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From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: NeXT Press Release
Message-ID: <4c9Go-jt1@cs.psu.edu>
Date: 19 Apr 91 18:25:42 GMT
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In-Reply-To: greg@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu's message of 19 Apr 91 14:03:30 GMT
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In article <47471@ut-emx.uucp> greg@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Greg Harp) writes:

   I thought you said you were a NeXT developer...  The NeXTStep _I_ saw and
   used (YES, version 2.0 on an 040 box) _was_ sluggish.  Sure you have a NeXT
   there? ;-)

I never said that I was a developer!!  And I use NeXT quite a bit.

   Certainly if you're not doing anything except playing with the GUI it's
   bearable.  If you start doing _anything_ it slows down to much slower than
   any other Unix box it's supposed to be comparable to.  For example, the
   SPARC 1+ feels at least twice as fast.  The SPARC 1 (more equal in CPU
   power) feels about 1.5 times as fast.

The NeXT is comparable to a SPARC 1+ is raw CPU performance.

   BTW, my comparison is based on machines with 8MB of RAM in each case.  Each
   of them swapped some, but the NeXT swapped a great deal more than the Suns.
   They were all running similar programs in a similar configuration.

I thought Sun shipped their SparcStations with 16megs of memory.

   Here's a project:  Run some of those little graphic demos that come with
   the NeXT (at least the demo version at our microcenter).  Now, make sure
   you're not running anything else and you're only running one at a time so
   that you're not swapping like crazy.  NOW, compare them to similar demos
   that came out in early '86 on the Amiga.  The NeXT can't draw triangles (or
   whatever the particular demo is) as fast as a 68K with a blitter.  NOW try
   and tell me DP isn't sluggish.  I've seen X demos get a lot better response.

The NeXT isn't that bad.  Try running the Saturn demo, BoinkOut, and
BreakApp concurrently.  I don't have the demos that came with the 86
Amiga, so I can't compare.  Although, I wouldn't be surprised if the
Amiga was a better animation machine.  If games are what you want, the
A500 is definitely the way to go.  It's much cheaper than the NeXT too.
Just don't try to run Unix on it.

-Mike