dan wrote:
well wikipedia states
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_ProCompared to RISC microprocessors, the Pentium Pro, when introduced, slightly outperformed the fastest RISC microprocessors on integer performance when running the SPECint95 benchmark,[6] but floating-point performance was significantly lower, half of
some RISC microprocessors.[6] The Pentium Pro's integer performance lead disappeared rapidly, first overtaken by the MIPS Technologies R10000 in January 1996, and then by Digital Equipment Corporation's EV56 variant of the Alpha 21164.[7]
6-^ a b Slater, Michael (13 November 1995). "Intel Boosts Pentium Pro to 200 MHz". Microprocessor Report.
I do wonder how specFP of PowerPC G4 and G5 compare to the Intel equivalents.
Emphasis mine. Sure the Alpha and the MIPS at the time beat the PPro. That doesn't mean the PPro didn't beat the PowerPC.
Some SpecFP 95 numbers of CPUs available at the time:
PPro 150 MHz: 5.42
PowerPC 604 133 MHz: 3.76 Scaled to 150 MHz: 4.42
And that was the "fast" 604, not the much more common 603.
As a point of comparison:
Ultrasparc 1 143 MHz: 7.90 Scaled to 150 MHz: 8.28
The Ultrasparc 1 was faster at FP, but only about 1.5X, not "more than double".
Both the PowerPC and Ultrasparc 1 got beaten at specINT by the PPro, even if scaled to the same MHz.
The PPro actually beat the MIPS on it's release date in FP, but to be fair much better MIPS came out shortly after.
R5000 150 MHz: 4.78
I could not find Spec numbers for the G4, but some SpecFP2000 numbers for a G5 from late 2004: PPC 970 2.2 GHz 2 cores: 1241 Core scaling wouldn't be perfect, but that's about 621 for a single core machine.
It looks good against a P4 of the same speed, except that the P4 is single core: P4 2.2 GHz: 777
But it wasn't competing against the 2.2 GHz P4 in late 2004, it was competing against this (has hyperthreading, but single core): P4 3.4 GHz: 1561
And this single core CPU: Athlon 64 FX-55 2.6 GHz: 1878
I'd say "ass handed to it" is appropriate for the G5 vs x86 of the time