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Tomorrow is the K-SLUG installfest, and in the interest of being prepared to assist users with installing Gentoo using a package CD, I slapped an AMD64 Gentoo install on and used the package CD to install xfce, screen, vim, and a host of other goodies. All of this in under 2 hours while watching a movie. Not bad.

Since it’s the only benchmarking utility that I’ve used, I decided to run nbench in both the 32-bit and 64-bit environments. Now, I’m not claiming that nbench is reliable or a good utility to benchmark with, but it’s what I had available, so it’s what I used. Also, notice that the 64-bit environment used gcc 3.4 and a 2.6.12 kernel, whereas the 32-bit environment used gcc 3.3 and a 2.6.14 kernel. I’m not sure how this should all affect performance.

64-bit:

TEST                : Iterations/sec.  : Old Index   : New Index
                    :                  : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT        :          1738.8  :      44.59  :      14.64
STRING SORT         :          152.88  :      68.31  :      10.57
BITFIELD            :      3.9006e+08  :      66.91  :      13.98
FP EMULATION        :          114.76  :      55.07  :      12.71
FOURIER             :           15639  :      17.79  :       9.99
ASSIGNMENT          :           21.09  :      80.25  :      20.82
IDEA                :          2652.7  :      40.57  :      12.05
HUFFMAN             :            1402  :      38.88  :      12.41
NEURAL NET          :          24.444  :      39.27  :      16.52
LU DECOMPOSITION    :          928.64  :      48.11  :      34.74
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU                 : AuthenticAMD AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3100+ 1809MHz
L2 Cache            : 256 KB
OS                  : Linux 2.6.12-gentoo-r6
C compiler          : 3.4.3
libc                :
MEMORY INDEX        : 14.543
INTEGER INDEX       : 12.916
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 17.896
Baseline (LINUX)    : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38

32-bit:

TEST                : Iterations/sec.  : Old Index   : New Index
                    :                  : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT        :          1590.7  :      40.80  :      13.40
STRING SORT         :          103.92  :      46.43  :       7.19
BITFIELD            :      2.9855e+08  :      51.21  :      10.70
FP EMULATION        :          86.965  :      41.73  :       9.63
FOURIER             :           16305  :      18.54  :      10.42
ASSIGNMENT          :          20.669  :      78.65  :      20.40
IDEA                :          2151.4  :      32.90  :       9.77
HUFFMAN             :            1105  :      30.64  :       9.78
NEURAL NET          :           23.35  :      37.51  :      15.78
LU DECOMPOSITION    :          946.92  :      49.06  :      35.42
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU                 : AuthenticAMD AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3100+ 1809MHz
L2 Cache            : 256 KB
OS                  : Linux 2.6.14-git13
C compiler          : 3.3.6
libc                :
MEMORY INDEX        : 11.618
INTEGER INDEX       : 10.538
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 17.989
Baseline (LINUX)    : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38

There seems to be a modest overall gain with the 64-bit environment, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to justify the hassles of dealing with 64-bits on a desktop yet.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2005 at 2:46 am and is filed under computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.