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From: davidsen@steinmetz.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.m68k,comp.sys.intel
Subject: Re: Recent Motorola ad seen in Byte
Message-ID: <1374@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Apr-87 08:27:42 EST
Article-I.D.: steinmet.1374
Posted: Thu Apr  2 08:27:42 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Apr-87 02:23:14 EST
References: <362@sbcs.UUCP> <1466@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <580@plx.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Distribution: comp
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 31
Xref: utgpu comp.sys.m68k:294 comp.sys.intel:126

In article <580@plx.UUCP> ed@plx.UUCP (Ed Chaban) writes:
....
>> 
> Me too, I'm told that if you want to take advantage of the 386 performance,
> you have to use some DISGUSTINGLY EXPENSIVE  RAM. 

I have the PC Designs GV386 (16Mhz at 0ws). It uses a very small chunk
of static RAM (35ns) as cache, and the rest is relatively checp memory.
I put a 2-1/2 MB ramcard in using 120ns chips, $110 for the board,
$202.50 for the memory. That's $125/MB, rather reasonable. Running on
the 16 bit bus drops the speed by about 20%, when 1Mbit chips drop a
bit I'll put more on the motherboard. Still it runs about 3x a VAX,
which is acceptable for a PC.

The bottom line is that the base price with hard disk and display is
~$4k. You just can't get a 68020 box for that price (the new Apple
looks more like $7k for the same size box, and that's a slow 68020.
Intel is starting to ship the cache controller, so the price of cache
will come down by 4th quarter (I assume).
>
> The other thing to remember is that the Motorola parts are SHIPPING at
> 25Mhz.  A 25Mhz '020 blows the doors off a 16.? Mhz '386.

So does a Cray2... compare on equal price or clock speed, please. The
actual performance is in a ratio of about 25:16 for Sun 3/260 and GV386.

-- 
bill davidsen			sixhub \
      ihnp4!seismo!rochester!steinmetz ->  crdos1!davidsen
				chinet /
ARPA: davidsen%crdos1.uucp@ge-crd.ARPA (or davidsen@ge-crd.ARPA)