Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!gvgpsa!gold!grege
From: grege@gold.GVG.TEK.COM (Greg Ebert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Whis is fastest 386/33 or 486/25 ?
Message-ID: <1166@gold.GVG.TEK.COM>
Date: 12 Jul 90 16:23:51 GMT
References: <1990Jul11.161138.13630@dvinci.usask.ca> <217@news.nd.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Grass Valley Group, Grass Valley, CA
Lines: 22

In article <217@news.nd.edu> laughner@news.nd.edu (Tom laughner) writes:
>There would be no difference in speed between a 386 with a math
>coprocessor and a 486.  The 486 chip is a 386 + the math coprocessor in
>one.  Intel considers the 486 as a part of the 386 family.

Actually, the 486 is faster because the instruction cycles were optimized.
Obviously, if a 386/25 didn't have a cache, the 486 would run faster.

On the flip-side, though, you can build a more efficient cache/cache
controller for the 386 than is contained in the 486. Then again, CACHE
PERFORMANCE IS A FUNCTION OF HOW THE SOFTWARE WAS WRITTEN. You could
write software which would execute with the same speed on systems with
4K, 8K, or maybe 64K of cache.

My $0.02 worth: If you have a 386/25 w/80387, don't waste your money on a
486/25. Wait for the 40Mhz version. There are so many other system parameters
which limit overall performance. If you do gobs of screen I/O, there will be
alsmost zippo difference between a 6Mhz 286 and a 486/33; get a display card
which shadows video BIOS. If you think your hard disk is slow, even a 100000Mhz
80786 won't make things faster. If your memory sits on the AT bus, it still
runs the same piddly 8Mhz bus cycle. And if TETRIS or BLOCKOUT is too SLOW
for you, too bad. A faster CPU won't get those critters to move any faster.