Re: MacOS vs. Windows PC for Mathematica?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg13897] Re: MacOS vs. Windows PC for Mathematica?
- From: Josip Loncaric <josip at icase.edu>
- Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 02:55:34 -0400
- Organization: ICASE
- References: <6s5l6q$c84@smc.vnet.net> <6s8ed9$ijr@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Harald Giese wrote: > > ... > sometimes I am also thinking about a switch, but to Linux, because > Mathematica runs there twice as fast as on a Mac or NT: "Speed > comparison of Mathematica on various machines": > http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~stst/mathstef2.html) > ... Indeed, this speed comparison in Stefan Steinhaus' benchmark shows a dramatic difference between Linux and NT. For example, the overall performance index for Pentium Pro 200 MHz machines is listed as follows (lower is better): Linux 2.0.33 252.110 NT 4.0 623.782 This huge 2.5:1 advantage of Linux is typical for Pentium based systems in Stefan's tests. HOWEVER, there is NO hint of ANY Linux advantage in another benchmark by Karl Unterkofler (see http://fampm201.tu-graz.ac.at/karl/timings30.html data). Why this inconsistency? The benchmarks are rather different, and Stefan's requires more memory to run. Could this be the main source of NT's lackluster performance? There is a bug fix for "Out of memory" errors reported by Mathematica 3.0 and 3.0.1 under NT (see http://www.wolfram.com/support/Systems/Windows/OutOfMemory.html page). Were Stefan's results affected by this in any way? I do not know if this NT performance penalty is unavoidable (I use UNIX and Mac versions of Mathematica). If anyone can shed some light on this question, please do so. -- Dr. Josip Loncaric, Senior Staff Scientist ICASE, M/S 403, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681-2199 Phone: (757) 864-2192 mailto:josip at icase.edu Fax: (757) 864-6134 http://www.icase.edu/~josip/