Steve's Scribbles...

"The Great Leap Forward?"

A breathless story on a technological breakthrough -- except it's not...

Tuesday, May 19, 1998

Concerning:

• 400-MHz Pentium IIs: The great leap forward by Laurianne McLaughlin [PC World, syndicated via CNN]

  "On average, the 400-MHz Pentium II systems we tested run PC WorldBench 98, our business application benchmark, 21 percent faster than the Pentium II-333s. Got your interest now?"

Hmm, let's see, 333 times 1.21 = 402.93?!? Wow!!! A system speed increase almost exactly proportional to the increase in clock speed??? Goshamighty, I'd better sit down! Bar the door and alert the media!

Seriously, I don't understand why this should be a big deal (let alone worthy of being called "the great leap"), unless maybe it's been the case recently that Pentiums haven't been providing the proportionate increase in speed one might expect based on raw clock speed numbers...which is exactly what John Dvorak talked about in September 1997 (plus he noted a lack of candor on the part of the PC press):

• Market Buster [PC Computing, inexplicably appearing in ultra-widescreen format on IE/Mac]

  "The result from the [widespread Intel co-op advertising] dollars is apparent. Virtually nobody criticized the Pentium II. One reviewer called a 30 percent increase in performance of a chip whose clock speed was actually 50 percent faster 'astonishing.' Another reviewer raved about how the architecture ... makes the chip less expensive to produce -- completely ignoring the fact that the Pentium II is encased in a huge and complex package that ... must easily cost as much as the chip itself."

Let me just point out, finally, what was left out of all of these articles: a 233MHz G3 Mac handily surpasses the 400MHz Pentium II, although (sigh) its price is still closer to a 400MHz Dell than a 400MHz Gateway.

And oh yeah, that's the slowest PowerPC G3..."great leap forward", my aunt Sally...