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Re: Computing Speed [message #10834 is a reply to message #10833]

Wed, 18 February 1998 00:00

Joe[1]
Messages: 4
Registered: January 1998

Junior Member

Matthew Hanson wrote:
>
> Greeting all,
> I have been running IDL on a Sparc Station20 for several months. A
> couple months ago we got an Ultra 1 (167MHz, 128MB RAM) and i used
> that
> for a while for our IDL apps. Now i have a Pentium II (300MHz) with
> 128
> MB of RAM.
> Running some computationally intensive surface fitting and FFT's on
> both
> machines i have found, quite surprisingly, that the PC (running NT) is
> whuppin the SUN Station (which costs roughly 6 times the PC).
>
> (We also run a Atmospheric Fortran program - the PC runs this about 8
> times faster than the UNIX)
>
> What has been other people's experience running IDL on PC and UNIX
> based
> machines? How about Macs? Fast, slow. . . ?

I noticed the same thing when I switched from a DEC Alpha 3000/500
to a PPro 200MHz a couple of years ago. The PPro was nearly twice
as fast and most IDL tests and it cost way less than the Alpha
(and I could buy software for NT unlike Digital Unix). Most of
the Alpha folks here have upgraded to PC's. We are now working on
getting rid of Sun's and saving a few hundred thousand dollars in
the process.

I noted a follow up post talking about the Unix boxes performing
better under load. Well that may be true, however, I offer that
the majority of computers out there sit on a desk dedicated to one
user and spend the majority of their time running a screensaver.
It is really hard to justify spending 3 to 10 times more (including
software) for a Unix box over a PC. Mac's are another story ;)

Z

--
Joe Zawodny http://wwwp.exis.net/~zawodny

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[Message index]

		Re: Computing Speed By: sclaflin on Thu, 19 February 1998 00:00
		Re: Computing Speed By: callen on Wed, 18 February 1998 00:00
		Re: Computing Speed By: Joe[1] on Wed, 18 February 1998 00:00
		Re: Computing Speed By: mgs on Tue, 17 February 1998 00:00

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