71B vs 75D

[Garth Wilson]

(04-14-2021 12:15 AM)Sylvain Cote Wrote:  [The 75] is also a lot faster than the HP-71B.

Gene's second attached file above, the V3N2P29-32 one, says on the right column of p.30 (p.2 of the .pdf):

...Using the same [aforementioned] benchmarks, the 71 appears to be running at only one-third of the speed of the 75, and programs which, on the latter, appear to be instantaneous cause noticeable delays on the 71 (which give problems because the buffer may allow INPUT pre-keying but does not allow the same ease of use with KEY$). However, those benchmarks are heavily weighted towards the simplest of arithmetic coupled with many jumps and subroutine calls. A program which replaces the trivial arithmetic of the benchmarks with something worthy of a computer, albeit running a small loop, gives an astonishing result: the 71 runs at the same speed as the 75. This is because the processor of that machine, like the 41, is designed for ease of processing numbers in the decimal, floating-point format used by the computer and is even less of a general-purpose computer than the 75/80-series CPU.