tokyoracer wrote:Norton Commander wrote:tokyoracer wrote:A few months ago or so, I got hold of an Amstrad Mega-PC and see there's a socket for a Co-Processor (FPU?). After some google'ing I discoverd what I am actually after is a Intel i387 Co-Processor (preferbly at 25Mhz).
I'm curious as to why you would want one as well..Unless you have an application that specifically requires or makes use of it (Lotus 1-2-3, CAD, and Borland products) it will pretty do nothing but occupy space on your motherboard.
Anyone remember if there were any games that used i387?
Well it just could do with that little more oomph but i'm very limited with what I can do with it. A Co Pro. is just one of the things I can add even if it does'nt get used often. Though I too would like to know when it gets used particularly in gameplay. I know Doom uses it but that's made for 486's really.
In your case it's not worth investing in an i387. You will not see any 'ooomph' whatsoever in any games or applications. Even if your CPU starts getting bogged down with heavy processing the i387 will lie dormant. It is there for Floating Point calculations, of which few applications made use of in that era. You will see no speed increase, you will not see smoother multi-tasking, you will not see faster loading times, less disk swapping, etc.
Think in terms of some Voodoo cards...they were add-on cards in the infancy of 3d accelertation. Most games did software 3d rendering so the dumb frame buffer cards were sufficient. Only if a game was written specifically to use hardware 3d would your Voodoo card come to life, otherwise it just sat there, offering no 2d acceleration or noticeable boost in performance.
Same thing with i387 - unless an application is written specifically to utilize it there will no benefit in performance. I know because I had one. I was a noob and thought that adding a co-processor would boost my 386DX-33. I would have had the same boost if I had taped a piece of cardboard in the co-processor socket.
It's your prerogative if you decide you still want one just don't expect anything noticeable in performance.