A C benchmark on the 6502 seems suspect to me given that the 6502's architecture tends to make writing stack-based language compilers for it more complicated than other platforms. Some of the difference may be just because the object code generated for the 6502 isn't efficient.
That said, any 16-bit optimizations the 8088's compiler could take advantage of, well, that's fair game.
That said, any 16-bit optimizations the 8088's compiler could take advantage of, well, that's fair game.