🚀 go-pugleaf

<snip>

>ahh, yes. but why buy a brand new PPro computer if you are going to hold it
>down to 16 bit apps? yes, the PPro runs 16 bit apps about 20% slower than
>a P5 at the same speed.

<snip>

Above is simply not true. Albiet the first Pro's to hit the market &
subsequently get reviewed had a problem\bottleneck in the stepping but this has
long been worked through. Also the newer shipsets are faster in this area. The
natoma that Dell & Micron ship will offer comprable or BETTER performance
running 16bit apps. Then there is the 323 bit OS issue. This is where th Pro
shines. So one may argue that the cost to performance ratio is not there. But to
say it is slower is, again not true. It is the fastest offering Intels has put
out to date PERIOD. You can (as more people take delivery & mags reviews start
to trickle out) now at this momment see data supporting this in the newsgroups
ect.... you might find this post of interest. It is based on a machine he has
TAKEN DELIVERY of.  As for me, I have a Pro (Micron) on order. Once I recieve it
I can post scores. ***scores below****


I had a similar problem before I purchased my Dimension Pro200n. I originally
planned on purchasing a P166s with 32MB of RAM, but after a little bit of
thinking and doing some research on the Pros, I decided to go with the Pro.
There really isn't a large premium and the Dell Pro200n is really fast.

The new Pros are based on the Natoma motherboard that fixes the PCI bug and 
uses EDO/ECC memory.

Subjectively, the machine is really, really fast. My old machine was a Micron
Pentium-90 (from 1994) with 24MB RAM with a #9 GXE64 Pro video card. 

Anyway, here are some stats that I compiled when I benchmarked my machine:
--

**Please read notes first**

Winbench 96
===========
			XPS Pro 200n	Top P150/166 Scores	Dell XPS P166s
			============	===================	==============
CPUMark 16	    :	352		335			333
CPUMark 32	    :	540		345			335	
Disk WinMark 96	    :	1040		1280			1160
Graphics WinMark 96 :	27.9		36.3 (#9 Imagine)	34.5 (#9 Imagine)

Wintune 95
==========
Dhrystone	    :	419 MIPS
Whetstone           :	112 MFLOPS


Notes:
(1) My Dell Dimension XPS Pro200n has 40MB RAM, 8x NEC CD-ROM,
    2.5GB hard drive, #9 771 Motion 2MB/VRAM running Windows 95.
    This machine has an Intel Natoma 440FX motherboard that uses
    EDO RAM.
(2) Scores for 150/166 Pentiums are INDIVIDUAL top scores from 
    PC Mag (June 25, 1996)
(3) Test was conducted at 1024x768, 8 bit color @ 75Hz.
(4) Top Disk Winmark was for a SCSI hard drive system.
(5) Top Graphics Winmark was for a #9 Imagine 128 S.2. I chose not
    to purchase this card because of slow DOS speed for games.

--

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Ben