Speedcheck

This article provides information about the real measured speeds of the CPC's hardware using different software. The abbreviaton "n.f." means "not feasible", since some software is not capable of performing a particular task. Numbers in bold indicate the smallest needed time. All experiments have been repeated 10 times, the statistic mean of the 10 experiments is given. Time is measured in seconds.

On CPC emulators the times can vary, for this tests only real CPCs had been used. For this tests the Dobbertin HD20 hard disc has been used.

The used PC had a AMD Duron CPU running at 900 MHz. It's OS was Windows2000. Instead of Vortex format 720K DOS format has been used.

Disc management

Various measurements of the floppy disc speed (3" internal or 3.5" external) or hard disc speed (Dobbertin HD20) have been taken.

Format a disc: 40 tracks (Data) or 80 tracks (Vortex or 720K Dos)

Format	FutureOS	XD-DOS	Disc'o'Magic	CP/M 2.2	CP/M 3.1	Utopia	Windows 2000
Data	16	17	18	33	33	43	n.f.
Vortex	64	65	n.f.	65	n.f.	n.f.	104

Copy a disc: 40 / 80 tracks, one or two drives

Tracks & Drives	FutureOS	XD-DOS	Disc'o'Magic	CP/M 2.2	CP/M 3.1	Utopia	Windows 2000
40 tracks, 1 drive	20	n.f.	42	66	63	71	n.f.
40 tracks, 2 drives	20	n.f.	42	69	69	69	n.f.
80 tracks, 1 drive	77	n.f.	n.f.	257	n.f.	n.f.	n.f.
80 tracks, 2 drives	76	n.f.	n.f.	207	n.f.	n.f.	n.f.

Copy a file of 40 KB, 176 KB or 400 KB with two drives or partitions (HD20 hard disc)

Size & Device	FutureOS	XD-DOS	Disc'o'Magic	CP/M 2.2	CP/M 3.1	Utopia
40 KB, floppy	6	19	10	33	18	n.f.
40 KB, hard-disc	2,5	13	n.f.	12	4	n.f.
176 KB, floppy	25	74	34	132	70	n.f.
176 KB, hard-disc	9	42	n.f.	38	18	n.f.
400 KB, floppy	55	n.f.	n.f.	147	107	n.f.
400 KB, hard-disc	20	94	n.f.	80	42	n.f.

Read a file of 40 KB, 176 KB or 400 KB from floppy-disc or hard-disc (HD20)

Size & Device	FutureOS	XD-DOS	Disc'o'Magic	AMSDOS
40 KB, floppy	2,5	9	5	9
40 KB, hard-disc	1	4	n.f.	n.f.
176 KB, floppy	9	n.f.	17	n.f.
176 KB, hard-disc	2,5	n.f.	n.f.	n.f.
400 KB, floppy	21	n.f.	n.f.	n.f.
400 KB, hard-disc	6	n.f.	n.f.	n.f.

Write a file of 40 KB, 176 KB or 400 KB to floppy-disc or hard-disc (HD20)

Size & Device	FutureOS	XD-DOS	Disc'o'Magic	AMSDOS
40 KB, floppy	2,5	12	5	12
40 KB, hard-disc	1	4	n.f.	n.f.
176 KB, floppy	9	n.f.	17	n.f.
176 KB, hard-disc	3	n.f.	n.f.	n.f.
400 KB, floppy	22	n.f.	n.f.	n.f.
400 KB, hard-disc	6	n.f.	n.f.	n.f.

Read a full directory, sort it and display it on screen

Format	FutureOS	XD-DOS	Disc'o'Magic	CP/M 2.2	CP/M 3.1	AMSDOS	Windows 2000
Data	1	3	2,5	3,5	12	5	1,2
Vortex	1,5	6	n.f.	6,3	23	n.f.	n.f.
HD20	12	20	n.f.	18,9	85	n.f.	1

In this examples XD-DOS was speeded up using the !FAST RSX command. CP/M 2.2 did not sort the directory.

Erase 64 (Data format), 128 (Vortex format) or 512 files (HD20 hard-disc) at once

Entries	FutureOS	XD-DOS	Disc'o'Magic	CP/M 2.2	CP/M 3.1	AMSDOS	Windows 2000
64 entries	1,0	27	1,5	26	15	27	33
128 entries	1,0	52	n.f.	51	29	n.f.	n.f.
512 entries	2,0	43	n.f.	25	11	n.f.	6

FutureOS clearly beats Windows 2000.

Display / Print characters on Screen / Printer

Load and type a file of 40 KB, 176 KB or 400 KB on the screen

Size & Device	FutureOS	XD-DOS	AMSDOS	CP/M 2.2	CP/M 3.1
40 KB, floppy	8	80	139	139	220
40 KB, hard-disc	7	76	n.f.	126	124,5
176 KB, floppy	36	349	618	618	969
176 KB, hard-disc	30	328	n.f.	556	548
400 KB, floppy	80	768	n.f.	1402	2203
400 KB, hard-disc	68	746	n.f.	1259	1246

Load and print a file of 40 KB on the printer

Device	FutureOS	XD-DOS	AMSDOS	CP/M 2.2	CP/M 3.1
Floppy	7	65	63	88	78
Hard-disc	4,5	61	n.f.	74,5	62

Other speed checks

Display 64 KB in hexadecimal and ASCII chars (DUMP)

FutureOS	Softbrenner	MAXAM	UTOPIA
34	65	106	106

Missing data

Speed checks using ParaDOS and SymbOS remain to be performed (on a real CPC).