Tag Archives: comparison

It’s over 11000!

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Last year I wrote a post comparing the benchmarks of my then-new (2011) MacbookPro against some of the previous Apple computers I had owned. While this is a side story, I recently decided to turn in my Lenovo Windows 7-based laptop at work and repurpose my 2011 MacBook Pro as my work computer. To summarize that decision, I really wanted a computer that worked and was annoyed with the $400 calculator my employer issued me (fodder for another post, later.) The important point is that I decided to continue my lust adoration of Apple products for another year and just recently purchased a base MacBook Pro Retina for my personal computer.

Therefore, I present you the benchmarks 2012 edition!

Ready for some exciting numbers? Ok! :) These numbers were all generated via the Geekbench tool (32-bit).

Last year’s MBP model (which had an Intel SSD installed) scored 10,135 while this year’s Retina MBP model scored 11,050.

This table summarizes the benchmarks for all of my previous MacBook laptops including my newest edition.

Screen-Shot-2012-06-28-at-4.35.38-AM

This graph shows the Geekbench scores of all models over time.

Untitled

Edit

I decoded to benchmark my iPad 3 with Geekbench after writing this post. It scored 754.

Thoughts

First and foremost, the Geekbench score is a little misleading.

I am not an Apple apologist but most of the benefits (technologically speaking) are likely not reflected in the Geekbench score. Display aside, I am pretty sure Geekbench does not measure GPU performance, for instance, which is likely much better with the 2012 model. While the retina MBP feels about the “same” speed-wise the GPU performance seems to be much improved when the resolution is held constant over time.

Second, the screen is amazing**

The retina display on a laptop is quite amazing – it’s like mixing a top-of-the-line 2000 CRT display and a laptop all in one. While the overall brightness is a bit weak sometimes, the display is simply beautiful.

** That is, of course, until you run into most websites and applications which look like they are being served through your 14.4k CompuServe modem. It will be interesting to see how we adapt to super high-res displays, websites especially. Even Apple’s own website has a ton of “non-retina” images which leaves their website looking like… well, crap.

Goodbye, CD
The battery in this new Retina MBP is amazing; I do not lament the loss of my CD drive at all.

Kindle Fire Benchmarks – stock vs. CM7

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Since ripping apart my Fire, literally, I was interested in comparing the performance of my Fire running CyanogenMod 7 versus the Kindle flavor of Android. To get a rough idea I used Quadrant Standard from the Google Market. Here are the results:

  • Stock Kindle Fire OS (6.2.1) – 1,951
  • CyanogenMod 7 (7.2.0-RC0) – 2,819

Continue reading →

Why I switched to Android… and back

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While there are a few major smartphone platforms, a few different figures indicate there are two major platforms set for battle in 2011 – Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS mobile platforms.

Granted, while RIM could pull a turnaround with their tablet and OS this year and Microsoft could make a major push with Windows Phone 7, talking about those platforms would totally throw a wrench in my post here. Plus, I’d posit the Android/iOS comparison is the prominent choice facing smartphone shoppers this year.
Continue reading →

AWS vs. Slicehost

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Now that I have had my blog on AWS for about a month I can finally compare the cost between the two services. All-in-all, while I was highly skeptical of AWS’ more complex pricing scheme, it has turned out to be cheaper than the flat-rate offered by Slicehost. Moreover, I feel like I get more with AWS than Slicehost.

This blog was running on a 256MB slice with Slicehost with a monthly cost of $20. One month of AWS with a 613MB EC2 instance cost $16.72. Interestingly, I could have used just as much bandwidth as I had with my Slicehost plan and still come in at under $20.

Compared to AWS, Slicehost has the following benefits:

  • Pricing plan is easy to figure out
  • Slices are easy to set up and take little know-how
  • Slices are faster (based on my benchmarking)
  • Easier to navigate management UI
  • Very easy DNS support

Compared to Slicehost, AWS has the following benefits:

  • A lot more flexibility in services and how I use them
  • Management console is pretty powerful
  • A ton of instance image (AMI) choices
  • Free monitoring
  • Beter support (free and paid)

Overall, I am really happy with my switch to AWS notwithstanding the fact that, you know, I work for Amazon. I also want to call out the fact that I was really unhappy with the fact that my Slicehost slices were immediately removed when I canceled my service. I expected them to last through the end of the billing period.

Slicehost vs. AWS EC2

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The Reason

Just how fast are various virtual machine (VM) server hosting services? There are many different plans, prices, and feature sets; however, I have not seen many good benchmark comparisons between VM hosting services. To this end, I decided to do a quick comparison of Amazon Web Services EC2 (AWS) and Slicehost, my current choice for hosting.

There are many different metrics I could benchmark and many different ways I could do so. I don’t have a lot of time, so I was lazy and used the byte-unixbench suite to perform my tests. I used the latest available stable version which was 5.1.2.

Author’s note: I know these machines are not exactly the same and that if they were more similar the benchmarks would be more meaningful. That said, I think this data is useful and interesting regardless so I am sharing here.

The VMs

Slicehost – 256 slice – $20/month

  • 1 CPU unit
  • 256mb ram
  • 10gb disk
  • 150GB transfer
  • VM server locations tested – US: Dallas/DFW
  • Gentoo 10.1

AWS – Micro EC2 ~$20/month

  • 1 CPU unit
  • 623 MB ram
  • 15GB disk
  • paid transfer/GB
  • VM server locations tested – US: Virginia AND California
  • Fedora Core 8 (ami-b232d0db)

The Methodology

I installed, compiled and ran the byte-unixbench application on each VM. Each test was run twice to verify the results between tests did not vary beyond 5%. The byte-unixbench platform omitted the graphics tasks since these were text-console-only VMs.

The Results

Slicehost

========================================================================
BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.2)
System: zerowing: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.24-23-xen -- #1 SMP Mon Jan 26 03:09:12 UTC 2009
Machine: x86_64 (AuthenticAMD)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
CPU 0: Quad-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 2350 HE (4011.6 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, AMD MMX, Physical Address Ext, SYSCALL/SYSRET
09:06:47 up 6 days, 21:48,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00; runlevel
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Sun Sep 12 2010 09:06:47 - 09:34:46
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables       16064847.2 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     1742.5 MWIPS (9.6 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                                714.0 lps   (29.9 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks        138066.4 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks           35927.3 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks        365354.4 KBps  (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                              227413.5 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                  57563.5 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                               1853.0 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                   1702.9 lpm   (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                    511.5 lpm   (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                         249555.3 lps   (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   16064847.2   1376.6
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       1742.5    316.8
Execl Throughput                                 43.0        714.0    166.0
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     138066.4    348.7
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0      35927.3    217.1
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0     365354.4    629.9
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     227413.5    182.8
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0      57563.5    143.9
Process Creation                                126.0       1853.0    147.1
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       1702.9    401.6
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        511.5    852.6
System Call Overhead                          15000.0     249555.3    166.4
========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                         309.1

AWS EC2

East (VA)

========================================================================
BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.2)
System: ip-10-205-13-162: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.21.7-2.ec2.v1.2.fc8xen -- #1 SMP Fri Nov 20 19:22:36 EST 2009
Machine: i686 (i386)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5430 @ 2.66GHz (5324.6 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, Intel virtualization
12:23:40 up 3 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.39, 0.19, 0.07; runlevel 4
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Sun Sep 12 2010 12:23:40 - 13:03:30
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables        4035717.2 lps   (10.3 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     2414.8 MWIPS (10.1 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                                151.7 lps   (30.4 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks        122499.4 KBps  (30.7 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks           12271.0 KBps  (30.5 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks        287778.0 KBps  (30.6 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                               39820.5 lps   (10.5 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                  18016.6 lps   (10.8 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                                409.3 lps   (30.9 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                    856.9 lpm   (61.3 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                    114.9 lpm   (62.5 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead                          31315.4 lps   (10.6 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0    4035717.2    345.8
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       2414.8    439.1
Execl Throughput                                 43.0        151.7     35.3
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     122499.4    309.3
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0      12271.0     74.1
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0     287778.0    496.2
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0      39820.5     32.0
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0      18016.6     45.0
Process Creation                                126.0        409.3     32.5
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4        856.9    202.1
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        114.9    191.5
System Call Overhead                          15000.0      31315.4     20.9
========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                         107.2

West (CA)

========================================================================
BYTE UNIX Benchmarks (Version 5.1.2)
System: ip-10-162-183-208: GNU/Linux
OS: GNU/Linux -- 2.6.21.7-2.ec2.v1.2.fc8xen -- #1 SMP Fri Nov 20 19:22:36 EST 2009
Machine: i686 (i386)
Language: en_US.utf8 (charmap="UTF-8", collate="UTF-8")
CPU 0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5430 @ 2.66GHz (5324.2 bogomips)
Hyper-Threading, x86-64, MMX, Physical Address Ext, Intel virtualization
14:30:48 up  1:17,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.28; runlevel 4
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Sun Sep 12 2010 14:30:48 - 15:17:06
1 CPU in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         881153.5 lps   (10.4 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone                     2487.3 MWIPS (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput                                139.6 lps   (30.9 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks         33377.6 KBps  (30.2 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks           14578.0 KBps  (31.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks         70487.5 KBps  (30.7 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput                               55655.4 lps   (10.5 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching                   6614.1 lps   (10.6 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation                                944.2 lps   (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                    449.0 lpm   (61.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                     31.5 lpm   (63.4 s, 2 samples) 
System Call Overhead                          23783.9 lps   (10.4 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0     881153.5     75.5
Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       2487.3    452.2
Execl Throughput                                 43.0        139.6     32.5
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0      33377.6     84.3
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0      14578.0     88.1
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0      70487.5    121.5
Pipe Throughput                               12440.0      55655.4     44.7
Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0       6614.1     16.5
Process Creation                                126.0        944.2     74.9
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4        449.0    105.9
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0         31.5     52.5
System Call Overhead                          15000.0      23783.9     15.9
========
System Benchmarks Index Score                                          64.2

The Conclusion

The hosts I tested, at least, indicate that Slicehost has VMs which perform much better in the byte-unixbench test suite than Amazon EC2 instances. Since the costs are about the same, I’d strongly recommend you evaluate both services carefully if you are looking for a VM. The benchmarks, obviously, can’t tell you everything but I think they shine some light on what you could expect from the service.
Yes, my Slicehost VM is on an underutilized server (likely) while my EC2 instances were on utilized servers; that is why you need to be careful reading into these. That said, however, the benchmarks still show what you can expect. For now.