On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Anthony DeLorenzo wrote:

# > Is there a processor upgrade path that is worth the expense for an IPX?
# 
# The Weitek PowerUP is an 80mhz replacement processor for the IPX and
# SS2.  It doubles the processor speed (on the 40mhx SS2 I don't know what
# the IPX ships with).
# 
# Rave[1] sells them new for $195 US and refurbished for $100 US, so you'll
# have to decide if it's worth it.  If you're like me, the cost of this is
# more than you paid for the rest of your system.  I've got one coming right
# now that I picked up on ebay for $60 US to pop into my SS2, although they
# seem to sell for ~$100 most of the time.
# 
# The various benchmarks I've seen (Specint and bogomips) seem to support
# anywhere from a 1.4 to 2.0 increase.  Floating point tests seem to show
# the greatest improvement.  (Sorry, I don't have the numbers around.)  I
# can't speak from any personal experience until my chip arrives.

You're not going to see much of an improvement unless your apps are
compute-bound; i.e. X is not likely to improve; compiling might improve
slightly.  The problem is that you have a 16k or 64k cache which is nigh
useless, and only the compute-bound stuff will accelerate since it's not
going to overclock your SBus.

Someone was kind enough to give me one, and I didn't see all that much
of an improvement; certainly, as was put to me, "Nothing earth-shaking."

You might check out Cycle5 for a MoBo upgrade for your IPX, but they're
all kind of expen$ive, and I'm not at all convinced they're worth what
is being charged for the speed of processor they put in.

				--*greywolf;
--
BSD: it's not free beer, but it's free.