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From: brian@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Brian Hoffman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: 249 hours to generate Mandelbrot on my 286
Message-ID: <1991May2.224345.434@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Date: 2 May 91 22:43:45 GMT
Organization: Columbia University
Lines: 30

I can't believe that 30 hosers responded to your question about Fractint
and not a single one (as far as I can tell) got it right.

Your question was basically this:  why is fractint much faster on a 33-386
than on my 12-286.

The lame answer was this:  get a math coprocessor.

The real reason is found on the first page of the fractint documentation.
Fractint was written to be 386 specific.  The program uses the advanced
386 specific calls in a way that does very fast INTEGER MATH.  On a 286,the
program approximates the 386 functions, but it runs much slower.

In general, fractint runs faster on a 386 because it was written that way.
A math coprocessor will NOT help because fractint uses integer math.

However, it is possible to tell fractint to use a math coprocessor, and this
will indeed speed up calculations on your 286.  But this was not the source
of the discrepancy you noticed originally.

-brian

______



she's staring as the lights are curling off into the dark. and the fuel
tank's erupting underneath a rain of sparks. and the birds all leave the
tree down in the corner of the park. with his neck bent back on the top of
the seat, he looks so relaxed despite the heat.