I've been doing a bit of work lately on cross-platform benchmarks, and I thought it might be interesting to share some of the results I've collected so far. I've run the benchmarks on three different machines (one PC, two Macs) and here are the results. Higher numbers, as always, are better.
I was under the impression that the G5/G4s were better at integer operations while the P4 was better at floating point operations. (Or was it vice versa?)
As always though it comes down to the tools used and how well they are (or are not) optimized for the arch in question. Things like MMX/SSE/Altivec make HUGE differences! Also hardware differences (such as FSB speed, hyperthreading, chipsets used, etc) make huge differences in things like ram access. It's like comparing a Camaro to a Volkswagon
Yes, I believe you are right Chealion, I think the 970 is best at integer operations, while the P4 and I believe G4 is best at floating point operations. With the proviso that you don't take Altivec into consideration. If you put floating point ops through Altivec, then of course the 970 wins overall, I believe.
I wouldn't say the G3 is a waste of time ... but it you compare it to the PC world you would be comparing it to P2 processors and the G3 will likely come up much nicer in that comparison
The Pentium 4 has a 533MHz FSB (it's an older machine).
The floating point tests aren't optimized for any particular platform; they don't use SSE or Altivec instructions. I might tweak the benchmarks to use SIMD instructions (if available), but I'm more keen on getting the benchmark suite out the door first.
jfpoole - Am I to assume you're near completion of the fabled GeekBench? Designed to test apples to oranges by comparing a fruit to a fruit? It will be too bad people will get stuck on an apple having black seeds, and the orange having white seeds, or do you have someway to explain it?
GeekBench will be done when it's done. The benchmarks are coming together nicely but there's still a lot of work to be done, especially with the UI and multi-processor benchmarks.
memory (stream) scores are roughly 30% better than the P4, and only slightly lower than the G5.
jfpoole said:
I've been doing a bit of work lately on cross-platform benchmarks, and I thought it might be interesting to share some of the results I've collected so far. I've run the benchmarks on three different machines (one PC, two Macs) and here are the results. Higher numbers, as always, are better.
That's the problem ... you can't translate it. As I said earlier in the thread.. due to radical diffrences in operating systems, compilers, etc, etc ... these tests don't even accurately show the differences in the hardware. That's part of it, they do show differences in the compilers, code used, etc etc though LOL
The only way to do a real comparison will be on MacIntels. That's what I'm waiting to see ... OSX vs. Windows on the same hardware
mgeurtin - Sure you can get better performance by tailoring the way the program is made and compiled for a specific processor, but if you just use generic code and a standard compiler with no biases towards any processor, then can you not get a benchmark that you can actually compare the computers to each other because they are on a level playing field. It's not the end all and be all, but it's the first try I've seen to make something that doesn't bias one end or the other.
On a sidenote, jfpoole's program compares hardware, not the difference in speed between OS X and Windows.
well yes and no .. the thing is that not all compilers are created equal, so it all comes back down to the toolchain. With gcc the x86 version, in general is _much_ more optimized then the PowerPC version ... alot of which comes back down to compatibility, etc.
The short answer is that yes it's a comparison, but it's not necessarily very accurate. This is a long running argument (of many many years, usenet has threads that are hundreds of posts long on just this part of things alone). There are (potentially) big differences in the compiler versions right down to assembly level and beyond.
Not saying the application is biased really, but it's not necessarily an "apples to apples" comparison .. there is really no such thing going across multiple architectures that exists. They are _an_ indication but not necessarily _the_ indication.
Not trying to be a party pooper or anything! Just trying to be the devil's advocate!
GeekBench isn't meant to be an exact processor or hardware benchmark, but rather a "computing ecosystem" benchmark (which includes the hardware, but also the operating system and developer tools). We're not interested in determining whether the P4 is better than the G5 (or vice-versa); we're interested in determining what application performance is like under Windows compared to Mac OS X.
We're using the standard development tools (Visual C++ on Windows, Xcode on Mac OS X) with the standard settings, and writing processor agnostic code. We're not doing anything particularily fancy, but most application code doesn't do anything fancy either, and that's what most people run day in and day out.
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