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From: hal@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Aaron Harsh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: NeXT Press Release
Message-ID: <2323@pdxgate.UUCP>
Date: 11 Apr 91 04:04:35 GMT
References: <2802B910.22818@orion.oac.uci.edu> <10922@uwm.edu>
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Reply-To: hal@eecs.UUCP (Aaron Harsh)
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Organization: Portland State University
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In article <10922@uwm.edu> gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes:
>From article <2802B910.22818@orion.oac.uci.edu>, by nguyent@balboa.eng.uci.edu (Thien Nguyen):
>> NeXT is a pretty nice system.  I don't know why all the Amiga people are
>> trying to make having Display Postscript sound like something bad to have.  
>
>It's nice.  But it's a processor hog, and it's useless for many things
>that I do every day.

>Do you honestly believe your term program NEEDS
>to have DP?  What about a spreadsheet?  Your screen blanker?

  My term program isn't slowed down by PostScript.  The serial port is the
bottleneck here.  My spreadsheet isn't slowed down by PostScript.  Processor
speed is the bottleneck here.  These are really horrible examples.  I wonder
what Gregory has against DPS?  I wonder what he wants to run at blinding
speeds that DPS won't let him do?

>Your games?

  I think I've found my answer.  Well, Greg, on an old '030 NeXT running 1.0,
DPS was fast enough to run a reasonable flight simulator.  But if you're a
serious gamer, and you need a serious game machine, buy an Amiga.

>> The slow down is not that noticable. In fact, it runs quite fast even when
>> I have many windows opened on the screen.  Also the whole window moves, not
>> just the outline.  Try to move the windows on the Amiga, when you have
>> several windows opened --- it slows down noticeably even on A3000 with 2.x.
>> 
>> By the way, I have an A3000/25!!!
>
>Not sure what you mean on that last part...  Anyways, you wouldn't
>notice the slowdown.  Seriously.

  I don't think it was a hypothetical situation.  Thien was saying that it
_did_ slow down and he _did_ notice the difference.

>Have you ever run Mach WITHOUT DP?
>No.  Why?  You can't.  So how can you say the slowdown isn't that
>noticeable.  Compared to what???

  Well, yes I have run Mach without DPS.  Why?  Because I can.  When I first
got my system I decided to test it out and see how much DPS would slow
everything down.  I wish I had saved the exact timings, but a 45 minute ray-
trace took about 30 seconds less in single user mode (with no Window
Server running).
  What do you think it is about DPS that slows things down? You can't draw as
many polygons/minute as you could on an Amiga (unless you've got a
NeXTDimension), but it doesn't bring every application you try to run to a
crawl.

Aaron Harsh
hal@eecs.cs.pdx.edu