Benchmarks Archive

Intel Quad-Core Linux Memory Performance

Submitted by Phoronix 2006-12-17 Benchmarks 25 Comments

With two Intel Quad-Core Clovertown processors and eight sticks of Kingston FB-DIMM DDR2 Phoronix set out to see the level of memory performance in an octal-core environment. Phoronix has tested the memory in single, dual, and quad memory channel configurations. Read the article to see how the Intel Xeon 5300 performs in various Fully Buffered Dual Inline Memory Module configurations.

Performance Comparison of Most Current CPUs

Submitted by mcsimpson 2006-12-08 Benchmarks 32 Comments

Most current Intel and AMD CPUs, as well as almost every Macintosh model from the last few years, geekbenched and compared. Interesting results if you just want to have an overall generic idea of how fast is what. Interesting to see that my 12" 867 Mhz Powerbook G4 is at least 6 times slower than a new MacBook Pro or that new Core2Duo CPUs at 2 GHz are way faster than my pretty recent 3 GHz P4 (which came with hyperthreading and 64bit support nonetheless). Technology flies fast past you!

Benchmarks: the Unofficial Eight-Core Mac Pro

Submitted by Governa 2006-11-15 Benchmarks 32 Comments

"We might be ahead of Apple's product release cycle, and we've probably violated our Mac Pro's warranty, but we just had to see what the Apple Mac Pro could do when populated with a pair of Intel's brand-new quad-core Xeon 5355 processors," Daniel A. Begun reports for CNET. They conclude: "Unless you do work normally relegated to high-end workstations, perform massively multitasking workloads, or just want the bragging rights, eight cores is definitely overkill - at least for now."

Solaris vs. Linux Performance on a Sun Ultra 20

Submitted by mcsimpson 2006-10-27 Benchmarks 36 Comments

"On Monday I posted Geekbench results for my Sun Ultra 20 M2 running Solaris and Windows. Afterwards, I received a number of requests asking how Linux performed on the same hardware. Now that I've finally managed to download Fedora Core 6, here are the Geekbench results for Fedora Core 6 (and Solaris, as a comparison) on a Sun Ultra 20 M2."

MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo) Performance Comparison

Submitted by jfpoole 2006-10-26 Benchmarks 11 Comments

Geek Patrol has benchmarked the new (Core 2 Duo) MacBook Pro against the old (Core Duo) model. "Moving from the Core Duo to the Core 2 Duo means 32-bit MacBook Pro performance is up 10% without an increase in processor clock speed. That’s impressive! Even more impressive is the Core 2 Duo is 20% faster (when executing 64-bit code) than the Core Duo (when executing 32-bit code)."

Solaris and Windows Performance Compared

Submitted by mcsimpson 2006-10-24 Benchmarks 25 Comments

A benchmarking comparison of Solaris 10 and Windows XP (64bit) running on a Sun Ultra 20 M2 Dual Core Opteron 1210 workstation. "Overall, I'm pleased with the performance of the Sun Ultra 20 M2. While this model (with an Opteron 1210) isn't quite as fast as a low-end Mac Pro, it's less than half the price of a low-end Mac Pro. Models equipped with faster Opterons (like the Opteron 1218) will certainly be more competitive when it comes to performance."

Testing Polygon Performance in Qt, Cairo

Submitted by Anonymous Reader 2006-10-23 Benchmarks 68 Comments

"A lot of people has been asking me about some performance comparison for the vector graphics framework we have. Rendering polygons, especially when we're dealing with stroke, tends to be the most expensive rendering operation performed in vector graphics. I constructed a little test, which tests raw polygon rendering power of Qt and Cairo. For the test I used the latest Qt main branch, and the master branch from Cairo's Git repository."

What’s The World’s Fastest Browser?

Eugenia Loli 2006-09-08 Benchmarks 61 Comments

"Oh sure, the following tests aren't as scientific as putting all the browsers in a ring and seeing which one is left standing after the fight, but it's close." More here.

Testing a Mac Pro, PowerMac G5, iMac CoreDuo

Submitted by Ralf Saalmueller 2006-08-30 Benchmarks 10 Comments

The PPCNUX-Team ran a benchmark on various Macs and operating systems, including the new MacPro. "When I tested the iMac Core Duo back in May the results were far better than I expected. That given, the Core2 disappoints me. Yes, it is faster than the original CoreDuo; but with all its announced enhancements I expected more. Its not the major leap ahead I expected."

Intel vs. AMD Gaming Benchmark

Submitted by Jeremy 2006-08-02 Benchmarks 5 Comments

Any computer gaming enthusiast has probably seen his fair share of gaming benchmarks in the past, but how accurate are benchmarks determined by recorded playbacks? ExtremeTech's Jason Cross built both Intel and AMD-based systems and recorded performance based on actual gameplay of six popular gaming titles, using FRAPS to measure performance. High-end systems from Intel and AMD, in this case the Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 X2 5000+, delivered superb performance, although Intel's newest architecture takes the cake across the board.

Windows XP Performance on a Mac

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-25 Benchmarks 26 Comments

" can easily enjoy the best of both the Mac and Windows XP worlds on a single system--as long as that system is an Intel Mac. Apple's own Boot Camp Public Beta allows you to install Windows XP SP2 onto an Intel Mac, giving you a dual-boot system. Parallels takes a slightly different approach with its Parallels Desktop for Mac, a virtual machine application. CNET Labs ran a few of its home-brewed benchmarks on a MacBook Pro with the Mac OS, Boot Camp, and Parallels Desktop to see how application performance stacks up between the three."

Lies, Statistics, and Benchmarks

Submitted by anonymous 2006-05-25 Benchmarks 3 Comments

"Since the second computer was built, users have compared the performance of different computers. Performance matters. Sometimes, a performance difference is just a question of whether a job will be done sooner or later; in other cases, a performance difference might prevent a job from being done at all. Measuring performance of a particular task is not too daunting, but developing a prediction of how quickly other tasks will run can be nigh impossible. A benchmark is a task designed such that a measure of performance on this particular task will be a good proxy for performance across a wide variety of tasks."

Linux vs. MacOS X Benchmarks Debunked

Submitted by Marciano 2006-05-18 Benchmarks 64 Comments

"The latest 'OS X is slow' meme to impinge on the mass psyche of the Internet comes courtesy of one Jasjeet Sekhon, an associate professor of political science at UC Berkeley. The page has hit digg and reddit and been quoted on Slashdot. Is there any merit to this?"

Benchmark: Linux, OS X on Core Duo

Submitted by Mystilleef 2006-05-07 Benchmarks 123 Comments

Jasjeet Sekhon benchmarked Linux and MacOS X on the MacBook Pro using his statistical software, and finds that "Linux is found to be much faster than Apple's OS X for statistical computing. For example, in one benchmark Linux is more than twice as fast." Earlier, he ran tests on a G5 and an Opteron, and conlcuded: "Those results were terrible for OS X and not particularly good for the G5 (970) chip. For example, my 2.7 pound Pentium-M Linux laptop is faster than my 44 pound G5 running OS X. The floating point performance of the 970 chip leaves much to be desired, but OS X makes the performance problem significantly worse."

Filesystems (ext3, reiser, xfs, jfs) Comparison on Debian Etch

Submitted by anonymous 2006-04-21 Benchmarks 27 Comments

"There are a lot of Linux filesystems comparisons available but most of them are anecdotal, based on artificial tasks or completed under older kernels. This benchmark essay is based on 11 real-world tasks appropriate for a file server with older generation hardware (Pentium II/III, EIDE hard-drive)."

Mac Minis Geekbenched

Submitted by mcsimpson 2006-03-10 Benchmarks 16 Comments

"The only benchmark where the PowerPC-based Mac mini outperformed the Intel-based Mac mini was Stdlib Allocate, which is also the only benchmark where the PowerBook G4 outperformed the MacBook Pro. The Stdlib Allocate benchmark depends more on standard library performance than raw hardware performance. It's also worth mentioning that the Intel-based Mac minis were, for the most part, faster than our baseline system (a PowerMac G5 1.6GHz). Yikes. Overall, we're impressed with the Intel-based Mac mini's performance."

Sun’s T2000 Beats Dual Xeon at Serving Dynamic PHP Pages

Submitted by Robert Milkowski 2006-02-20 Benchmarks 50 Comments

According to a benchmark, Sun's Niagara processor is over 4 times faster at serving dynamic PHP pages than a dual Xeon server. "We did real production benchmarks using different servers. Servers were put into production behind load-balancers, then weights on load-balancers were changed so we got highest number of dynamic PHP requests per second. It must sustain that number of requests for some time and no drops or request queue were allowed. With static requests numbers for Opteron and T2000 were even better but we are mostly interested in dynamic pages."

Geekbench Comparison Redux

Submitted by mcsimpson 2006-02-02 Benchmarks 16 Comments

"The other day I posted an article to highlight our new benchmark application Geekbench. It received a lot of attention, but there was some concern about the machines used in the testing (mainly, the Athlon 64 and Pentium 4c are kind of old). Despite the fact that the article was meant to be more about the testing than the results, some people refused to let it pass. Luckily, a few people responded to my request for results from more machines, so here is a smaller article comparing just three machines: a PowerMac G5 Quad, an Athlon 64 X2 and a Pentium D."

12 Machines Benchmarked

Submitted by Matt Simpson 2006-01-30 Benchmarks 54 Comments

GeekPatrol puts their new cross platform benchmarking tool to work and compares 12 machines including the new iMacs, PowerMacs, an Athlon64, a P4c, and a Xeon. "The PowerPC G5 is still a good processor. In fact, it’s still a great processor. Apple isn’t switching to Intel chips because Intel chips perform better, but rather because a G5 would melt through the bottom of a laptop. The Athlon 64 edged out the Pentium 4c on all the CPU tests, while the Pentium 4c edged out the Athlon 64 on all the memory tests. It seems to me that Intel and AMD have had their different strengths all along, so I don’t find this surprising. The Intel Core Duo is a great processor. It performed as well or better than the PowerPC G5 at similar clock speeds (1.8GHz and 2.0GHz), and has nowhere to go but up."

‘Unix Beats Windows’ – Says Microsoft!

Submitted by Peter Harmsen 2005-11-09 Benchmarks 45 Comments

"Ok, that headline may be a bit overblown - but Microsoft Research has released part of a report on the Singularity kernel they've been working on as part of their planned shift to network computing. The report includes some performance comparisons that show Singularity beating everything else on a 1.8Ghz AMD Athlon-based machine. What's noteworthy about it is that Microsoft compared Singularity to FreeBSD and Linux as well as Windows/XP - and almost every result shows Windows losing to the two Unix variants."

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