Re: UltraSparc Power?
Steve George <stevege@i-way.co.uk> writes:
> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if anyone could compare/contrast the speed/power of an
> UltraSparc 5 270 compared to a PC/Intel?
> I am looking into purchasing a Sun and have found some reasonable prices
> but having never made the jump am a little concerned that I might be
> purchasing a computer thats slower than my current P133/128MB. Sun are
> saying that the 270 would be fine rather than the 333 and that an Ultra
> 5 would fit rather than an Ultra 10. Could anyone comment a little as
> I'm a bit beyond my knowledge and this is quite a big purchase for me?
They are quite little machines, but you could get quite a PC for the
same price (e.g. with SCSI and better graphics). For raw performance,
I would just look at the Spec95 numbers:
CINT95 CFP95
Ultra 5 270 9.17 10.1
Ultra 5 333 14.1 18.3
Intel AL440LX (233) 9.47 7.04
Intel Al440LX (333) 12.8 9.14
Intel SE440BX (400MHz) 15.8 12.4
Per processor speed, Sun always wins on FP and beats Intel on integer
for the higher processor speeds. (FYI, the baseline for Spec95 is a
Sparc10, so the Ultra5 333 is 14.1 times faster on the integer
benchmarks than a Sparc10.)
> It would be specifically for use with Linux, home usage with some 'fun'
> software projects.
> Also, can anyone tell me what the graphics are like under X. The
> ability to only do 24bit seems a little wak. Does anyone think it would
> be worth getting a Ultra 10 and better graphics?
The graphics are fairly bad. Sun put 2M of video memory in the
machine, so you are stuck with 1152x900 in 16-bit mode or 800x600 in
24 bit mode. (You can do higher resolutions in 8-bit mode.)
It shouldn't be too difficult to add Matrox support (you said you
wanted a fun software project :) ). I started to work on the kernel
driver but I couldn't get it working yet. (It sets the resolution
correctly, but doesn't write to the screen - I may take another look
someday.) The best way to proceed would be to fix the console driver
and then work on the X driver (which should be fairly easy) - but if
you could live with X and the console coming out of different
connectors, then you could work on the X driver first.
Steve
dunham@cse.msu.edu
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