Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!husc6!rice!sun-spots-request From: ray@dsiramd.dsir.govt.nz (Ray Brownrigg) Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun Subject: Colour vs monochrome performance Keywords: Hardware Message-ID: <571@brazos.Rice.edu> Date: 26 Jul 89 20:07:20 GMT Sender: root@rice.edu Organization: Sun-Spots Lines: 20 Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 8, Issue 86, message 10 of 18 1) Does anyone have any measurements of the relative performance of colour vs. monochrome SPARCstations? I have some data which imply that on a colour 3/60, performance improves by a few percent (as much as 8% for the whetstone benchmark) when not running in the suntools environment. This was running *non-graphics* applications (specifically the C and Fortran compilers, and various CPU benchmarks). Thus one might expect to get some of this performance improvement for a monochrome workstation when compared with a colour one. More importantly, of course is the performance of graphics applications. I have heard of someone who selects monochrome operation to obtain noticeably better performance of a graphics application (S-PLUS dynamic graphics on a 3/60). Anyone have any data? 2) Related to this, I presume that the GX graphics accelerator is designed to enhance colour graphics, and so is inappropriate to consider for a monochrome workstation. Anybody care to elucidate? Ray Brownrigg domain: ray@dsiramd.dsir.govt.nz Applied Maths Div, DSIR ACSnet: ray@dsiramd.nz[@munnari] PO Box 1335 System: OLIVETTI/AT&T 3B2/400B+, System V R3.0 Wellington, New Zealand "unx -rules -OK"