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From: mariusk@Lise.Unit.NO (Marius Kjeldahl)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Mac Vs. Windows? (sorry)
Keywords: ROM questions
Message-ID: <1991May18.130215.10867@ugle.unit.no>
Date: 18 May 91 13:02:15 GMT
References: <1991May17.170732.13608@macc.wisc.edu> <1991May18.050842.5732@cs.uoregon.edu>
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Reply-To: mariusk@Lise.Unit.NO (Marius Kjeldahl)
Organization: Norwegian Institute of Technology
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In article <1991May18.050842.5732@cs.uoregon.edu>, akm@obelix.cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal) writes:
|> 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

1. Usually RAM is faster than ROM, thats why they incorporate things like 
shadowram and so on.

2. That is one of the drawbacks with the operatingsystem in ROM - you'll usually
need hardware to perform the upgrade. This kind of solution you are mentioning
does not sound healthy.

3. This is difficult to measure..

Generally: Applications across hardware platform usually contains small, but
quite a lot of different features so it is not always rights to test against
time only. Anyway the actual speed of an application varies with what kind of
hardware it is being run on. The critical points are the usual microprosessor
type (speed, fpu's and so on), speed of RAM (and ROM if used), speed of
harddisk and so on. But often _more_ important is the way that the application
has been written! Well, I want try to judge what is more fair to judge by, but
just wanted to say there are many ways to perform speed tests. Usually this
speed is not so critical (often in terms of seconds), but ofcourse there are
applications where speed is the only essential factor.. Well, probably did not
make you a lot wiser, just keep these things in mind...