Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mstan!amull
From: amull@Morgan.COM (Andrew P. Mullhaupt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Whis is fastest 386/33 or 486/25 ?
Summary: Wrong.
Message-ID: <1256@s8.Morgan.COM>
Date: 20 Jul 90 02:47:46 GMT
References: <1990Jul11.161138.13630@dvinci.usask.ca> <217@news.nd.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Morgan Stanley & Co. NY, NY
Lines: 19

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.

Maybe they think of it as a 386 family processor, but the i486 is a hell
of a lot faster at the same clock speed. The i486 FPU is on the order of
3 times faster than the 80386/80387 combination at the same clock speed.
The i486 is about twice (or maybe a bit faster) than the 80386 at the
same clock speed.

Also: I have a 25 Mhz i486 which beats up Sparcstation-I by about
30% on identical code. This means that the i486 probably can compete
with the Sparcstation-1+ for integer code. It isn't much slower for
double precision floating point, but the SS goes faster for single
precision (although I have very little use for singles).

Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt