On Mon, 26 Aug 1996, Chris G Demetriou wrote:

> > > I ordered a couple of those machines, and also got 2 16MB simms for
> > Are the sims the same kind (72 pin with/wo parity) which are readily 
> > available for the PC market?
> 
> yes.
Great!

> > > It's an OK deal, i'd say.  They're not incredibly speedy machines.
> > > I'd guess that an intel box would beat them in terms of
> > > price/performance, but i can't say for sure.
> > 
> > The 166MZ Pentium Pro chip is about $600 on the net.
> > The 166MZ Pentium chip is about $800.  (I think Intel is trying to get
> > people on to the Pentium Pro).
> > 
> > [ ... ]
> >
> > Is it possible that the 166MHZ Alpha perform at 69 SPECint92 (97 * 166/233)
> > while the 100MHZ regular Pentium performs at 138 SPECint92 (_Twice_ the 
> > speed?)
> 
> In a nutshell, yes.
Bummer :-{
> 
> (0) processor cycle time and performance are not necessarily related.
Granted - RISC vs CISC
> 
> (1) from what I understand, the 21066 apparently (due to design flaws)
>     has some serious performance limitations, but i don't know
>     exactly what they are.
Too bad.
> 
> (2) the Multia/UDB/whatever typically only has 256k of cache.  From
>     all indications i've seen, this is too small a cache for good
>     performance on an Alpha.  Note that most of DEC's 21064-generation
>     workstations ship with 512k cache, and the rest ship with a 2M or
>     larger cache...  
With 64bit word and RISC arch 256k would not be as effective when compared
to a 32bit word CISC.
> 
> 
> 
> Chris

Wish this Alpha was close to performance of the Pentium Pro.  For $800 to
get a case, good graphics card, SCSI controler (even though the disk is 
small), eithernet, etc. it looks like a great deal - except if the
processor is going to be at the 50MZ Pentium speed.

I'll have to think about this some more.

johnh...