Performance differences between 386 Unices

[Wm E. Davidsen Jr]

  I have no doubt that the results Everex quotes so frequently are true,
in that they really ran benchmarks of some nature and got the results
they show. I have not verified that this reflects the number I would get
from another benchmark, or that either is a good predictor of how well
the system would perform under normal load.

  When I benchmark I do measure system call overhead, but only for a few
calls. I use getuid(), since that is unlikely to involve any i/o in a
rational system.

  I also measure file system throughput for single large files. I write
a single file of size 6MB or size of physical memory, whichever is
larger. I then read it back in. I measure the time it takes and get a
write speed and read speed. I find this useful to me, because it
reflects performance on the largest file I am like to copy on a regular
basis on that machine. I realize that caching will help the performance,
but it will in real application, too, so that's fair.

  Using this test of disk performance I find that SCO Xenix has better
performance than any of the V.3 or V.4 variants I've tried.

  Test conditions: unloaded system, multiuser mode, typically 4MB to 8MB
memory. Write performed by a C program looping writing 1k blocks. Time
from the time system call.

  You are the sole judge of how well the results of this test apply to
any productive work you may run on the machine.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen at sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me