> The test hardware was a Dell E6410 with a Core i5 CPU running at 750MHz
Is there a reason to downclock your CPU when running benchmarks? Is is trying to reduce the effect of memory stalls?
Is there a reason to downclock your CPU when running benchmarks? Is is trying to reduce the effect of memory stalls?
More seriously: I cannot afford to buy new hardware on a regular basis and heat is what kills hardware. That, and 750MHz is plenty for everything I do.
But then we figured out how to make software slow (all good and appropriate abstractions, I’m sure) and I find myself wishing for faster CPUs again.
I’ve often wondered if it is just that I’ve gotten impatient or if performance has actually not perceptionally improved much over the years.
This is why I like to visit the Living Computer Museum here in Seattle once in a while. It turns out that even very old systems feel snappy at some tasks even by today’s standards.
UI and interactive features are generally fast, but there’s no getting around the slowness of say rendering a fractal.
Kudos to you for this work and a fun and interesting website. It reminds me of the recent “This Old Lisp” posting.
https://danluu.com/keyboard-latency/
"Old computers did it better!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wDtxYeJdzg
But for most people, they don't really have a computation problem, they have a communication/information problem, and I think computers could be made more effective in solving it.