feipoa wrote:Perhaps so, unless the goal is to see how much abuse a socket 3 platform system can take, whereby the Intel Pentiums are exluded. I often use "486" loosely to simplify titles. If I were to run this, I'd probably include the best socket 3 CPU from each vendor, an AMD X5-160, a POD-83/100, and an IBM 5x86c-133 (2x66). If Win95 offers even the slightest speed advantage over Win98 for the employed games, I'd probably use Win95. I'd also ensure the PCI frequency is not reduced when using FSB's other than 33 Mhz. You also want to be sure all RAM is cached and that all BIOS timings are optimised. Ultimately, it is up to the tester to decide what he/she wants to include or not.
"fair" has other areas of contention anyway . . . like AMD's access to more advanced manufacturing cprocesses for the 486 vs Cyrix's 5x86. (AMD also released it later, so the DX4 120 was the more contemporary chip of the Cyrix 5x86 -since Cyrix discontinued production in favor of the 6x86)
Also, the 5x86 may be a scaled-down 6x86, and it may have the same FPU (with very similar performance), but given Fiopa's actual tests, the faster clocked (overclocked) x5 486s pushed ahead in many tests/applications, including floating poiin5 in some cseveral cases (approaching the POD 83, when that technically should have been much faster).
The only area the 5x85 consistently obeat the x5 486 was I/O and cache performance. (which is also the biggest area the 6x86 had over the P5)
Some of those results may be due to compilers not using pentium optimizations or bottlenecked by areas other than floating point or I/O . . . or others that are pentium optimized, but don't end up benefiting the CX5x86 over the 486.
Quake, which should be very pentium-optimized, performed almost as well on a x5 200 as a POD, and significantly faster than a Cyrix 5x86 133.
The performance gap likely would have been wider had the 5x86 continued production longer (and transitioned to later processes and higher speeds), or more so had it actually been released as a socket 5/7 part, but as it is, the performance is much more in line with the 486. (especially for mainstream apps of their day ~95/96, hence the x5 133 and Cyrix 133 both being P-rated 75)