On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, John A. Maier wrote:
> Why is the Alpha so much slower that the P-75?
> I realize that the Multia was a bit watered down, as Alphas go; but   
> nearly 1/2 as fast as a P-75?
> 
> What gives?  Is it the compiler or NetBSD or the computer?
> Can someone with more regular Alpha in the 166Mhz range run dry2 and   
> reinstill my faith in the Alpha?

I'd say that the Multia was more than just a bit watered down :) Also,
gcc isn't that hot on the Alpha... but mainly, those Multias are pretty
slow machines.

The only Alpha I have is a 500MHz PC164, and it gets 547645.1
dhrystones/sec (10,000,000 runs, no register, -O2 -mcpu=ev56).

You might try a more floating point intensive benchmark, such as
linpack. Alphas are better at floating point compared to x86 chips,
whereas x86's integer isn't too shabby. (My AMD K6-2 450 has better
integer performance than my Alpha... for example, compiles are noticably
faster. It also gets about 770K dhrystones/sec).
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