On Tuesday 19 August 2003 01:36, Martin wrote: > I'm on a 333Mhz UltraSPARC IIi and I would find it difficult to describe > it as poor. Clock speed doesn't really mean much in terms of real CPU > system / performance IMHO. Most of the folks I know turn their noses up > at it because it's not up to the same clock speed as their Athalon and > then they wonder when my machine out performs theirs.
Hi Martin, I'm on a 333 UIIi too. I use my U10 as my development and multimedia workstation and, stopwatch at hand, I sadly have to see that my workstation is slower than my old PC (Athlon based, 2000+ processor), and I'm talking about real-life tasks (e.g. using the same programs with the same operating systems), not mere bogoMIPS calculations. Obviously, system's speed is not related to CPU's clock only (for example, my CMD646 integrated IDE controller is only capable of multiword DMA versus the UltraDMA2 capabilities of my old VIA southbridge on the Athlon m/b (using the same hard disk), and the main memory isn't designed to skyrocket at DDR-like timings (it was designed years before DDRs, it's understandable). Just to make it clear: I like my workstation, I bought it with hard earned money and I'm quite happy about it, just I am less than an enthusiast in the workstation's performance on the multimedia field (mplayer, as an example, even with SDL optim. enabled and the like, can't play a simple dvd/divx/mpeg/you name it at a human-recognizable frame rate. I understand perfectly that my video card is a 4-Mb model and it was bleeding edge when my workstation was built, but the processor's aid in getting things solved in this field is not sufficient, and so I visually feel that the system's performance is poor. Never said the mighty UIIi is poor at all, and excuse me for the post's length. -- Antonello Iunco <etn at libero dot it> Cruising the Web on a (Modified) Debian-Powered Sun Ultra10
