🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4reioj$1ss@news.acns.nwu.edu>, Geoffrey Gass <glg@nwu.edu> wrote:
>If you're buying now, why would you not go for the PPro.  It will remain 
>top of the line for a least a few more months (until a PPro >200 is 
>released), and as more and more apps are rewritten in 32-bit code, this 
>machine will gain utility as opposed to the Pentium which will remain the 
>same.
>
>Geoff Gass
>glg@nwu.edu

One thing anyone contemplating a Pentium Pro should watch for: make sure
you don't get one of the old 82450 motherboards.  Due to a bug in A2
and earlier steppings of the chipset, intel disabled write posting on
the PCI bus.  This reduces performance to about the level of a P133
(sometimes much better or much worse, depending on the app.) Intel
says that this only matters on network servers, of course.  I guess
they never imagined that anyone would plug a PCI video card into one of
these things.  But I digress.

If you get a system that supports EDO RAM, you have a newer motherboard
and no problem.  Later revisions of the 82450 (which doesn't support EDO)
are fixed, but I think most of the mail-order vendors still sell only
the old broken ones (Gateway for sure, Dell until recently, others
I dunno).

   - Jeff Petkau (jpet@eskimo.com)
     My opinions are not my own, but those of a three-headed rat who
     is telling me what to type.