Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!shelby!lindy!Valinor.Stanford.EDU!vaf From: vaf@Valinor.Stanford.EDU (Vince Fuller) Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec Subject: Performance comparison: pmax vs. vax Message-ID: <7062@lindy.Stanford.EDU> Date: 11 Jan 90 02:20:11 GMT Sender: news@lindy.Stanford.EDU (News Service) Reply-To: vaf@Valinor.Stanford.EDU Organization: Stanford University Lines: 16 I'm interested in hearing about experiences that others have had with the performance of the two different DEC architectures. Ideally, I'd like to know what folks feel about the pmax (DS3100) vs the microvax 3800 series, for overall system performance, not just CPU speed (the DS3100 seems to win that one). In particular, how do the systems stack up for heavily I/O bound processes? My impression from having a pmax on my desk is that the RZ55 disk + SCSI combination is rather slow. How does it compare to a microvax-3800 with RF71 + Qbus? We are considering using these systems a) a big network server machine (domain service, mail relaying, etc.) and b) as general purpose timesharing/development machine. I'd like to get a feel for which architecture will give better overall performance in each case. Thanks, --Vince