#really bad feeling
24 messages in this thread
> In raw terms there may be a big difference but if you compare a decently
> designed machine against a badly designed one you get some real suprises.
> In some tests I saw there were amazing speed differences between similarly
> clocked machines (all to do with motherboard design really).
Very true. Board quality is a major factor, but I took that into account.
When Moto, Intel, and others give a processor speed spec, they assume a "great"
board. ie, high speed RAM, good cache, good bus, etc. The numbers Moto
released for the '060 were slightly lower than those for the Pentium at the
same clock. Real world systems tend to get about 70% of what the published
spec is because nobody can afford these "dream" system. The Pentiums can't
afford it, but neither can the '060 systems.
Of course an _excellent_ '060 at 66Mhz might give a poorly built 120Mhz Pentium
a run for the money, but it would take a really _horrible_ design on that
Pentium to do it. Most name brand Pentium boards are fairly good designs and
the new 120Mhz machines are "showboat" designs to compete with each other.
They are using the new burst RAM etc.
Besides, a low volume '060 design will have much higher costs to achieve the
same quality design. ie, the same speed RAM will cost more in a low volume
design. For an '060 to get the same RAM bandwidth as a Pentium gets for free
it will have to use either twice as fast RAM ($$$$), or interleave which helps
but still raises board costs due to overhead.
If you were running a GUI, the user may not notice because how much faster can
a menu appear? But running a _computational_ task, I can assure you the
120Mhz Pentium will _SMOKE_ the 66Mhz '060. The '060 has a crippled bus of
only 32 bits, and has a smaller cache. The Pentium has twice the bandwidth to
RAM, _and_ has a larger cache to make the code run quick, even if the mother
board RAM is slow.
The worst part is that Moto is not being agressive with the '060s future. They
are not even shipping 66Mhz '060's much less 80, 100, or 120Mhz ones. Intel is
shipping these speeds today, and will be shipping 133 and 150Mhz ones by years
end. It's hard to compete against that. The Pentium has a huge amount of
baggage but Intel is spending _BILLIONS_ to brute force it along.
***BIG HUGE NOTICE***
I am _not_ a Pentium fan, I'm just pointing out the '060 is too little, too
late, too hot, too expensive. And that Moto has _ZERO_ desktop plans for it.
PowerPC is their future and they know it. If you want to compete with the
120Mhz Pentium or entry level P6 in the consumer desktop market, the only chip
with a chance is the PPC604. It's fast, and it's half the price per SPECmark
against the Pentium.
Oh well…..
—– Andrew
The pentium MAY be better than an 060 at raw processing power. But at some time
you have to put it into a real application. Even with a good motherboard design
you still have to put a pentium onto an IBM-PC compatible motherboard, and the
pentium still has to go through hoops with it's instruction set. The 68000 is
better code than 8086, needing more instructions on the 8086 than the 68000. It
might be quicker for a pentium to load a value into a reqister, but with the
restricted number of registers you have to keep pushing and poping them off the
stack. Windows is slower than AmigaOS. Always was always will be. NT is even
more of a hog. Without sounding as if I am 'slagging' the PC (which I wish I
could do without everyone else in the world having a go at me :-)). The only
thing the PC is good for is software availability and being able to buy
complete hardware solutions. If the Amiga had ever been sold the same way as
the PC, and if IBM hadn't been the ones who made the PC (they had a good
reputation then) we would all be using Amigas now.
The Amiga in my view is better than the PC because it can do what I want at a
lower cost, it is also undeniably technically better (well maybe up until the
a3000, the a4000 was a pig).
People don't buy the best they buy what they think is the best which is VERY
different. If you don't know about something you tend to follow the ideas of
others you think that do. What you tend to find is that all these people think
the same and don't want everyone else to know they haven't a clue about
computers. Amiga was sold to people that wanted a computer. PC was sold to
people that wanted to use a computer. Anyway I am rambling, I cannot afford an
060 AAA machine anyway so maybe it's a good thing there aren't any about.
*** DISCLAIMER ***
I am not a PC fan, but I do serious computer work for a living and keep up with
PC through high end workstations. Do not take the below as "supporting" a PC!
<grin>
> The pentium MAY be better than an 060 at raw processing power. But at some
> time you have to put it into a real application. Even with a good motherboard
> design you still have to put a pentium onto an IBM-PC compatible
motherboard,
> and the pentium still has to go through hoops with it's instruction set.
IBM motherboards are getting pretty nice now. No more hardware 640K
restrictions, etc. They also have the benefit of 1000:1 ratio against the
Amiga in volume so they can get huge discounts on parts. Do not confuse a
"solid" modern PC with the PC's which were out when the Amiga was at it's peak.
Times have changed. These machines have high speed caches, wide memory buses,
accelerated video, etc.
> The 68000 is better code than 8086, needing more instructions on the 8086
than
> the 68000. It might be quicker for a pentium to load a value into a reqister,
> but with the restricted number of registers you have to keep pushing and
> poping them off the stack.
Very true. This is why the PowerPC is better than the '060, because it has
twice the number of registers again, and they are ALL general purpose, unlike
the '060 where you have an 8/8 split.
On the other hand, the Pentium has a huge amount of logic thrown at it to help
brute force make up for this lack of registers. Instructions can sometimes be
shorter (often 1 byte vs 2 for the '060), and the external bus is 64 bits vs 32
bits. This means when both CPU's have a cache miss, which is often, the
Pentium can get twice as much data per cycle as the '060. This is a MAJOR
factor.
Also, the P6 has a good compromise on the limited number of registers. They do
what the PowerPC does and "Register rename". Tprogramer only sees a few
register but there are really many more and the hardware will shuffle between
them to allow more instructions to execute in parallel that normally could not
because they would fight over the same registers.
Going the other way, the Pentium can't execute an FP and integer instruction in
the same cycle, while the '060 can.
> Windows is slower than AmigaOS. Always was always will be. NT is even more of
> a hog.
Windows is a pig. They are throwing faster and faster CPU's at it. As they
get quicker Windows gets quicker. This shows no sign of ever slowing. Amiga
DOS, while wonderful, is not ending up on faster CPUs' so it stagnates. The
'060 is the end of the road. Moto is just not pushing it. So no matter how
"clean" it is, Windows will eventually brute force it's way past it in time.
Not fair to compare to NT. NT does MUCH more than Amiga DOS does. ie, full
memory protection, multi-user security, etc. It's a pig, but it's core
archetecture is rather nice.
Oh well. Could be worse, could be raining.
—- Andrew Carol
Windows is a very big pig. We got the win95 preview today, and it does look
alot better (oh well). It's starting to get harder to defend the Amiga position
all of the time.
Windows 95 has alot of hype associated with it, including the no more DOS
thing. But it is all a lie. You still have a version of MSDOS installed on your
computer for compatibility with device drivers that don't exist in 32 bit form.
Just makes you wish that it had all gone very differently.
As an aside, there are no decent PowerPC operating systems either. MacOS is not
pre-emptive and the next version (according to a book I read in a shop, good
shop that was) won't have full memory protection
Only MacOS will be protected (like kickstart being in ROM I suppose 🙂 ).
Processor rating 1) PowerPC
2) 68000
3) 6502
4) 8086
I do not like PC's never have never will but they do the job (sometimes).
I just wish that all PC owners would shut up. They swagger about as if they own
the place. It's as if SCSI/IDE/RS232/centronics devices were invented only for
them (oh add PCMCIA as well).
I just wish I could get an 040 or 060 for my Amiga1200, I will have to make do
with a 030/50 I suppose.
Phill
Phil,
Windows NT for PowerPC is fully pre-emptive. And runs great. 🙂
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
"Windows NT for PowerPC is fully pre-emptive. And runs great. :-)"
Same for OS/2 on the PowerPC.
🙂
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2
I didn't know that OS/2 for the PowerPC was released, or are you running a
beta?
Phill
"I didn't know that OS/2 for the PowerPC was released, or are you running a
beta?"
No to both.
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2
"Windows NT for PowerPC is fully pre-emptive. And runs great. :-)"
IF you can afford it 🙂
Out of interest, how quick is it compared to Windows NT for intel?
Phill
Phil,
I'm not at liberty to discuss that particular aspect of things, at least not
quite yet. You should know about midsummer if all goes well, though.
I can say that generally, the PPC 604 is a very, very fast CPU. 🙂
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
I want one 🙂
Forgive me for not knowing the chip numbers off by heart, but what spec is the
PowerPC 604?
Phill
Spec – Specmark, you mean? <looking veeery dumb>
Heck, I dunno! We don't use benchmarks on the various CPUs… what we do
instead is in WinImages, our PC product, there is a "chronograph" function
which you can turn on and which will time, exclusive of display time (which can
vary widely based on your gfx hardware, since Windows is 100% retargetable),
any function or series of functions (in the timeline) in the program down to
hundredths of a second. When we want to see how fast something is (or isn't) we
just run a series of ops in WinImages on both machines and read the numbers.
That gives us an honest, relative feel for the _machines_, rather than the
CPUs, and we like that. I haven't even felt curious about benchmarks since we
put that in.
Sorry! <grin>
The 604 is very fast. :)))
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
What 604 machine and OS are you running?
Mr. Zombie
Paul,
> What 604 machine and OS are you running?
We're running Windows NT. As for what machine, I can't say at this time.
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Actually, you don't have to put the Pentium in an IBM compatible
motherboard. However if you didn't, you would not be comaptible with
anything currently being produced, either OS or software.
At which point you would face the damn near impossible task of marketing a
brand new computer/operating system, and trying to line up developers for
it.
If you indeed managed to build this new comptuer, with this new great OS,
and had some applications at launch time…. You know what would happen?
People would ask, where is Windows, or at least do you have Word Perfect,
do you have Lotus, what no Excel? And that would be the beginning of the
end of your new computer company.
The window (pardon the pun), is essentially closed of for new architecture
and new operating systems in the small business/home maket. If you can't
run some of what is already out there, you are not going to have much of a
chance. (If any…)
You have pretty much always been able to run PC software on an Amiga but no-one
was really interested 🙁
Pentium & p6 are crippled by Intel's bad design many years ago. p7 may be ok as
long as it doesn't run 8086 code. But when that happens then intel will be in
the same boat as everyone else.
Whatever happens the PC will rule for a long time to come 🙁
Phill
Actually, the way I've heard it, the P7 may or may not be vliw, if you can
believe that. Sounds like they're developing in two different directions to
hedge their bets.
Mr. Zombie
Maybe the P7 will be vliws or "Very Long Instruction Words Sometimes" 🙂
Until it ships you shouldn't believe a word they say. I am not sure yet whether
Pentium 120's are in full scale production yet. The test quantities were higher
densities (I forget the microns). They cannot go to full production until they
sort the heat problems out (this may or may not of course be true, I just read
it 🙂 ).
Phill
<G> True enough. I think the vliw scheme I read about is probably too risky
for Intel to commit to, but who knows?
Mr. Zombie
vliw is very riscy :), what about having a 64mb long instruction word. That way
any program could be executed in one clock cycle 🙂
Phill
I think the reason that few were really interested in running PC software
on the Amiga, was because the average Amiga buyer didn't have PC
interests. So the PC capability didn't sell Amigas to any but those who
needed some PC capability.
If the same is true with the Mac, then it is mainly Mac users who need PC
access that will be getting the dos cards. If so, it will not really
bring new users to the Mac, but rather only slow down the exodus for a
time, with essentially the same results as the Amiga.
>>If the Amiga had ever been sold the same way as the PC, and if IBM hadn't
been the ones who made the PC (they had a good reputation then) we would all be
using Amigas now.<<
Exactly.
Bart Van Bockstaele at 100574.2352@compuserve.com
… On AutoPilot and Amiga all the way from Belgium …