Sorry folks, my previous question was a dumb one, when I asked where I
could find comparisons of of these....of course there hasn't been time
to do reviews and get results to press/website yet.

I meant it in the future sense. I don't know what publications/web
sites to trust for objective tests. This is what I was asking.....where
should I watch for the straight scoop on which is faster, and which will
be faster in 6 months, a year...?

Thanks, sorry for my miswording.
Jim

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 12:02:26 -0400, Jim Kroger
<jimkkREMOVEME@umich.edu> chose to bless us with the following wisdom:

The honest answer is that you will never be able to find what you
want. There are simply too many fudge factors that can be introduced.



--

"Whoever is advising them [Democrats] on gun control
should be shot."

Blaine Rummel, spokesman for the Coalition to
Stop Gun Violence.

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 12:02:26 -0400, Jim Kroger
<jimkkREMOVEME@umich.edu> wrote:

Barefeats.com usually has pretty interesting reviews. They recently
did a review that essentially stated the only way the Mac G5 was
faster in Q3 would be if the PC was a Xeon with lower FSB than the
current P4s that normal people buy, if all of its' options were maxxed
out to the very highest, and the Mac's options were put only on
'Normal' (which isn't nearly as stressful) - AND if the PC had a
slower last-gen graphics card too. Here's the review:
http://www.barefeats.com/#quick

Update: Here's the link info with RAM/speed info:

So in the spirit of fairness, we borrowed brand
new P4 3GHz test unit with the same 800MHz FSB
and 400MHz DDR memory as Apple's Pentium test
unit. The only thing we couldn't match was the
graphics card. Our Radeon 9700 is has a slower
clock speed than the Radeon 9800 used by Apple.

Thanks, and here is another link:


http://www.haxial.com/spls-soapbox/apple-powermac-G5/

Jim Kroger <jimkkREMOVEME@umich.edu> wrote:
That article is neither trustworthy nor is it even a comparison, thus
making it rather off-topic .

-- Erick

In article <hv4ufvke5s8s7qav1j201pl3g7fdvijpht@4ax.com>,
Mayor of R'lyeh <ev515o@hotmail.com> wrote:



I was afraid of that. But what do you think of this:


Get a <computer A>. Get a <computer B>.

Install Matlab on both computers. Start matlab on both. On both, type:

bench

compare the results.You get several kinds of benchmarks (floating, etc.).

True, Matlab has probably been optimized more for PCs because there are
more PC customers, and the PC version was probably compiled on a
compiler that was more successfully optimal for the PC chip than is
possible for a G5 chip........and though this could change this is
reality right now, and if the G5 is REALLY faster, SIGNIFICANTLY faster,
this reality won't prevent that from becoming apparent.

So I think this is an OK way to go. People over in the matlab newsgroup
are waiting for somebody to get their hands on a G5.

It's esp. a good test for me, since Matlab is the only thing I do for
which these issues really matter, except on a good day when I'm typing
in MS Word REALLY fast....

Thanks for the reply...
Jim

In article <bdnojm$c81$1@morgoth.sfu.ca>,
erick@sfu.ca (Erick Bryce Wong) wrote:


Well, the author does seem a bit adolescent, but it seems he had dug up
some facts which are echoed in other web sites.

Jim

In article <bdnojm$c81$1@morgoth.sfu.ca>,
erick@sfu.ca (Erick Bryce Wong) wrote:

I don't think it's possible that there could be any trustworthy
comparisons because it's rather like comparing Diesel and gasoline
engine horsepower ratings (as someone else pointed out). They don't
jibe. It's probably not possible to devise a test that that measures the
throughput of the computer that doesn't depend on the accuracy (by which
I mean absolute "sameness") or the acceptibility as being absolutely
equal by the various camps involved in the software used to test the
benchmarks.

In other words NO tests can be devised so that everybody, in both camps
will just accept the results with no one challenging the results on the
basis of the efficiency of the compiler used, the software's
optimization for the platforms under test, etc. So. If one is interested
in speed, one just picks the computer which runs fastest with the
software that one most needs to be as speedy as possible. That's the
ultimate test and in the end, the only one which really matters.

--
George Graves

Jim Kroger <jimkkREMOVEME@umich.edu> wrote:
I think that a confounding factor will be the JIT compiler in Matlab
6.5. Since it is unlikely that Mathworks wrote the compiler with the
G5 architecture in mind, the Matlab performance will be at a greater
disadvantage than normal apps, at least until an updated release is
available (and given the non-Aqua nature of the current Mac OS X port,
and the complete lack of any non-x86 Linux version, it is not clear
how committed Mathworks is to the PowerPC architecture in general).

-- Erick

In article
<jimkkREMOVEME-A15738.19291929062003@visonmassif.rs.itd.umich.edu >,
Jim Kroger <jimkkREMOVEME@umich.edu> wrote:

I think that in either case, it won't really tell you a thing. One might
be better for integer performance and the other for floating point, and
the mix of floating point and integer test run on Matlab's 'Bench' test
might still favor one platform over the other even though ultimately the
"slower" one is really the fastest computer. The two platforms are just
too unlike one another for anything to be infered from the results of
such a test (IMHO, of course).

--
George Graves

In article
<jimkkREMOVEME-E6FFD8.19351529062003@visonmassif.rs.itd.umich.edu >,
Jim Kroger <jimkkREMOVEME@umich.edu> wrote:

an AMD fanboy. He directly quotes AMD benchmarks and then goes a head to
compare but to a mythical Single 2 Ghz G5.

He does not have any original info on his site.

--
Ari Ukkonen

In article <bdnv4c$kc9$1@morgoth.sfu.ca>,
erick@sfu.ca (Erick Bryce Wong) wrote:

(and given the non-Aqua nature of the current Mac OS X port,

Erick,

I've been asking various Linux vs OSX and Mac vs PC questions for a
couple months trying to decide which way to go when I set up my lab.

You may have just said something that trumps everything. Matlab is what
my computer(s) must do, as well as possible, so do you mind if I explore
this a little further?

I did not know Matlab's OSX release did not support Aqua. Do you have
any further information/thoughts on whether Mathworks will release a
full-blown Mac version, and whether the current aqua-less version
suffers for being so?

When I am concerned about getting the speediest machine, I mean
speediest at big (multi-day) Matlab jobs.


Thanks much,
Jim


(ps - hope nobody minds if I for obvious reasons post this to the matlab
group as well)

In article
<gmgraves-FE10E9.16531129062003@newssvr15-ext.news.prodigy.com>,
George Graves <gmgraves@pacbell.net> wrote:



I agree, and then for me it's Matlab, who provide a benchmark program
in bench.

Jim

In article
<jimkkREMOVEME-E6FFD8.19351529062003@visonmassif.rs.itd.umich.edu >,
Jim Kroger <jimkkREMOVEME@umich.edu> wrote:

Show some of these "facts" and show us where they are echoed other than
sites that are referring to his...

--
Alan Baker
Vancouver, British Columbia
"If you raise the ceiling 4 feet, move the fireplace from that wall
to that wall, you'll still only get the full stereophonic effect
if you sit in the bottom of that cupboard."

In article <alangbaker-8AFEF2.19284629062003@news.telus.net>,
Alan Baker <alangbaker@telus.net> wrote:



Nah.....

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003 19:29:19 -0400, Jim Kroger
<jimkkREMOVEME@umich.edu> chose to bless us with the following wisdom:

If Matlab is the app you use the most then it will provide the best
benchmark for you definitely. Its pretty much a YMMV kind of thing.


--

"Whoever is advising them [Democrats] on gun control
should be shot."

Blaine Rummel, spokesman for the Coalition to
Stop Gun Violence.

The only way to get an even somewhat legitimate comparison is to run
some application you want to run fast on both machines. Apache might
serve pages much faster on box 'a' while box 'b' may raytrace much
faster. And even more so, it will come down to what compiler &
options were used on a specific binary in a lot of cases.

The 970 is a very good CPU though.

dave

Oops! Jim Kroger <jimkkREMOVEME@umich.edu> was seen spray-painting on a wall:
Which means that's likely a good benchmark for you.

For someone else, the better benchmark might involve:
- Running a set of transactions through a database;
- Running an X benchmark;
- Some other _relevant_ task, in the eyes of the beholder...
--
(reverse (concatenate 'string "gro.gultn" "@" "enworbbc"))
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/spiritual.html
"Problem solving under linux has never been the circus that it is
under AIX." -- Pete Ehlke in comp.unix.aix

Jim Kroger wrote:
In a way that has only started entertaining flame wars but generated
no useful information, I might point out.

Yes, if it's in c.s.mac.advocacy or c.s.linux.misc. c.soft-sys.matlab
is a good place. Apple's sci tech list is better.

Yes you did, because I told you. It is also clearly stated on
MathWorks web page, where I sent you. This is a piece of Unix
software, identical in all respects to the same software on any other
Unix(like) system. You know that too.

They have already. It is fully native and uses OS X's built in java
and X11.

Only the user interface is not a pretty as an Aqua interface. I never
use the gui anyway. Use emacs and Terminal or Xterm.

Now, for what you really want to know, from the SciTech list, where
you should be asking these questions:

Resent-From: Surajit Nundy <nundys@neuro.duke.edu>
From: Surajit Nundy <nundys@neuro.duke.edu>
Date: Mon Jun 30, 2003 8:09:16 AM US/Pacific
Resent-To: scitech@lists.apple.com
To: beta <beta@mathworks.com>
Subject: G5 benchmarks on MATLAB


I attended WWDC (conference at which Apple unveiled the G5 computer)
and I ran bench (MATLAB's cross-platform benchmarking function) on it
using MATLAB 6.5 R13. The results are below.

The G5 numbers for bench were:


LU FFT ODE Sparse 2-D
3-D
0.3097 1.1282 0.4329 0.5004 0.9657 0.7893

For comparison, the Mathworks supplies the following benchmark numbers
on other machines.

LU FFT ODE Sparse 2-D
3-D
Intel Pentium3 700MHz Laptop 2.0933 2.3500 1.2020 1.8230 1.7290
2.5540
Windows 2000, ATI Mobility
Intel Pentium4 2.0GHz 0.8440 1.6410 0.5620 0.7970 0.9220
0.5940
Windows 2000, Matrox G450
AMD Athlon 600Mhz 1.6819 3.0545 1.9673 2.5462 2.8626
3.8693
Linux, Pentium 3 BLAS, Software OpenGL
AMD Athlon 1800+ Dual 0.6702 1.3188 0.6752 0.9850 0.8665
0.4710
Linux, Matrox G450
HP PA-8700 750MHz 0.5040 2.2458 0.7684 1.3686 1.3578
2.4139
HP-UX, Visualize FX10
Compaq Alpha 21264B 834Mhz 0.8588 0.9543 1.0236 1.2184 1.3656
1.0363
Tru64, PowerStorm 350, Software OpenGL
IBM Power3 450Mhz 0.5956 1.7016 1.1413 1.4862 2.0769
3.0919
AIX, GXT4000P
SGI R12000 400Mhz 1.4594 3.4102 2.7477 2.0578 5.3070
2.0957
IRIX64, V10 graphics
Sun UltraSPARC-II 750Mhz 1.0215 2.7104 1.5564 2.1607 1.8234
3.5861
Solaris, PGX64
Macintosh G4 1.0GHz Dual 0.9688 1.7966 0.7920 1.4270 1.8071
3.1606
OS X, Graphics uses X-windows, OroborOSX and Mesa, GeForce4 MX

Christopher Browne wrote:
For someone else, the better benchmark might involve:

Exactly so......arguing over SPEC figures for the overwhelming majority
of users is just so much mental masturbation. The new Macs are good news
for Mac users, period. If they greatly enhance the user experience for Mac
users, Apple will succeed.........nothing anybody posts on c.s.m.a will change
that market reality.


--
Joseph Crowe