How do we measure up?
|
We wanted to see how our machines measured up to the industry
standards. Running a suite of commonly used Photoshop routines, we were
pleasantly surprised to discover that our systems give the best comparable
systems in the industry, a run for their money. The only system that exhibited
faster performance in any (only three) of the fourteen tests was the four-processor
Daystar Genesis.
The RAID disk sub-system also showed its advantages,
reading and writing files two to four times faster than the competion.
The tests were performed using similar general configurations
on a 25 Megabyte RGB file with one Alpha Channel.
The tables below describes the configuration of each
of the systems as tested and the execution times for each test of the suite.
| System
Specifications |
BirchBark DP5000 | BirchBark DP5000 | BirchBark DP3000 | BirchBark DP4000 | Genesis MP 528 | SGI Indy 4400SC | Intergraph TD-40 |
| CPU | Two 300MHz Pentium® II | Two 300MHz Pentium® II | One 200MHz Pentium® PRO | Two 200MHz Pentium® PRO | Four 132mhz 604's | 175 MHz RISC 4400 | Two 100 MHz Pentium® |
| Total RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB | 128 MB | 256 MB | 128 MB | 128 MB | 192 MB |
| Photoshop Allocation | 75% of RAM | 75% of RAM | 90% of RAM | 90% of RAM | 112 MB | Max (112 MB) | 112 MB |
| Monitor Setting | RGB - 1024 x 768 x 24 bit | ||||||
| Hard Disk | 2.0 Gig x4 RAID0 Stripe Set | 2.0 Gig x43 RAID0 Stripe Set | 2.0 Gig x3 RAID0 Stripe Set | 2.0 Gig x3 RAID0 Stripe Set | 2 Gig | 2 Gig | 2 Gig |
| System Software | Windows NT4.0 | Windows NT4.0 | Windows NT3.51 | Windows NT3.51 | Mac OS 7.5.2 | UNIX (Iris) | Windows NT |
| Photoshop version | 4.0.1 | 3.0.5 | 3.0.5 | 3.0.5 | 3.0.4 | 3.0.0 | 3.0.0 |
| Test File Description |
|
||||||
| Systems--> | BirchBark DP5000
Photoshop 4 |
BirchBark DP5000
Photoshop 3 |
BirchBark DP3000
Photoshop 3 |
BirchBark DP4000
Photoshop 3 |
Genesis MP 528
Photoshop 3 |
SGI Indy 4400SC
Photoshop 3 |
Intergraph TD-40
Photoshop 3 |
| The Tests |
|
||||||
| Open File | 3.1 | 3.7 | 4.1 | 3.1 | 10.7 | 20.0 | 10.1 |
| Rotate 90 bicubic | 1.9 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 3.3 | 4.0 | 8.3 |
| Rotate 3.5 bicubic | 13.0 | 13.4 | 29.0 | 17.5 | 24.4 | 42.0 | 66.9 |
| USM 150,1.5, 3 | 3.22 | 6.3 | 34.9 | 24.1 | 8.5 | 25.0 | 45.8 |
| Apply Curves | <1 | <1 | <1 | <1 | 1.8 | 2.8 | 5.4 |
| RGB to CMYK | 4.3 | 4.4 | 11.5 | 5.6 | 7.1 | 33.0 | 31.9 |
| Gaussian Blur 12 | 5.25 | 6.9 | 6.6 | 3.8 | 11.8 | 28.0 | 34.0 |
| Pinch 75% | 13.8 | 16.22 | 25.2 | 24.2 | 47.6 | 75.0 | 77.0 |
| Polar Coords: rect to polar | 44.1 | 40.0 | 57.7 | 54.5 | 94.3 | 120.0 | 169.0 |
| Dust R=2 Thresh=0 | 13.3 | 15.9 | 30.6 | 13.1 | 15.3 | 80.0 | 53.0 |
| Clouds | 7.0 | 21 | 12.8 | 14.5 | 26.9 | 37.0 | 57.4 |
| Emboss 135,5,150 | 2.4 | 3.1 | 3.5 | 4.2 | 4.7 | 11.0 | 17.0 |
| Find Edges | 5.0 | 7.0 | 16.0 | 9.1 | 4.8 | 27.0 | 16.6 |
| High Pass | 6.2 | 9.5 | 13.9 | 11.5 | 9.0 | 37.0 | 43.0 |
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