IBM PS/2 95 XP
>486/33 ------------------------------------6.2

>DELL 433P
>486/33 ---------------------------------5.9

>* "Performance Index is the measured result relative to the slowest machine
>  tested (a 286-based IBM PS/1 running Windows). For example, Mac Quadra 950
>  is 9.7 times faster than the Performance Index; the Dell 433P is 5.9 times
>  faster."

Fine.  I'll address configurations later.  But for now, let's say that the
Quadra 950 is at 9.7 and the ALR 486/50 is at 8.1.  I'll bet that on a
price/performance scale, the 486 still gives more bang for the buck.  Until
Macs are cloned, it will probably remain that way.

>No surprise, really.  Macintosh and its graphical user interface were designed
>from the start around the 68000's true 32-bit architecture.  Naturally, it
>outperforms computers powered by an extended 8-bit architecture running a
>character-based operating system with a tacked-on GUI."

How are the 486 systems configured?  Less than 4 MB of RAM?  Cheap video?
No disk caching?  No external cache?  Windows would positively SUCK on any
processor without any of the goodies specified above.

Before I can accept this conclusion, I need to see how the systems were
configured.  I'm not surprised that a 486 would be slower if it had 2 MB of
memory, cheap video and no external or disk caches enabled.  A 386/40 with
16 MB, 24X video, 4 MB disk cache and a 256K external cache might almost be
faster than a 486 with very little additional support.  Let's compare a $5,000
Mac system to a $5,000 486 system.  Or a $2,500 486 system with a $2,500 Mac
system (if there is such a thing as a $2,500 Mac system).

All I'm saying is that they don't mention if the configurations and peripherals
are comparable in the Macs and the PCs they tested.  And there's more to the
world than just Windows.

>This is not another "closed minded" Mac user's attempt to save the world
>from the wages of PC use.  Certainly IBM/clones have a niche in the world of
>personal computing. My intent is to point out that if you want a high
>performance graphical computer, I think the Macintosh is the way to go.

Well, at least you said "I think," and admitted that there is a place for PC
clones, which makes you a rarity among Mac advocates.


Tim Irvin
******************************************************************************
Microsoft Windows--from the folks who brought you EDLIN.