friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) (07/12/89)
Hi folks,
We have a customer with a 3B15 running Sys V Release 3.1,
and we generally like it a lot (I develop on it about half-time)
However, my Everex STEP/25 80385 machine beats the 3B15 for every
benchmark I can find, and this surprises me. While certainly a
25MHz 80386 with a good cache will beat it for CPU-bound tasks, I
find that an ESDI drive on the 386 beats the SMD drive on the
3B15. I suspect that while the SMD interface has much higher
bandwidth, the 14MHz WE32100 CPU just can't push it fast enough.
Does anybody know of things where a 3B15 will beat an
80386 machine (or a 3B2/600 for that matter)? I would really
like to avoid AT&T bashing here, but real experience is welcome
no matter how brutal.
Please email, I'll summarize and post, etc.
Thanks much,
Steve
--
Stephen J. Friedl / V-Systems, Inc. / Santa Ana, CA / +1 714 545 6442
3B2-kind-of-guy / friedl@vsi.com / {attmail, uunet, etc}!vsi!friedl
---> vsi!bang!friedl <-- NEW
"Friends don't let friends run Xenix" - meedw@wells.UUCP (Ed Wells) (07/13/89)
Stephen J. Friedl writes: > We have a customer with a 3B15 running Sys V Release 3.1, > and we generally like it a lot (I develop on it about half-time) > However, my Everex STEP/25 80385 machine beats the 3B15 for every > benchmark I can find, and this surprises me. While certainly a > 25MHz 80386 with a good cache will beat it for CPU-bound tasks, I > find that an ESDI drive on the 386 beats the SMD drive on the > 3B15. I suspect that while the SMD interface has much higher > bandwidth, the 14MHz WE32100 CPU just can't push it fast enough. > > Does anybody know of things where a 3B15 will beat an > 80386 machine (or a 3B2/600 for that matter)? I would really > like to avoid AT&T bashing here, but real experience is welcome > no matter how brutal. I have also done some interesting testing. I have a 16 Mhz cached 80386 clone on the AT bus and a VME/3B system (a 3B on the VME bus made by AT&T). The VME/3B is a 18 Mhz version. Both systems have 4 MB of ram memory at 0 wait states, hard drives with comparible access times. If fact, the VME/3B is 12 mS and the 80386 is about 18 mS. The 80386 is running Xenix and the VME/3B is running System V.3. Althought the operating systems are different, I put something in memory and monitored its in-memory progress while I tied the processors up with other memory/disc activity to try to get an idea as to how its performance was effected. This should have given me a good "processor" test. Neither processor was busy enough to cause swapping. In every case with single tests (while in multi-user mode), the '386 beats the VME/3B, however, on big difference is that the 80386 is known to fall like a rock on performance whereas the VME/3B has a nice gradual slope. I have generally found that the 80386 is normally tied up in mountains of page faults per second when the performance vanishes. I like both systems, however, they both have their pros and cons. ..... Anybody else have similar experiences? I'd like to hear from you if you have. -- ========================================================================= Edward E. Wells Jr., President Voice: (215)-943-6061 Wells Computer Systems Corp., Box 343, Levittown, Pa. 19058 {dsinc,francis,hotps,houxl,lgnp1,mdi386,pebco}!wells!edw