If you want to use that metric then the Onyx would be: 4x 250MHz R4400s + 12x 40MHz Intel i860s = 1480 MHz when maxed out. But clock speed is a very poor metr

If you want to use that metric then the Onyx would be: 4x 250MHz R4400s + 12x 40MHz Intel i860s = 1480 MHz when maxed out. But clock speed is a very poor metric for comparing older CPUs. The size of these CPUs were much smaller, the number of instructions they could cram into each clock cycle and complexity of those instructions was no doubt far lower, and the variety of instructions and ability to specialise far lower (i'm not even considering the whole RISC and MIPS thing, just the fact that they are working with much smaller dies and far fewer, larger gates)... instructions per second might be a better comparison, but then you still lack that qualitative difference in the variety of instruction as i said.