[GRLUG] virtual box/cpu speed"

Thu Mar 24 08:00:00 EDT 2011

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 7:46 AM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
> Benchmark results vs part price, based on a website Ben Rousch linked to on
> IRC a month or two ago. I couldn't (and can't) easily grep my logs right
> now, or I'd cite...

Probably this one, especially the Price Performance link:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/common_cpus.html

I just used it 2 days ago to help me put together a really nice 3D CAD
station for work for about $1100.

>
> On Mar 24, 2011 12:49 AM, "Bob Kline" <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Not sure what's meant by the sweet spot
>> being at three processors. Why?
>>
>> A couple of observations. Processors with six
>> CPUs have been available at popular
>> prices for a while now. I take it if the sweet
>> spot is three, then the incremental performance
>> by having six is less than 2X - how much less?
>>
>> The taskset command sets an affinity for a
>> CUP, which I take it is short of actually
>> being able to assign a process to a CPU,
>> and might be that way because one is competing
>> with the Linux scheduler. But where physical
>> CPUs are actually available, isn't taskset a
>> way of taking advantage of an arbitrary number
>> of CPUs? i.e., performance doesn't actually
>> plateau as one adds CPUs? That would be
>> true, if true at all, as long as there are always
>> enough processes that need a CPU.
>>
>> So, again, what does a sweet spot of three
>> CPUs mean?
>>
>> -- Bob
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 11:21 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Sure, there's a speedup with quad-core. Your computer has dozens of
>>> processes, and the ability to service more at the same time reduces
>>> latency.
>>>
>>> Additionally, some server services scale very well to multiple cores.
>>> HTTPd, for example. If you use soft RAID on Linux, and have the
>>> appropriate
>>> kernel option enabled, checksum calculations for RAID modes 4, 5, and 6
>>> will
>>> be split across your cores.
>>>
>>> Desktop apps are catching up, too. If you use Firefox, Flash is kept as a
>>> separate process, a scenario which benifits from more cores (see my note
>>> on
>>> latency near the beginning). If you use Chrome or Chromium, each _tab_ is
>>> a
>>> separate process, which leverages multicore for app-wide performance
>>> improvements.
>>>
>>> These days, hanging at two cores when looking at making a purchase
>>> doesn't
>>> make sense.
>>>
>>> Right now, I believe the price/performance sweet spot is at three cores.
>>> It
>>> will probably be at four by the end of summer.
>>> On Mar 23, 2011 10:25 PM, "west mi" <west.mi420 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Do you think there is a significant speed difference between the dual
>>> > and
>>> > quad core cpu's?
>>> > I havent used anything but single and dual cores.
>>> > I switched several years back to dual core, and did notice a
>>> > significant
>>> > speed up.
>>> >
>>> > Do you think vbox can fully utilize a quad core?
>>> > I hesitate on going to a quad core, because I don't know if today's
>>> software
>>> > can
>>> > fully utilize 4 cores.
>>> >
>>> > thanks,
>>> > Darrin
>>> >
>>> > On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Topher <topher at codeventure.net>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> On Wed, 23 Mar 2011, west mi wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> Anyone have win7 working in vbox?
>>> >>> And does it work good?
>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> >> I'll chime in.
>>> >>
>>> >> I have a 32bit win7 install on my 32bit Arch linux laptop. The host
>>> >> has
>>> 2G
>>> >> of ram and I give one to the vm. I use Photoshop in it and it works
>>> >> just
>>> >> fine.
>>> >>
>>> >> I copied that vm to my 64bit arch host and that went flawlessly. Now
>>> that
>>> >> vm has 2G of its own, and 2 of my 4 processors. Still using photoshop,
>>> but
>>> >> it screams right along. It takes 5-7 seconds to go from power on to
>>> login,
>>> >> and maybe 12 seconds to reboot.
>>> >>
>>> >> I really like VirtualBox.
>>> >>
>>> >> topher
>>> >>
>>> >>
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-- 
 Ben Rousch
    brousch at gmail.com
    http://ishmilok.blogspot.com/
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