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- Path: sparky!uunet!gumby!destroyer!cs.ubc.ca!unixg.ubc.ca!buckland
- From: buckland@ucs.ubc.ca (Tony Buckland)
- Newsgroups: comp.misc
- Subject: How significant is clock speed anyway?
- Date: 10 Nov 1992 17:48:27 GMT
- Organization: University Computing Services, UBC, Canada
- Lines: 12
- Message-ID: <1doslbINNei4@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: swiss.ucs.ubc.ca
-
- Finally got a chance to try out the 486SX model PS/1 yesterday.
- I was suitably impressed with the speed on a few tests of
- real-slow-on-a-286 things, but I still have this nagging thing
- about the specs in my mind. This model is rated at only 20 MHz.
- Virtually every 486SX in North America is 25 MHz; why did IBM
- select the slower speed, and how significant is clock speed
- anyway? Is it likely that IBM made a very poor choice somewhere
- else in the architecture, and had to run 20% slower to compensate?
- Or is it instead possible that the slower clock speed means
- relatively little in the overall environment? For that matter,
- with so many 386DX 33's, what makes even a 486SX 25 an
- improvement?
-