Re: Comparison of Mathematica on Various Computers
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg64346] Re: Comparison of Mathematica on Various Computers
- From: Joseph Gwinn <JoeGwinn at comcast.net>
- Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 03:15:04 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: Gwinn Instruments
- References: <200602090745.CAA19418@smc.vnet.net> <200602100713.CAA15024@smc.vnet.net> <dsk8m8$i9l$1@smc.vnet.net> <dsmueo$da0$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
In article <dsmueo$da0$1 at smc.vnet.net>, albert <awnl at arcor.de> wrote: > Renan wrote: > > > On 2/10/06, fizzy <fizzycist at knology.net> wrote: > >> Can someone explain why AMD does so well on this test and Pentium does so > >> poorly by comparison?? > >> I am planning to buy a new computer and these tests seem to indicate > >> that a Mathematica user should buy an AMD machine. > > > > I'd guess that an Athlon 64 CPU is faster than a Pentium 4 > > (32-bit).(most AMD CPU's that I see in the benchmark are 64-bit) > > hm, I hoped for good answers to that, but my guess is also that it is the > 64-bit vs. 32-bit which explain the difference to a big extent. Obviously > it will be less often necessary to use software arbitrary precision > arithmetic and when you have to it should be a big advantage to be able to > work with words of double size. > > Maybe it would be worth to check whether there are "unfair" tests within the > benchmark like numerics with a precision which can be done in hardware on a > 64-bit processor but needs to be done in software on a 32-bit processor? > This is just another case where just a single number is not enough to > decide whether one or the other computer is faster for what you want to do > with it. So you should probably look into the results for specific parts of > the benchmark if that's possible... Mathematica 5.x uses 64-bit floats for numerical evaluations. It doesn't matter if the quantity requires 64 bits or not. Nor should it, as Mathematica has no way to know such a thing. If the platform does 64-bit arithmetic in hardware, so much the better. > > Does Mathematica support special instructions like SSE? I'm guessing that it does not, because Mathematica is designed to be portable to a wide range of computer platforms. Joe Gwinn
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Re: Comparison of Mathematica on Various Computers
- From: Arturas Acus <acus@itpa.lt>
- Re: Re: Comparison of Mathematica on Various Computers
- References:
- Comparison of Mathematica on Various Computers
- From: karl unterkofler <karl.unterkofler@fhv.at>
- Re: Comparison of Mathematica on Various Computers
- From: "fizzy" <fizzycist@knology.net>
- Comparison of Mathematica on Various Computers