MS-DOS

[Don Buchholz]

In article <5700 at awdprime.UUCP> jerry at heyman.austin.ibm.com (Jerry Heyman) writes:
>In article <1991Mar1.155715.16544 at Think.COM> unger at think.com (Leo Unger) writes:
>>I have some questions regarding MS-DOS and AIX:
>> ...[stuff deleted]...
>
>>What kind of performance can be expected?
>
>Depends on what the application is.  If its a heavy duty number cruncher, then
>the performance has been quoted at a 16Mhz 80386 (read in one of the trade
>magazines).  If your application is VGA, then the performance is along the
>lines of a 12Mhz 80286.  The difference is that all the display hardware that
>you get when you buy a VGA card is being emulated in software.
>
I don't have any hard numbers for comparision, but here's a subjective
comparision.  When using the Surfer (Golden Software, Golden, CO)
contouring package under pcsim the gridding/contouring times suggested
(a) an XT with 8087  (b) a 16MHz 80386 without an 80387.  Graphics are
slow.  The 3D color graphics cards seem to be slower than the normal 8-bit
color cards.  

Also, WordPerfect is noticeably slower under pcsim than it is on a
10MHz, 1 wait-state, 80286 (w/ 80287) machine.

BTW, a 3D graphics subsytem takes two slots, the ethernet card needs
one, and the SCSI controller needs one -- and the model 320 is FULL.  

Don Buchholz                   
Oregon Graduate Institute     
buchholz at ese3.ese.ogi.edu