Re: possible 560 newbie

[ross@math.hawaii.edu (David Ross)]

> 2.  Does the lack of a L2 cache hurt its performance severely?  I'll be
> doing a bit of Photoshop work and would like to know if I should wait
> until a more powerful 560 comes around (has one been announced? any
> insider gossip?).

The 560 graphics is relatively slow; this might be a function not only
of the graphics chip but also of the lack of cache.  (Wintune 95 reports
that my P133 Micron Transport is almost 3 times as fast as the 560 for 8
bit 800x600 graphics.)  Some smaller, cache-optimized software will
likely also run much faster with a cache.

However, these are all very fast machines; I alway find it amusing when
a machine's performance is criticized in a review because it was the
slowest of the machines under consideration, since it would almost
surely have been the fastest machine in a similar review a few months
earlier.  (On the other hand, program inertia seems to be increasing as
fast as CPU speed: MS Publisher 97 actually drags on this machine, and
Word 97 is noticeably less zippy than was WordStar on the 4Mhz Z80 CPM
machine I used to use 15 years ago.)

- David