DOSBox and pDOSBox Benchmark

[segler]

I have a X51v. I know most people want a DOS emulator for DOS games.

For my part, I want DOS emulation in order to run scientific calculation programs that I compiled from old FORTRAN and BASIC code. I compiled them to produce standard DOS .exe files. In the compiler switches I always turned on the NDP switch to make sure the code runs on the 80x87 coprocessors. You can tell this was old stuff.

I have bencharked DOSBox 0.63 and pDOSBox 2b2 with my code. I set up a calculation to run only on the processor. No I/O or graphics. The code display already gives start and finish times, so you can easily see how long a calculation takes.

The calculation I used for this benchmark is a FORTRAN deeply nested calculation of X-ray fluorescence alpha coefficients for a 12-element alloy problem.

On DOSBox 0.63 the calculation takes 1418 sec.
On pDOSBox 2b2 the calculation takes 186 sec.

pDOSBox is fully VGA-aware, so on my X51v it looks better than the "interlaced with blanks" QVGA appearance of DOSBox 0.63.

So, if you don't need any I/O, such as sound or graphics, pDOSBox 2b2 really screams. My understanding is that for games with sound, most people feel that DOSBox 0.63 is faster and better.

But here is the amazing thing. The same software code that used to require a DEC 11-34 ($30k) to run is now running on my little tiny handheld. Amazing.