Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 08:48:38 -0700 (PDT) From: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com> To: mgraffam@idsi.net Cc: alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: relative alpha speed Message-ID: <XFMail.990903084838.jdp@polstra.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.04.9909030019040.5562-100000@albert.critical.net>
index | next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail
mgraffam@idsi.net wrote:
>
> What generation of Alpha are you using?
EB164
Digital AlphaPC 164LX 533 MHz, 531MHz
8192 byte page size, 1 processor.
CPU: EV56 (21164A) major=7 minor=2 extensions=0x1<BWX>
OSF PAL rev: 0x1000100020116
real memory = 132276224 (129176K bytes)
avail memory = 124076032 (121168K bytes)
> It's not fair to compare anything but the A #1 newest Alpha to a PII
> 500.
To me it seems perfectly fair to compare an $N Intel system to an $N
Alpha system, regardless of anything else.
> Alphas tend to cost more, so people have a tendancy to compare a $500
> Alpha to a $500 Intel box.. if you do this, Intel machines will
> consistently out perform the Alpha.
>
> The Multia is a good example. A few months ago, a bare multia would run
> you about $90-100.. and gives weak performance compared to the P5 233 MMX
> that you can get for $100.. but the Multia was born around the time that
> 486/66's were coming out. The proper comparison is to compare the 21064
> to a 80486, not to a P5.
I disagree. The proper comparison is by price/performance ratio. If
I can get better performance from an $N Intel system than from an $N
Alpha system, how can you say the Alpha is better?
One thing I should have mentioned before, though, is that it's
entirely possible that the disappointing -mieee performance on the
Alpha is due to inferior code generation by gcc. Maybe that can be
improved in future versions of the compiler.
John
---
John Polstra jdp@polstra.com
John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA
"No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up." -- Nora Ephron
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
help
Want to link to this message? Use this
URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?XFMail.990903084838.jdp>