Creative Computing Benchmark: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 05:50, 19 March 2025

Latest revision as of 04:27, 9 June 2025

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{{cquote|... the benchmark program presented here is not representative of the way computers are actually used; it measures only a few aspects of performance, and no one should buy a computer based solely on the results of these measures. Yet, the results provide some interesting comparative data.{{sfn|Ahl|1983|p=259}}}}

The initial results were provided for common machines of the era, including the [[Apple II]], [[Commodore 64]] and the recently- released [[IBM Personal Computer]]. Most of these machines ran some variation of the stock [[Microsoft BASIC]] and thus provided similar times on the order of two minutes, while the [[16-bit]] PC was near the top of the list at only 24 seconds. the fastest machine in this initial suite was the [[Olivetti M20]] at 13 seconds, and the slowest was [[Atari BASIC]] on the [[Atari 8-bit computers]] at 6 minutes 58 seconds.{{sfn|Ahl|1983|p=260}}

In the months following its publication, the magazine was inundated with results for other platforms. It became a regular feature for a time, placed prominently near the front of the magazine with an ever-growing list of results. By March the fastest machine on the list was the Cray-1 at 0.01 seconds, and the slowest was the [[TI SR-50]] [[programmable calculator]] at 12.7 days.{{sfn|Ahl|1984|p=7}}