Xref: utzoo comp.unix.microport:2225 comp.unix.xenix:4126
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: Any experience with Enix (Everex SysV for 386)?
Message-ID: <12779@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 9 Dec 88 21:47:25 GMT
References: <418@telly.UUCP> <11209@reed.UUCP> <3032@sugar.uu.net> <102@epsilon.UUCP> <7113@icdi10.uucp>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 32

In article <7113@icdi10.uucp> fr@icdi10.uucp (Fred Rump from home) writes:

| VP/ix is slow as a task. Yes. You really need a 20 or 25 Mhz box to look like
| an AT. And to run a bunch of DOS jobs is not the goods. It's really meant to
| be the occasional task to prevent Xenix from having to be taken down as
| before. But it works: Halleluja!

  I think this comment may give people the wrong impression. VP/ix pays
a penalty when updating the screen, without a doubt. Programs which do a
lot of writes to the screen, particularly those which bypass the BIOS,
will run a lot slower under VP/ix. However, programs just uning the CPU,
such as compiles, database lookup, and data analysis will run at full
speed. Programs which have both screen and CPU characteristics, such as
large spreadsheet recalc, will slow in proportion to the screen usage.

  Taking this as a premise, a few measurements of CPU performance under
VP/ix and raw DOS will show (by my measurements, anyway) that this
assumption is correct. Disk i/o is may be slightly slower or faster
depending on the buffer sizes, etc. The reason that BIOS driven screen
writes are affected less than direct writes is that (a) they are slower
to start with, and (b) the VP/ix BIOS is no worse than the DOS BIOS.

  I ran some CPU tests, from Dhrystone to the Microway benchmark (and of
course Norton SI) and they seem to reflect the same performance in DOS
and VP/ix, within the limits of the measurements.

  I actually find that the only thing which is really obnoxious under
VP/ix is games. Does anyone else like PCPOOL?
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me