CompuServe Messages

Jeff, the pentium 90 is in fact faster than the ppc or dec alpha or mips 4400 when you run a fair comparision. If you run micrografix Picture Publisher NT, which is both a 32 bit NT program and pentium compiled , there is a 2 fold increase in speed over the same program in 16 bit 386 code on windows on the pen 90. Many periodicals have done this test against ppc alpha and mips including pc mag, Publish mag, and the latest Windows Mag. The pentium has gotten a bad rap because it has been tested using 16 bit os- windows- and 16 bit software that is not pentium specific. Put Nt- multithreaded- and dual pen 90's on 32 bit pentium compiled software, and there is nothing on the planet that touches its speed. The ppc's have a fast processor, but the 601 suffers from extremely poor surrounding architecture like slow harddisk systems, video bottlenecks, and poor unoptimized code. Keep in mind, when motorola quotes these ppc cpu figures, the cpu tests are not done with a mac ppc, but rather are done on a BENCH with equipment measuring the cpu directly, using short repetitive floating strings. Put the 601 or 604 in a mac, with all the poor architecture and a non multi tasking non multuthreaded os that is only 30% compiled for the ppc, and the 601\604 slow down horribly, just ask any Motorola engineer. Nt daytona is here now- with full open GL support, video cards with open GL 64bit video coprocessors pumping over 1, 500,000 shaded polygons a sec, a scsi Barracuda fast-wide drive with a 64 bit disk access support 1 meg of l2 cache – around 2 pentium 100 processors with the new 15 ns e dram RAM , and you have a desktop that approaches supercomputer performance for under $7000. Intel is an OPEN architecture. cameron