From: w.l.vaughn@LaRC.NASA.GOV (Wallace L. Vaughn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel,comp.sys.mac.hardware,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: 486 vs. Mac Benchmarks
Date: 12 Dec 1992 20:41:28 GMT
Organization: NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA  USA
Distribution: world
Reply-To: w.l.vaughn@LaRC.NASA.GOV (Wallace L. Vaughn)
NNTP-Posting-Host: b1205amac8.larc.nasa.gov

> ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Iskandar Taib) writes:

>>          Macintosh IICi, built-in Apple video, 680x480(yuck)x256 colors.
>>          32 bit addressing turned on, VRAM on, 16 Meg available, disk 
>>          cache 384K.      

>>Software: Excel 3 (I will try it with Excel 4 in the next couple days).
Evan Torrie.  Stanford University, Class of 199? responds
 > I tried it with Excel 4.0 on the Mac, which is generally slower than
>Excel 3.0 in my experience.

>>The test: Put an integer into cell A1. Cells B1 -> Z1 are cell to the left
>>          + 1. Cells A2 -> Z1000 are cell above +1. See how long it takes 
>>          to recalc the sheet after changing value of A1.

>>Results:  Under Windows recalc took 3.3 seconds. 
>>On the Mac, 7.5 seconds.

>  4.1 seconds on my IIci.  
I tried it using excel 3 on a IIci, cache card, two screens run in 8 
bit(640x480) and 4 bit (15" stardard number of pixels) modes with video cards 
(non-accelerated), system 7.01+, 20 meg ram, 3meg excel partition.

recalc took 2.5 secs (hand held, so, say give or take 0.2 seconds), looks 
like Evan may be correct 4.0 may be a little slower than 3.0. Looks like 
Iskandar Taib is suffering from the onboard video slow down on the IIci or 
maby the lack of a cache card.

>>          I'll try this and other benchmarks on different machines. Don't
>>          have a Quadra to try though.

>  I do though.  1.2 seconds for the same test on a 25MHz 68040 Quadra.

I have previously run a simular test using a more complex calculation wich is 
to messy to state clearly here but it involved multiplications, additions, 
divisions, sins, cosins, averages, standard deviations, roots, powers etc., 
more or less at random, (care was taken to use absoulte values in some places 
to eliminate (divide by zeros, negative roots) etc.) all based on other cell 
results so that changing cell 1A would cause a complete recalc as in the 
above exapmle. I also measured the time to scroll the 1000 row spread sheet. 
Results as follows

Mac II, 16mHz, system 7.01+, 8bit 640 x 480 video, 8 meg ram
Mac IIci, 25mHz, see above
386dx, 33mhz system, windows, 3.0, 640x480 svga screen, no cache. 8meg RAM
                     calc.(sec)       scroll(min:sec)
Mac II                    35.3            2:16.2 
Mac IIci                  15.3            1:31.2
Mac IIci/cache off        19.2            1:44.7
386dx                     22.5            2:25.3

Sorry about lack of spec for the 386 system, but I couldn't find the manuals 
for it, or the purchase orders, but its was a typical clone package with a 1 
meg video card and 14" hi-res monitor, AT style slots. The 386 on this calc 
seem to be in line with the Mac IIci/cache off, however the scroll 
performance was fairly slow. 

just my $0.02, this was my playing and doesn't reflect any official position 
or recommendation by NASA or the US Government.

Wally



Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel