Re: Apple II benchmarks

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote:

>Roy and/or Janet Miller  <millers@inetnebr.com> wrote:
> 
>> Paul Schlyter wrote:
>> 
>>> That's because the 8088 didn't have hardware multiply/divide.  It was
>>> implemented in microcode, and one mul or div took some 100-150 cycles
>>> to execute on the 8088.  On the 80188 this had been cut down to about
>>> 30 cycles -- but you didn't compare the 6502 to the 80188, did you?
>> 
>> As stated above Paul, Byte magazine did the comparison in 1985, and they
>> were dealing with a product review for an 8086-2 based computer. That's
>> why there was no comparison to an 80186
> 
>Which means they were comparing to an 80x86 with no hardware multiply....

Interestingly, I had a PC Transporter card in my IIGS and I
found it slower doing almost all tasks than the IIGS (with
accelerator turned off).  The PC Transporter is a coprocessor
card that uses an NEC V30 processor, a clone of the 80186.
It had 640k of memory and a socket for an 8087 math
coprocessor.  I never populated this socket, but the PCT
was horribly slow even though its CPU clock speed was
turbo speed and the V30 was supposed to be faster than
the real 80186.

Now in 8-bit emulation mode, the IIGS should be equal to
an 8-bit "Apple II" clock for clock right (since in 8-bit mode
the 16-bit functions of the CPU are turned off)?  But the
IIGS' clock speed is faster just like the PC Transporter's
clock speed is faster than the real 80186.

To make the story short, I used an 8-bit unzipper (Angel)
and compared the IIGS to the PC Transporter in unzip
file speed.  Also, I compared the speed of converting a
JPEG file in both.  The IIGS won both tests AND the
PC Transporter was painfully slow running an early
version of the GeoWorks GUI while the IIGS ran GS/OS
much faster.

My conclusion:  sorry, the PC didn't get acceptable until
the '486 and didn't REALLY take off until the Pentium
(and competitors like the AMD K6 and Cyrix MII series)
came on the scene.  It wasn't until I saw the 200Mhz
models of these sixth generation processors come on
the scene did I really get excited about the PC.

>>> The 4.77 MHz PC did indeed not perform particularly well: its clock
>>> speed was slow,
>> 
>> but faster than most Z-80 computers (most as in the millions of
>> Kaypros, TRS-80 Models, 1, 3, 4, Osborne, and hordes of other CP/M
>> machines)
> 
>Slightly faster, yes, since the standard clock speed of CP/M computers
>at those days were 4 MHz.  Which of course means those 4 MHz Z80
>machines didn't perform very well either, particularly compared
>to today's standards... :-)

I am convinced now that we see history through our
own experiences.  After all, why is every time
someone mentions "Apple II"  you think of an
Apple II+ in CP/M mode while to me I think of a IIGS?
And why is it that every time someone mentions "PC"
I think of a PC Transporter card in a IIGS in Turbo XT
emulation (80186 compatible) and you think of a PC
with a math coprocessor chip?

By the way, while the PC Transporter was slow, I did
compare it to a stock IBM XT and yes, it was faster
than a stock XT.  After all, the PCT was a TURBO XT.
That's not saying much, however.
 
>>> and it still had an 8-bit external bus.  I remember
>>> quite well how my 6 MHz Z80 card in the Apple II often outperformed
>>> the 4.77 MHz PC, except on floating-point intensive code, where the
>>> 8087 in the PC did give a speed advantage the Apple II was unable to
>>> catch up on.
>> 
>> Of course that isn't a comparison between an Apple II and a PC, but
>> between the CP/M computer in the Apple and the PC.
> 
>Sorry, but it was still an Apple II: it used the Apple II's bus and
>memory, and *all* I/O operations were done using the 6502.  No standard
>CP/M disk format could be read -- all CP/M disks had to be in Apple II
>disk format.

Hmm.  Then, Paul, all your comparisons are invalid.  You
know why?  All you said about the PC = Apple II.  Why?
Because I can plug a PC Transporter into your Apple II+
and it would still be an Apple II but an Apple II using an
80186 compatible processor!  ;-)

Oh, an in the PCT, I/O operations except for video and
optionally drives are also done using the 6502, 65C02
or 65C816 depending on the Apple II model.  The PCT's
hard drive is the Apple II's hard drive if you had one.
The disk could be an Apple II disk drive if your MS-DOS
programs were in Apple II format OR you can connect
your Apple drive directly to the PCT and it would read
PC format disks.  The video was CGA, directly from
the PC although a video mixer allows both videos to
display on the IIGS.  On an 8-bit Apple II, the video goes
through the Apple II motherboard out the same
composite output as your Apple II video.
 
>> But take an Apple II that had a numeric coprocessor board installed
>> (and there were such available) and it might have blown the doors off
>> the Intel 8087 equipped machine too.
> 
>Sorry, but the Apple II didn't "blow the door off" the 4.77 MHz PC
>without coprocessor -- rather it was able to sometimes keep up with
>the PC.  Equipping the Apple II with some coprocessor would hardly
>"blow the door off" an 8087 equipped 4.77 MHz PC either, since you
>still had that 8-bit data bus, on the Apple II as on the 4.77 MHz PC.

I'm sorry, but this may be true if all you intend to do is
crunch numbers for a specific purpose (astronomy?)
but for normally application users, the Apple II was
very often faster.  I know this because I remember
being turned off by 4.77Mhz PC speed but found 1Mhz
Apple IIe quite acceptable.
 
>Also: the only coporcessors I ever saw for the Apple II did only
>single-precision FP arithmetic (4-byte IEEE format), and to me it was
>essential to have greater precision than that.  To me, the 5-byte FP
>format of Applesoft was barely enough, the 6-byte FP format of early
>versions of Turbo Pascal was OK, and the 8-byte IEEE double precision
>format is fine.  But the 4-byte IEEE single-precision format was just
>not enough for me - therefore I frowned at those coprocessors for the
>Apple II that I saw.

Maybe if you waited a year or two.  After that Mac
was released, Apple II coprocessor cards using the
68881 chip appeared.  These Motorolla based FP
cards had what you wanted.
 
>> I found it interesting that the spreadsheet test was floating point
>> math, and the Apple at one fifth the clock speed was crunching numbers
>> in only twice the time of the PC.  I wonder what spreadsheet was used?
>> Multiplan?
> 
>If it was an early spreadsheet, it may have been written in assembly
>language which had been machine translated from 8080 assembly to
>8086/8088 assembly.  Such programs were quite common in the early PC
>days: while it allowed a quick migration of software from CP/M to the
>PC, performance did indeed suffer.

Early PC programs were SO slow and that PCT is
constantly reminding me.  I am sure it has to do with
both hardware and software problems and the fact that
the IBM name was enough to sell the computers and
competitive speed was not really necessary.

For the Apple II, programmers have a history of doing
the best work they can.  Optimization is an obsessive
trait in the average Apple II programmer.  That's why
AppleWorks (the 8-bit version) has always been a very
quick program.

WordStar, WordPerfect, Lotus, Multiplan?  I shudder
to think of the speed on 4.77Mhz PCs.  But I remember
using 8-bit AppleWorks on a 1MB Apple IIe quite
fondly.

Thus, assuming you are right that CPU wise the
65C02 can only often keep up with the 4.77Mhz 8086.
Well, that is more than enough to make almost ALL
Apple IIe applications faster than almost ALL 4.77Mhz
PC applications BECAUSE of the better programmers
in the Apple II world and the better programming styles.
And that was what happened.

Not surprisingly, when AppleWorks was released, it
beat out Lotus 1-2-3, the top selling PC program, as
the top selling program across any platform in the
United States.  ;-)