SUN SPARCstation 1 vs. DEC 3100

[Ian Evans]

In article <2072 at trantor.harris-atd.com>, mlindsey at x102c.harris-atd.com (Lindsey MS 04396) writes:
> Below are price comparisons between a similarly configured DEC 3100 and
> SUN SPARCstation 1.  I found the price difference amazing.  A monochrome
> configuration was $8,061 more for DEC even though the DEC didn't even have
> a floppy drive.  For color, SUN was $10,561 cheaper (again the DEC machine
> didn't have a floppy drive).  Even with a GX graphics accelerator the SUN
> machine was $6,061 cheaper than a DEC 3100 with no floppy and no graphics
> accelerator.

[Price comparisons deleted to save space]

Your comparisons show that the DECstation is between 30% and 55% more
expensive than the SPARCstation 1.  However you don't mention the
performance comparison.  I have conducted some performance experiments
using the real live applications that I run every day, and NOT just
benchmarks like LINPACK and WHETSTONE.  They show that the DECstation is
between 30% and 100% faster than the SPARCstation, with a harmonic mean of
about 50% faster (both for single and double precision computations).
Thus the price performance appears to be about the same for both systems
for the sorts of things that I do (mostly number crunching, and a
relatively small amount of graphics).  Your price comparison is
meaningless without a performance comparison for the sorts of things you
want the machine to do.  Note that users who do different things will get
different price/per- formance comparisons.  For heavy number crunching,
the DECstation seems to be better, while the SPARCstation appears to
provide better graphics performance (except when using X, which is
terribly slow in comparison!).

Ian Evans                                   internet:   evans at scivax.stsci.edu
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