While swapping motherboards in and out on `box', 
to see if a different PSU would solve the instability
on the nforce board, various tests were made of
performance on each board with other components identical.
There's little difference to be noted, but if anything
the nforce is a little quicker.

2006-02-17

All times are given in seconds, with the nforce4 board
first then the viak8t890.

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glxgears (dependent almost entirely on GPU)

20120 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4024.000 FPS (initial size)
1160 frames in 5.0 seconds = 232.000 FPS (maximised)

20122 frames in 5.0 seconds = 4024.400 FPS
1160 frames in 5.0 seconds = 232.000 FPS

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transcode a video, using mencoder and lavc
two runs on nforce, then two on via:

real    54.9 55.0    57.7 56.6
user    53.9 53.9    55.1 55.2
sys     0.36 0.39    0.45 0.45

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open "comsol": 1st time to get from disk, 
second to do cached startup:

9s, 5s   nforce
8s, 6s   via

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comsol: open example file em->pacemakerelectrode
(starting from an already open comsol window)
?, 15s, ? , 12s   nforce
15s, 15s, 14s     via   <-- never as quick as 12s

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open "mlx" (matlab):  same idea as comsol test
13s, 5s  nforce
13s, 5s  via

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kmail 
?, 5sish nforce
?, 13s!! via  (repeatable)  <--- !!

[ strange:  could be a change in kmail, e.g. it's
  cross about changes in configs;  or, note the
  difference in network cards and drivers -- could
  this really be so immensely important for the 
  reading of many small files over NFS? ]
  
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konqueror web
?, 0.5+0.5s (appear, ready) nforce
?, 0.5+0.5 -- 1+1s (appear, ready)  <-- hard to measure:  seems slower on via

                              nforce via
Booting: 
power-on to grub:		 16  20 (longer POST check)
kernelbooting:			  6   5 (meas.err?)
rc-scripts:			 42  50 (diff hardware?)
startx--startuserlogin:		 13  12
startuser--loggedinkde:		 16  16

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Graphics (desktop) sluggishness

can do ls -lR / in 4 consoles (as user) on one desktop and still not feel
it dragging (though they're slow to Ctrl-C):  this is the same for 
both boards