[Sunhelp] Performance question

[James Lockwood]

On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, Bill Bradford wrote:

> Which of the two machines below would you rather have on your desk at work?

Raw CPU:

System            CPU        ClkMHz  Cache      SPECint SPECfp  Info
Name              (NUMx)Type ext/in  Ext+I/D      95      95    Date
================= ========== ======= ========== ======= ======= =====
Sun Ultra5/270    UltSP2i    90/270  256+16/16    9.16   10.1   Jan98
Sun Ultra1/200E   UltSP      100/200 512+16/16    7.44   10.40  Feb97

The Ultra 1 is slower, but not by much.  The faster bus and bigger cache
help a lot.

The Creator3D on the Ultra 1 will be much faster for regular 2D
bitblitting and tremendously faster for anything involving shaded 3D.

The hard drive on the Ultra 5 is larger, but slow.

The Ultra 5 has a faster expansion bus for "typical" use (PCI).  SCSI
cards and the like for the U5 are cheap and faster than the onboard SCSI
in the Ultra 1E.  Other modern peripherals (like the SunPCi) are only
available in PCI form factor.

The build quality on the Ultra 1 is far, far better than the Ultra 5.  The
Ultra 1 does have a history of CPU fan (early revs) and powersupply
failures, though.

I'd probably lean towards the Ultra 1 myself.  Even for "typical"
non-graphics use (compiling etc) they will probably run neck and neck as
the disk on the Ultra 1 is almost certainly faster.  If you want really
fast graphics then go with the Ultra 1 for sure.

If you take the U1, could you post the part number of the Creator3D card
that's installed?  I need to find a horizontal one capable of 100MHz UPA.

-James