From: etl0@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (ERIC TODD LANDRIEU)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: Is OS/2 2.0 faster than Windows??
Date: 13 Apr 92 03:42:17 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

>>>
>>>WINOS2 tests run on: PS/2 Model 80 16MHz w/ 80387; IBM VGA; 8 MB memory
>>>Win3.1 tests run on: 386/40; Tseng ET4000 VGA (640x480x16); 8 MB memory
>>>
>>
>>As far as I'm concerned, this negates any value of these numbers.  How
>>can you compare these values when they were done on different machines
>>with different video boards?  This is nonsense....
>
>But, if anything, this would go in favor of Windows 3.1.  A 386/40
>with ET4000 should be at least twice as fast as a 386/16 with VGA,
>especially if they were using the Tseng drivers (though the native
>Windows 3.1 VGA driver is pretty fast on my ET4000 card).
>
>Is WINOS2 really _that_ much faster?  I'm impressed.
>
Unfortunately, you still can't say that WINOS2 is faster.  Here's why(I'm not
anti-OS2 or anything, so don't flame me...I even have my copy ordered, I'm
just setting the logic straight):  Both tests were(presumably) measured
against what Win3.0 would give for the particular machine.  As an example, let
us say that on the 16MHz, a certain video operation took 28.4 ms under Win30.
Under WINOS2, the operation took 27.0 ms.  The benchmark would report the
result as a factor of 0.951.  Under the 40MHz machine, the operation might
only take 12.2 ms under Win3.1, BUT IT IS NOT SAYING THAT WIN3.1 IS RUNNING
OVER TWICE AS FAST AS WINOS2 FOR THAT OPERATION!  This would translate to a
time, assuming(for example) Win3.0 does this at 12.9 ms on this machine, to a
benchmark of 0.946.  Thus, in such a case, the faster machine and operation
ends up being the lesser of the improvements.  This makes such comparisons
more feasable.
I would not, however, take these results as the standard.  The two machines
had different video boards, BIOSes, etc.  Calls to these can affect
performance(for example, standard VGA calls are MUCH faster on my current Boca
SVGA board than on my old Trident board, using the same machine).  I would
love to see the results of the benchmark redone on one machine for all tests,
with the same hardware used for everything.
One interesting sidenote:  This is similar to the DISK access benchmark PC
magazine used in its April 28 issue for Win3.1 in the problems I have with it.
 In that issue, they showed improvements in disk speed that occurred with 3.1
 over 3.0.  They had 2 machines with about a 2xx% increase, and one with over
 1000%.  They went on to say the average increase was over 500%.  In another
 area of the page, they went over the 3 machine configurations.  The two
which had 2xx% increases were both IDE drives.  But the 1xxx% increase came
with a SCSI drive.  They didn't link this conclusion with the fact that
SMARTDRIVE.SYS now works with SCSI.  Thus, the disk accesses SHOULD be
significantly faster for SCSI, as it was comparing a cached drive versus one
without the cache.
Oh, well... Hoping my GA will get here soon... I'm so anxious.
                                      Eric Landrieu

                                      
-- 

               ===============================================
               =   Eric Landrieu  =  ETL0@ns1.CC.lehigh.EDU  =
               ===============================================
"Of all the people I've ever met, you're certainly one of them."
                                                 -Ellis Fuls