Doug,

This is really interesting!
<snip>
> 300 MHz VAResearch Pentium II, Windows NT, ATI 3D RAGE IIC AGP card
>                         8-bit Sqk:    16-bit Sqk:   32-bit Sqk:
> Host OS = 8-bit:        951 941       5257 5258     5548 5538
> Host OS = 16-bit:       931 931       1282 1272     3395 3375
> Host OS = 24-bit:       991 982       1682 1672     3315 3355
> Host OS = "True Color": 1101 1112     1552 1553     1632 1612
> 
> 
> 180 MHz Toshiba Pentium I laptop, Windows 95, Chips & Tech. 65554 PCI
> board
>                         8-bit Sqk:    16-bit Sqk:   32-bit Sqk:
> Host OS = 8-bit:        6829 6762     8574 8924     11489 11521
> Host OS = 16-bit:       7432 7441     9282 9265     11523 11428
> Host OS = 24-bit:       8162 8128     10184 10143   14288 14305
<snap>

I think that the major speed difference you're seeing is mainly due to the
different graphics drivers (e.g., ATI always had relatively good drivers).
This can make a huge difference since Squeak uses just one function and if
this function isn't properly implemented by the card Windows falls back into
some weird conversion code. It might be interesting to see how the values
look if you *don't* draw this stuff actually onto the display (e.g., the
'raw' internal morphic drawing speed).

  Andreas
--
+===== Andreas Raab ========= (andreasr at wdi.disney.com) ==+
| Walt Disney Imagineering        Phone: +1 818 544 5016  I
I Glendale, CA                    Fax:   +1 818 544 4544  I
+======< http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~raab >========+


> ----------
> From: 	Doug Way
> Reply To: 	squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
> Sent: 	Thursday, October 28, 1999 11:06 PM
> To: 	Squeak
> Cc: 	recipient list not shown
> Subject: 	Graphics Benchmark (was Re: Squeak on SPARClassic, other
> speedquestions.)
> 
> <<File: simpleGraphicsBenchmark.st>>
> 
> On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, John Duncan wrote:
> 
> > Also, I was wondering.  On my P233 ThinkPad, Morphic is a dog,
> > especially in 2.6.  I heard people discussing the high speed of
> > PMacSqueak and the dogginess of IntelSqueak.  The 'lassic, being a
> > big-endian machine with tons of registers, is supposed to have an
> > architectural advantage for Squeak over the Intels, but is this enough
> > to make Morphic fast at low clock rates?
> 
> Often, if Morphic "feels" slow, the kind of graphics card you have or your
> screen depth setting will matter as much or more than the type of CPU.
> The benchmarks that come with Squeak measure message send and bytecode
> speed, so they won't help you with figuring out graphics card/screen depth
> issues.
> 
> So, I whipped up a simple benchmark which attempts to measure graphics
> performance in Squeak.  (See the bottom of this message.  Run "Morph
> simpleGraphicsBenchmark".)
> 
> It's fairly brain-dead... it just opens a workspace at a fixed size, and
> scrolls a bunch of text up and down 20 times.  (It does temporarily
> disable inboard scrollbars, which can be a factor.)  The results seem
> fairly consistent.  Having a much larger or smaller default font makes a
> slight difference in the outcome (though not much), so it's best to run
> this with the default font settings.
> 
> The benchmark mostly exercises the DisplayScreen primitive, plus some
> character scanning code.
> 
> Fancier benchmarks ("speed tests" might be a better term) could probably
> be created which measure the performance of common Morphic operations such
> as resizing windows (in non-fastDrag mode)...
> 
> Here are some results from some tests I ran.  (I ran 2 tests per screen
> depth combination.)  Mostly, you just want to pay attention to the values
> where Squeak's screen depth matches the host OS's screen depth, although
> the other values can be interesting. (e.g., on the NT box, you pay a huge
> penalty if the two don't match, but it's not as big on deal on the other
> platforms.)
> 
> Anyway, I find Morphic very usable at a value of 1000, reasonably usable
> at around 3000, and pretty tough to use above 7000 or so.
> 
> - Doug Way
>   EAI/Transom Technogies, Ann Arbor, MI
>   dway at eai.com, dway at mat.net
>   http://www.transom.com
> 
> 
> 
> 266 MHz Apple iMac:
>                         8-bit Sqk:    16-bit Sqk:   32-bit Sqk:
> Host OS = 8-bit:        1512 1510     2287 2282     3123 3138
> Host OS = 16-bit:       2321 2330     2023 2027     3165 3149
> Host OS = 24-bit:       3049 3024     2959 2978     3075 3044
> 
> 
> 300 MHz Apple iBook:
>                         8-bit Sqk:    16-bit Sqk:   32-bit Sqk:
> Host OS = 8-bit:        1226 1223     2033 2022     2870 2883
> Host OS = 16-bit:       2247 2249     1621 1616     2752 2721
> Host OS = 24-bit:       3431 3425     1983 1979     2586 2542
> 
> 
> 300 MHz VAResearch Pentium II, Windows NT, ATI 3D RAGE IIC AGP card
>                         8-bit Sqk:    16-bit Sqk:   32-bit Sqk:
> Host OS = 8-bit:        951 941       5257 5258     5548 5538
> Host OS = 16-bit:       931 931       1282 1272     3395 3375
> Host OS = 24-bit:       991 982       1682 1672     3315 3355
> Host OS = "True Color": 1101 1112     1552 1553     1632 1612
> 
> 
> 180 MHz Toshiba Pentium I laptop, Windows 95, Chips & Tech. 65554 PCI
> board
>                         8-bit Sqk:    16-bit Sqk:   32-bit Sqk:
> Host OS = 8-bit:        6829 6762     8574 8924     11489 11521
> Host OS = 16-bit:       7432 7441     9282 9265     11523 11428
> Host OS = 24-bit:       8162 8128     10184 10143   14288 14305
> 
> 
> 
>