This isn't a "real" benchmark, but it is my actual application. It is always amusing to see how well benchmarks "predict" performance (even relative performance) on any given application and this is the one I care about most.
On the other hand, I've run the "spinbench" benchmark on lots of systems over the years and have a pretty good idea of how it scales with various things. I enclose below the run results from the dual Athlon (and a few current/recent results from alternative systems).
As one can clearly see, the 1.2 GHz Athlon is the best of the best, so far. As one can also see, On_spin3d tends to scale with CPU clock and only CPU clock within any general processor family. It doesn't care much about memory speed (it scales with CPU clock clear back to the 200 MHz Pentium Pro with plain old EDO memory in the P6 family). It doesn't even care much about cache size (it scales with CPU clock between the Celeron and PIII and PPro across a variety of cache sizes). As one can ALSO see (from the CPU Performance Summary) bogomflops are a pretty damn poor predictor of performance!
This is why one should always benchmark your own application (or get a very good idea of how it scales relative to certain "similar" benchmarks and design parameters) rather than rely on "Joe said that the system gets 1.5 gaziflops". Benchmarks aren't useless, but they are very dangerous predictors of your performance.
Even so, since this is my application, and since Athlons are relatively inexpensive, this is likely a price-performance winner for me personally. Your Mileage May Vary!
#============================================================ # Benchmark run of On_spin3d on host dual.aslab.com (1 at a time) # CPU = 1.2 GHz Athlon, Total RAM = 1 GB DDR (266 MHz) # Time = 17.460user 0.000system 0:17.47elapsed
#============================================================ # Benchmark run of On_spin3d on host dual.aslab.com (2 at a time) # CPU = 1.2 GHz Athlon, Total RAM = 1 GB DDR (266 MHz) # Time = 17.290user 0.010system 0:17.31elapsed # Time = 17.400user 0.010system 0:17.43elapsed
#============================================================ # Benchmark run of On_spin3d on host ganesh (Mark III) # CPU = 933 MHz PIII, Total RAM = 128 MB # Time = 22.64user 0.00system 0:22.74elapsed #============================================================ # Benchmark run of On_spin3d on host b14 (1 at a time # CPU = 933 MHz PIII, Total RAM = 512 RDRAM # Time = 21.50user 0.00system 0:21.50elapsed #============================================================ # Benchmark run of On_spin3d on host b14 (2 at a time) # CPU = 933 MHz PIII, Total RAM = 512 RDRAM # Time = 20.84user 0.00system 0:20.85elapsed #============================================================ # Benchmark run of On_spin3d on host eve # CPU = 800 MHz Athlon Tbird, Total RAM = 64 # Time = 25.870user 0.000system 0:25.895elapsed #============================================================ # Benchmark run of On_spin3d on host qcd2 # CPU = 667 MHz Alpha EV67, Total RAM = 512 MB # Compiler = gcc (old revision)! # Time = 66.08user 6.14system 1:12.25elapsed # Compiler = ccc! # Time = 23.79user 0.00system 0:23.84elapsed #============================================================