🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3aq1lh$5...@harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au>,
GM Enierga <gme...@lindblat.cc.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>ak...@crux4.cit.cornell.edu (Allen Kim) writes:
>>pde...@draper.com (PDeMaio) writes:
>
>>By the way, people are now saying that Origin is going to be "all Pentium."  I
>>really don't see how this will exclude the 486 market, since the Pentium only
>>has one instruction more than the 486.  In other words, what works on the
>>Pentium also works on 486's.
>
>	Not necessarily... if the Pentium's abilities are utilised fully, then
>the 486 will NOT - because the pentium is like 2 chips in one, ie 2 general
>processing chips in one, not a beefed up 486 and co-pro.
>

	Don't credit the Pentium's superscalar design too much.  Sure, it
can execute up to two instrcutions per tick, but I bet it rarely does,
especially with the bloated and gaudy coding.  So in no way is Pentium
"2 chips in one".  So far, the coders have practically no incentives to
utilize the Pentium's abilities fully.  It's a big honking hoss of a chip
and human reflex is only so good.  So programmers fill the games chokefull
of graphics, sounds, and whatnot.  Just so much eye-candy _for the most part_.
Certainly, I'm not going to discount attractiveness of SVGA graphics but
at what cost are those 'enhancement' achieved?  Games that can work
well in a lesser chip don't. 
	 I think tight, efficient coding, excellent
gameplay, and good audiovisuals can make a game a classic.  But so far,
some makers are concentrating on the last factor over the first two.
And it's not coincidental that increasing processing power and 
emergence of 'multimedia' in games are linearly pathed.  And it's also
not surprising to note that the first two factors don't require a big honking
hoss of a processor.

	[snip on pipelining and 486 chips]
>
>	How can it benefit the 486?
>

	It can benefit a 486 in that tighter and more efficient code can 
benefit just about any chips.  Branch prediction should allow Pentium to
achieve closer to 2 instructions per tick, and just as easily allow faster
performance from a 486.  


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