Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!samsung!umich!sharkey!rjf001!mudos!mju From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware Subject: Re: How much for a 487SX?!! Message-ID: Date: 24 Apr 91 01:40:04 GMT References: <13342.28130474@ecs.umass.edu> Organization: The Programmer's Pit Stop, +1 313 665 2832 Lines: 30 daly@ecs.umass.edu (Bryon Daly, ECE dept, UMass, Amherst) writes: > Who would buy a White Elephant like a 486SX? The margin between 486's and > 386's is disappearing rapidly as it is, and someone would have to be brain de Intel is targeting the 486SX at people who would otherwise buy a 386 machine. A lot of people have no use for the built-in FPU in the 486DX, since their applications do little or no floating-point math. (Remember that the FPU only helps out with floating-point stuff or complex math like trigonometry; the CPU still does integer math itself.) A 486SX will be MUCH faster than a 386DX running at the same clock speed, since the 486SX has an instruction prefetch cache, and a lot of the instructions have been speeded up (in terms of clock cycles). I know that if I had the choice between a 386DX and a 486SX machine, I'd take the 486SX machine any day. I don't think Intel expects to sell many 487SX coprocessors -- if you need a FPU, you buy the 486DX. Hmm...Since the WSJ article says that the 487SX will supposedly be just a slightly-modified 486DX and will "take over all the functionality" of the existing 486SX, and since the 486SX will be a DX with the FPU circuits disabled, what's to prevent you from pulling your 486SX and just replacing it with a 486DX? Since the 487SX is more expensive than the 486DX, there seems to be no reason why ANYBODY would buy a 487SX. -- Marc Unangst | mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | "Bus error: passengers dumped" ...!hela!mudos!mju |