More memory vs 80387 (A summary)

[Gilbert Chan]

I'm forwarding the following article for a friend, PLEASE send all
your responses/flames to him at bchan at ddn-eur.ddn.mil,
 
Thank you
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I posted an inquiry on "more memory vs an 80387" to run X a few days ago. 
I guess I didn't make myself clear; The correct query should have been
"16 Megs of RAM vs 8 Megs + 80387".
 
Well that hardly matters. I received many replies. (I stopped counting after 
10.) The consenses were unanimous. Get the MEMORY!  Most netters agreed 
the math chip would help the arc drawing but not much more under X. One
netter even said the 80387 was overrated. Humm...I am going to take an 
exception to the last statement. My old beast (4.77 Mhz) has a 8087. I ran
some benchmarks (Matlabs) on it against my 33-386 w/64K cache (with 
8087 emulation). To my surprises, the old beast actually ran actually faster 
than the 386 in most tests. So while the 80387 may not be that useful under
X, it does has its place. 
       
The list of names was simply too long. Rather to thank everyone and my wife
individually; I will express my gratitude here. "Thank you all". 
 
Net is great, isn't it?
 
Regards,
 
Brian Chan.
Stuttgart, West Germany.
email: bchan at ddn-eur.dec.mil