These aren't very sceintific tests, but it's interesting to see the difference from processor to processor. The test I'm performing is a builtin pystone benchmark from the test module in python that tests mostly cpu performance in executing python code. It is simply done by doing the following on a *unix box:

from test import pystone

pystone.main(500000)

It will then output the time it took and the pystones/second value. Run it a few times and take the lowest value. Here are the results from a bunch of machines I have access too:

Machine	Time	pystones/second
Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 (2.4 ghz)	7.04	71022.7
Intel Xeon 5110 (1.6 ghz)	10.42	47984.6
Athlon s969 3200+ (2.0 ghz)	12.02	41597.3
Athlon s969 3000+ (1.8 ghz)	13.37	37397.2
AMD Hammer? (1.6 ghz)	14.95	33444.8
AMD Opteron 242 (1.6 ghz)	15.20	32894.7
Intel Pentium 4 (2.4 ghz)	16.53	30248.0
AMD Sempron (1.6 ghz)	17.01	29394.5
Epia M6000 (600 mhz)	74.54	6707.8
Intel Celeron (300 mhz)	100.89	4955.9

As can be seen from the graph the new Core 2 Duo chip I got outperforms my old AMD 64 3000+ by almost double in this test. And it really does make quite a noticeable difference in just day to day use. Well worth the upgrade I would say...

posted at: 00:00 | path: /general | permanent link to this entry