486 vs 040
Keir,
Although I doubt such exercises are worth the effort, you might
check back through Byte magazine about the time the 040 and 486 chips were
first coming out. They had an article comparing the two using benchmarks
aimed mainly at testing pure processor power without the infrastructure of
operating systems and language compilers. Though I don't recall the issue,
I'm sure you can find it by browsing through the library issues. As I
recall both chips were considered of nearly equal power with a slight edge
to the 040 under certain circumstances and, I believe, at a clock rate
somewhat slower than the 486. But check it out, don't quote me.