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Am386DX-40 vs AM386SX-40

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First post, by clueless1

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I noted in Phil's VGA Benchmark charts that the DX appears to be significantly faster than the SX at the same clock speeds. Is this primarily due to the 32 vs 16 bit data bus, 4 vs 2 byte prefetch, or both? I'm not at all familiar with these processors other than what I've read up on them online. I've only ever owned an Intel 386SX-20 (my first PC) and quickly upgraded to a 486, so my experience with the 386 is very minimal.

Would one expect a similar difference in performance between an Intel 386SX-33 and 386DX-33? In other words, do they share the same 32 vs 16 bit data bus and 4 vs 2 byte prefetch differences?

What is the relationship between SX, DX, and a math co-processor? From what I've gathered, at least for a 386, DX does not equal math co-processor--you could have a math co-processor with either an SX or DX? Is that accurate?

Thanks!

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Reply 1 of 2, by PhilsComputerLab

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clueless1 wrote:

you could have a math co-processor with either an SX or DX? Is that accurate?

Thanks!

Yup. It's the with the 486 DX, that the co-processor was included. But on the 386 it wasn't and is an upgrade option.

And yea, the SX should always be behind the DX at the same clock speed because of the differences in bus width.

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Reply 2 of 2, by jesolo

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Apart from the differences in the external bus between the 386SX and 386DX chips, the latter also (in most cases) employed external cache on the motherboard (which also improved performance).
External cache was practically non existent on 386SX motherboards.