wbmw,
As I scanned the article, when Milo originally posted the link, before you posted the link, I actually stopped at the page with Webmark, and and thought to myself that the one test where P4 is clearly ahead is perhaps the most retarded of all benchmarks there (coincidence?)
Please read their explanation of WebMark you linked:
WebMark 2001 is a new benchmark for evaluating Internet performance from a user’s perspective. Internet access is a requirement for most businesses and a driving force behind consumer PC purchases today, yet no comprehensive metric exists for understanding how the client computer and the speed of the connection will affect the overall Internet experience. WebMark will address the need for a broadly deployed, industry standard benchmark that can record and report Internet performance for businesses and consumers alike. The workload of WebMark includes a combination of popular and emerging Internet technologies such as: Adobe Acrobat Reader; Apple QuickTime; Cycore Cult3D; Java; JavaScript; Macromedia Flash; Microsoft Agent; ASP; Windows Media Player; VML; RealNetworks RealAudio and RealVideo; SSL; and XML.
I am sure you realize how stupid this benchmark is. You would have to have data streams an order of magnitude faster that the current peak broadband bandwidth to mildly challenge a low end CPU.
Let's take an example. It was said back a few years ago that to decode DVD completely, and actually outperform dedicated hardware decoders that existed at the time, all you needed was a Pentium II at about 400 MHz. Current CPUs deliver performance 2x (low end) to 4x (high end) of Pii-400.
DVD is decoding is probably more complex than any of the benchmark components they use. The data stream to DVD I believe generally goes up to 500 or 600 KB per second. That is some 5 Mbits per second. For comparison, the peak bandwidth of broadband connections is 1 to 2 Mbit/s. You would need a datastream of DVD equivalent of 10x to 20x of current peak broadband bandwidth to challenge these high end CPUs (P4 2 GHz, Athlon 1.4 GHz).
Of course you know that your connection does not operate at the peak broadband bandwidth, most people don't have broadband, just dial-up. The streams that I have seen on internet are typically 56kbs, 100kbs or 300kbs. Since you need (by my estimate) 50,000kbs to challenge the high end CPU, this benchmark will become relevant when the Internet connections are sped up by factor 100x to 1,000x of what is currently available, and at this time, CPU technology has to stay still.
Joe
PS: Thsi doesn't mean that that this benchmark doesn't tell anything. It tells you the story of P4 vs. Athlon, which is that P4 excels when it needs to deal with a $h*tload of repetitive predictable tasks (decoding, encoding), Athlon excels at dealing with ad-hoc, unpredictable tasks (program logic). Most of us knew this all along. |
