Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!remus.rutgers.edu!declan From: declan@remus.rutgers.edu (Declan McCullagh/LZ) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: To upgrade or not to upgrade... Summary: Memory vs. Drive speed vs. Processor speed Message-ID: Date: 12 Nov 90 01:00:07 GMT References: <1990Nov11.212910.2084@sctc.com> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 57 In article <1990Nov11.212910.2084@sctc.com>, herndon@sctc.com (William R. Herndon) writes: > Some final, general, questions: > > 1. NeXTStep 2.0 will work on an 030 cube, will it not? NeXTstep 2.0 will work on the original NeXT computer. You'll notice a great improvement when launching applications, and more subtle ones elsewhere in the system. > 2. Other than sheer blinding speed, what are some other advantages to > having the 040 upgrade? ( Please discount getting Lotus Improve. > I'm already weighting that as factor. ). How about a 10Base-T Ethernet connector, SCSI-II connector, hardware flow control on serial ports (!). And, of course, sheer blinding speed. $-) Actually, as you probably know, UNIX is inherently disk-based, and not everything will be improved by adding a faster CPU. Now, NeXTstep, on the other hand, is a memory hog [*], and an 8 MB NeXT is somewhat less than adequate if you want superior performance. So, in terms of user interface perofrmance, MIPS is only one-third the solution. For the best possible performance, you'll have to confront those other two limiting factors (memory & drive speed). > 3. How long will 040 upgrades be offered? Indefinately? To the best of my knowledge, NeXT has not set a cutoff date. -Declan --- [*] NeXTstep *is* a memory hog. Here are some excerpts from a process listing on my 16 MB system with just Terminal and Edit loaded: USER PID %CPU %MEM VSIZE RSIZE TT STAT TIME COMMAND declan 140 11.0 23.5 5.71M 3.77M ? S 35:38 - console (WindowServer) declan 142 0.0 17.1 4.70M 2.74M ? S 4:47 /usr/lib/NextStep/Workspace root 141 0.0 6.1 2.65M 1000K ? SW 0:02 - console (loginwindow) root 113 0.0 1.5 1.26M 248K ? S 0:00 /usr/etc/autonfsmount -tm root 106 0.0 2.3 3.15M 384K ? SW 0:00 /usr/lib/NextPrinter/npd declan 143 0.0 0.8 1.23M 136K p0 S 0:00 Console Daemon That's 8 MB of RAM used just by the user interface (actually, the numbers indicated in the RSIZE field are misleading, but for the purposes of comparison, they're useful). Then, if you take into account the few MB used for the UNIX end of things, you can probably imagine that there's going to be a lot of swapping going on. Then again, isn't it all worth it? $-) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Declan McCullagh / NeXT Campus Consultant \ declan@remus.rutgers.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------