Need buying advice for 386 and Unix

[Flint Pellett]

jca at pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) writes:


>A 486/33 motherboard will yield about 14 to 15 MIPS.  But keep in mind the
>bottleneck going across the ISA bus.  A 64-bit processor running on a 16-bit
>bus.  Sort of reminds me of a traffic jam when a highway suddenly goes from 4
>lanes to 1 (which is the correct ratio).  Do NOT get a 486 unless you're going
>to go EISA or MCA.  It's a waste of CPU bus bandwidth if you don't.

You don't need EISA in order to justify a 486: If you need floating point,
and you are looking at a 33 MHz 386 plus a 33 MHz 387, you ought to look
at a 25 MHz 486 instead: it will run a lot faster and probably cost less,
because you don't have to spend the money for the 387.

On your "traffic jam" analogy: on what type of highway do you think you'll
be able to drive faster: one that is one-lane wide it's entire length, or
one that is 2 lanes wide half the time (when going through cities) and
1 lane wide the rest of the time?  Just because you can't afford to pay
for 2 lanes for the entire distance (486 & EISA) doesn't mean that you
can't get a lot of benefit from a partial, lower cost solution.
-- 
Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc.
1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, IL  61874     (217) 352-1165
uunet!gistdev!flint or flint at gistdev.gist.com