one of the problems one might encounter (and this is true of
    almost all very high end processors) is nondeterministic
    execution time.  Since you can set up timer interrupts when you
    need specific timing, it often isn't an issue, but it can be if
    you are pushing the processor timing to its limits and need to
    know how long a piece of code will take to execute.

IMO, determinism is overrated (or we'd all be using token ring network.)
Part of the POINT of using a pentium class processor is that if you have a
3GHz processor, you don't NEED to "push the processor timing to its
limits."  You have to go to some lengths to justify spending thousands of
dollars of programmer time doing that "pushing" when the faster processor
is comparitively cheap.

BillW

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