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From: akm@obelix.cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Mac Vs. Windows? (sorry)
Keywords: ROM questions
Message-ID: <1991May18.050842.5732@cs.uoregon.edu>
Date: 18 May 91 05:08:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.1991May18.050842.5732
References: <1991May17.170732.13608@macc.wisc.edu>
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Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Oregon
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In article <1991May17.170732.13608@macc.wisc.edu> dsals@vms.macc.wisc.edu (David Sals) writes:
>1)  Windows runs slower on a comparatively powerful machine (of
>	course, you can't really compare mac and ibm power, but the
>	windows environment is a software "emulation" shell, whereas
>    the mac environment is built into the hardware.  Of course it
>	is going to run faster on the mac.

A number of people have talked about how the fact that much of the
MacToolbox is in ROM makes it faster than Windows, where the code for
all the graphics resides in RAM. Does this really make a difference? I
have the following reasons for believing this doesn't make a
difference: 

1.	Many PC clones allow for shadow ram, which copies the ROM
	routines to RAM, which substantially speeds the machines up.

2.	The System distributed for the Mac contains patches to fix
	bugs in the ROM, so some Toolbox routines execute in RAM

3.	There are a couple of applications that exist in both Windows
	as well as PM versions (e.g. Word for PM and Word for
	Windows), and the PM versions are faster (InfoWorld reported
	on this a while back. This is done by running the two versions
	of the program on the same machine, so they are using the same
	ROM (to whatever extent the ROM is used at all...)
	
So, my question is: if the Mac is faster than a "comparable" pc in
execution, what is the reason? Is it ROM? (I don't think so for the
reasons listed above.) What other things can make a difference?

cheers,

kartik

-- 
Anant Kartik Mithal                                     akm@cs.uoregon.edu
Research Assistant, 					(503)346-4408 (msgs)
Department of Computer Science,                         (503)346-3989 (direct)
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1202