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From: mahesh@caradhras.cc.nd.edu (Mahesh Subramanya)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXTstation's speed?
Message-ID: <1991Jan4.233847.9141@news.nd.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 91 23:38:47 GMT
References: <1991Jan4.182011.28485@xn.ll.mit.edu> <1991Jan4.201609.23733@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Sender: news@news.nd.edu (USENET News System)
Reply-To: mahesh@caradhras.cc.nd.edu (Mahesh Subramanya)
Organization: Univ. of Notre Dame
Lines: 34


Over the last year, I've had extensive use of a SS1/SS1+, a NeXT, a 
DecStation 3100, a Mac IIci, a Mac IIfx, and an IBM R/600 Model 530.
I've had these (in various combinations) on my desk at one point or 
the other for extended periods.  Also, I've had a Nstation on my desk
for around a week.  Tho I haven't run some of the "tried and proven" bmarks
on these boxes, I have done quite a significant amount of "real world" usage
on these boxes.  To make it short and sweet, the order of speed is

ss1 <  ss1+ < DecStation < Nstation < R/6000 320 < R/6000 530

Within this, the most obvious performace gap is in the SS1s.  The 
SPARCstations seem to be the least powerful of the lot by a rather large
factor. In fact, from my impression, tho' they *do* achieve their 1.4/1.7 
LINPACK ratings, they usually average 1 MFLOP on most other things.  By and
large, SPARCS are rather slow beasties compared to their brethren.

The Decstations are usually around 1.5 times faster than the SS1/1+.  THe
surprising result was that in most of my usage, the Nstation was faster than the DecStation!! (also corroborated by some chap in comp.benchmarks using
Mathematica bmarks!).

  Definitely not to my surprise, the R/6000s blew the doors off the rest
of the competition.


 
-- 
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Mahesh Subramanya                     INTERNET: mahesh@caradhras.cc.nd.edu
Senior Analyst                        
Office of University Computing        NeXT:     mahesh@numenor.next.nd.edu
University of Notre Dame              Voice:    (219) 239-5600  x6421
Notre Dame,  IN  46556
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