Some Unix benchmarks for those who are interesed

Fluffles etc at fluffles.net
Thu Mar 8 15:58:54 UTC 2007


Eric Anderson wrote:
> On 03/07/07 23:13, Fluffles wrote:
>>
>> On what hardware is this? Using any form of geom software RAID?
>>
>> The low Per Char results would lead me to believe it's a very slow CPU;
>> maybe VIA C3 or some old pentium? Modern systems should get 100MB/s+ in
>> per-char bonnie benchmark, even a Sempron 2600+ 1.6GHz 128KB cache which
>> costs about $39. Then it might be logical DD gets higher results since
>> this is more 'easy' to handle by the CPU. The VFS/UFS layer adds
>> potential for nice performance-increases but it does take it's toll in
>> the form of cputime overhead. If your CPU is very slow, i can imagine
>> these optimizations having a detrimental effect instead. Just
>> guessing here.
>
>
> Before making speculative claims about slow CPU's and putting the VIA
> C3 in with that pile, please at least refer to what makes you believe
> that it is an issue.  Comparing the VIA C3 to 'some old pentium' isn't
> exactly fair or accurate, and inferring it isn't a modern system isn't
> true either.

I'm sorry if i offended you. But it is well-known that C3 Nehemiah has a
much lower IPC than processors from AMD and Intel. For general purpose
comparisons, i would guess a 400MHz Athlon 64 to outperform the 1GHz C3
Nehemiah; just guessing here! Not to talk about Core2Duo who has even
higher IPC.

Though Nehemiah does have some fancy MPEG/AES hardware acceleration
stuff built-in, which makes it a suitable platform for a Media Center or
anything like that. Personally i think a budget AMD processor to be a
better option; they have the same power consumption under standby mode
(thanks to Cool'N'Quiet) but can deliver much higher performance when
needed (such as HighDef 1080p video?).

The bonnie Per Char-benchmark is often bottlenecked by the CPU since it
requires either a lot of cpu power or a lot of memory activity; both
which puts demands on the cpu. If i see only 0.5MB in the Per
Char-benchmark, i would suspect a slow CPU. Slow is a relative term
though; C3 can be powerful enough for the task you bought it, so i don't
want to discredit it.

- Veronica


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