Doom3 Benchmarks out!

M

Michael W. Ryder

Highlandish said:
both your pc's had a math coprocessor in them, that's why they ran better.
the sx models were severely hampered with out one

386s did not come with a math coprocessor, it was a very expensive add
on, if your motherboard supported it at all.
 
M

McGrandpa

Tony said:
you would have been really really! jealous of my DX4/100 then :)

--
Tony DiMarzio
(e-mail address removed)
(e-mail address removed)
message

I remember those days very well :) I finally did get a 486 DX4/100,
and only a couple months later the Pentium motherboards seemed to pop up
everywhere at low cost, so I skipped the '2 digit midgets' and got a
P-233 and 2ea 64 meg dimms! Been upgrading furiously ever since! :p
McG.
 
H

Highlandish

Quoth The Raven "Michael W. Ryder said:
386s did not come with a math coprocessor, it was a very expensive add
on, if your motherboard supported it at all.

uhuh, I knew that, I guess you didn't catch the point that his was a 386DX,
the sx models meant no math co-processor, while the dx models did.
 
R

RayO

Highlandish said:
Quoth The Raven "Michael W. Ryder" <mwryder@_worldnet.att.net> in
E%[email protected]

uhuh, I knew that, I guess you didn't catch the point that his was a 386DX,
the sx models meant no math co-processor, while the dx models did.

No they didn't, the math co-processor was extra even in the i386DX. You're
confusing 386 with 486. I had added a math co-processor though in my 386,
very few people did.


RayO
 
K

killermike

Highlandish wrote:

both your pc's had a math coprocessor in them, that's why they ran better.
the sx models were severely hampered with out one

If I am remembering this correctly:
386SX was a cut down version of the 386 with some of the data pathways
cut in half. 386DX was the full 32bit 386 chip. The 387 co processor was
an add on for the 386DX/SX.

On the 486, DX meant 'with co processor' and and 486SX had no co
processor. You could buy a 487 co processor to compliment the 486sx.

Actually, DooM (or Duke) took no advantage of a maths co processor.
Quake was the first ID game to do this.

I seem to remember that having PCI graphics rather than ISA made the
difference between jerky and ultrasmooth on the 486/66. Probably, VLB
would have been similar to PCI in performance.
--
***My real address is m/ike at u/nmusic d/ot co dot u/k (removing /s)
np:
http://www.unmusic.co.uk
http://www.unmusic.co.uk/Top_50_Films.html - favorite films
http://www.unmusic.co.uk/amh-s.html - alt.music.home-studio
 
S

Slash

No they didn't, the math co-processor was extra even in the i386DX. You're
confusing 386 with 486. I had added a math co-processor though in my 386,
very few people did.


RayO

Yep. The DX designation just meant 32 bit vs 16 bit addressing and
such, no bearing on still having to plug in a 387 coprocessor chip.

-Slash
 
R

RayO

killermike said:
Highlandish wrote:



If I am remembering this correctly:
386SX was a cut down version of the 386 with some of the data pathways
cut in half. 386DX was the full 32bit 386 chip. The 387 co processor was
an add on for the 386DX/SX.

On the 486, DX meant 'with co processor' and and 486SX had no co
processor. You could buy a 487 co processor to compliment the 486sx.

Actually, DooM (or Duke) took no advantage of a maths co processor.
Quake was the first ID game to do this.

I seem to remember that having PCI graphics rather than ISA made the
difference between jerky and ultrasmooth on the 486/66. Probably, VLB
would have been similar to PCI in performance.


There is one thing about the 387 math-chip that not many people
knew. It didn't just speed up floating-point math, but also
integer division and multiplication, as well as long integer math of any sort.
So just about any software that did a lot of math, including integral math,
benefited from it.

RayO
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top