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Price/performance ratio

 

 
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Price/performance ratio
 
 
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In economics
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
 and engineering
Engineering

Engineering is the discipline and profession of applying Technology and science knowledge and utilizing natural laws and physical resources in order to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and process that safely realize a desired objective and meet specified criteria....
, the price/performance ratio refers to a product's ability to deliver performance, of any sort, for its price. For instance, if you have a whole day to travel 100 km, spending $50 to do the journey in two hours is a better price/performance ratio than spending $105 to do the journey in one hour.

Price/performance is often written as price-performance. Even though this term would seem to be a straightforward ratio, when price performance is improved, better, or increased, it actually refers to the performance divided by the price, in other words exactly the opposite ratio to rank a product as having an increased Price/performance.






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In economics
Economics

File:Ballard Farmers' Market - vegetables.jpgEconomics is the Social sciences that studies the Production theory basics, Distribution , and Consumption of Good and Service ....
 and engineering
Engineering

Engineering is the discipline and profession of applying Technology and science knowledge and utilizing natural laws and physical resources in order to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and process that safely realize a desired objective and meet specified criteria....
, the price/performance ratio refers to a product's ability to deliver performance, of any sort, for its price. For instance, if you have a whole day to travel 100 km, spending $50 to do the journey in two hours is a better price/performance ratio than spending $105 to do the journey in one hour.

Price/performance is often written as price-performance. Even though this term would seem to be a straightforward ratio, when price performance is improved, better, or increased, it actually refers to the performance divided by the price, in other words exactly the opposite ratio to rank a product as having an increased Price/performance. To avoid such confusion, the word ratio is often dropped or the dash used instead. Technical and news publications are often sloppy in their coverage of changes in these matters.

The term tends to be used quite a bit when comparing computer hardware. During the latter 1990s, the price/performance ratios of midrange and large mainframe
Mainframe computer

Mainframes are computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, Enterprise Resource Planning, and financial transaction processing....
 systems fell tremendously in comparison to a number of smaller microcomputer
Microcomputer

A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. Another general characteristic of these computers is that they occupy physically small amounts of space when compared to mainframe computer and minicomputers....
s handling the same load. Many companies were forced out of the industry as this happened, including DEC
Digital Equipment Corporation

Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering United States company in the computer industry. It is often referred to within the computing industry as DEC ....
, Data General
Data General

Data General was one of the first minicomputer firms from the late 1960s. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation....
 and many multiprocessor vendors such as Sequent Computer Systems
Sequent Computer Systems

Sequent Computer Systems, or Sequent, was a computer company that designed and manufactured multiprocessing computer systems. They were among the pioneers in high-performance symmetric multiprocessing Open system , innovating in both hardware and software ....
 and Pyramid Technology
Pyramid Technology

Pyramid Technology was a computer company that produced a number of RISC-based minicomputers at the upper end of the performance range. They also became the second company to ship a multiprocessor Unix system , in 1985, which formed the basis of their product line into the early 1990s....
.