Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 10:50:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu> To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net> Cc: FreeBSD-Alpha <alpha@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: relative alpha speed Message-ID: <14285.15184.962395.217919@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909011034110.369-100000@picnic.mat.net> References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909011034110.369-100000@picnic.mat.net>
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Chuck Robey writes: > I have just begin to compare my dual 333 MHz PII system against my > PC164SX system. I haven't any rela confidence yet that I've got the new > PC164SX correctly set up (particularly, I am not certain about the way I > have my RAM installed), but in timing and comparing makes of buildworld > and of the kernel, the 333 MHZ PII seems to be beating the 533MHz Alpha > by nearly 2:1. Bear in mind that the alpha is a risc machine. Compilers for risc machines tend to have a more difficult task and take longer. Also bear in mind that the size of the objects produced on an alpha are just about double the size on an x86, so if you have the same amount of memory on both boxes, the alpha will be breathing a lot harder. For example, I just built the world last night on both platforms. The size of /usr/obj on the alpha was ~420MB, and on the i386 it was 220MB. How much memory do you have in each machine? Also, your PC164SX is more the alpha equivalent of a 300Mhz Celeron, not a dual PII. Its missing one level of the cache hierarchy entirely. > I did the testing before and after I activated softupdates on the alpha, > and I was very surprised to note that I saw about a 5 percent slowdown > when using softupdates. No idea about this. Softupdates are usually faster here. I've been running softupdates on alphas for over a year with no problems. Drew ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Andrew Gallatin, Sr Systems Programmer http://www.cs.duke.edu/~gallatin Duke University Email: gallatin@cs.duke.edu Department of Computer Science Phone: (919) 660-6590 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message
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