A Speed & Power Consumption Benchmark and Comparision for Pegasos Efika, WinUAE and Amiga

Remarks and brief conclusion:

Mac mini G4/1500: The Mac mini with MorphOS outperforms all other systems by far. In regard to the subjective (perceived) speed and OS reaction times I have never experienced something comparable. But also on heavy computing tasks the Mac mini is still in a good position. In general it is a very different league than the 68k based systems. The gap is obvious and huge. Also the emulated systems cannot compete in smothness and snapiness. Altivec accelerated software benfits even more. The system can compete with current low end x86 based systems (e.g. Intel Atom) pretty well. For example HD video replay works up to 720p w/o stressing the system too much, but reaches its limit at 1080. Pegasos1: Perceived the Pegasos1 feels much faster and smoother than WinUAE on the PIII or the 2.4 Ghz Celeron. The latter both feel surprisingly similar. MorphOS on the Pegasos seems much, much faster than OS3.9 under UAE - it pretty much benefits from being native and nothing has to be emulatd. With MorphOS 2.x the overall performance has been increased once more. With Layers3D the system gfx got faster and more powerful. In comparison to the Mac mini the Pegasos1 still feels conveniently fast and keeps a good system for many of the everyday tasks like webbrowsing, listening to music or editing texts. For current market prices it is a pretty good catch. Since the cpu needs no active cooling a 100% silent system can easily be build on basis of the Pegasos1. AmigaPPC: MorphOS on the Blizzard is surprisingly fast! 68k applications are faster by factors than with the original 68040 processor and reachs the performance level of a 68060. Sincee the OS is PPC native the average overall perfromance is similar (or even a bit above) with teh overall performance of the WinUAE PIII setup. Efika 5200B: The Efika yields about two to four times the performance of the Blizzard setup. Subjective the Efika is well between the Pegasos and the Blizzard and feels faster than both WinUAE setups. The Efika RAM interface does at least 137MB/s writing and 127 MB/s reading, while the Pegasos1 (April1) does 176 MB/s reading and 71MB writing (memtest, MorphOS). The Efika is fast enough for many tasks: Surfing the web is usually convenient (e.g. google maps works fairly okay, for sites requireing lots of flash teh processor speed is not enough though), movies up to DVD resolution are fluently replayed (depends on the codec though), pdfs are rendered fast enough for a fluent work flow. It is good though not to use the most demanding MUI skins to avoid even slightest slowdowns of teh GUI and save available RAM. Layers3Dkeeps the system snappy even under heavy load. Since the MorphOS release V2.3 the speed got increased once again, usb works pretty stable now and the RAM usage got minimized (MorphOS 2.5 will even lower the RAM footprint once again, due to freeing gfx mem from the RAM and holding it exclusively in VRAM). A downside of the 603e Core is the lack of a 2nd level cache. Especially teh 68k JIT emulation gets hit by this, hence ppc native code benefits on the 603e even more than on the G3/G4. Electric power uptake: the uptake of the Pegasos 1 and des Mac mini are similar and generally pretty low for desktop systems - while typical usage teh uptake is ranges at 30 W (Mac mini) or 35-40W (Pegasos 1). Thus, evenn long uptimes get neither desaterous for teh wallet nor the environment. Under maximum load the Mac mini peaks at 50W, the Pegasos1 at about 55W. Wile at maximum load the Mac mini delivers about three times the computing power. The usage of a low power 2.5" harddsik by the Mac mini adds to the positive effect of teh generally low uptake. The Efika setup has an power uptake lesser than 15W w/o display. It can nicely be used as a low energy jukebox and/or small server. With the display in operartion the uptake stays usually below 30W and thus, at 3/4 of the typical uptake of the tested laptop but a bit above the netbook. The display of the Efika delivers teh best quality of these three devices. Withou the display the power uptake of the Efika is at about 2/3 of the uptake of the Vaio laptop w/o display and at about 40% of the uptake of the Pegasos 1. The Intel Atom based netbook delivers similar results. A board based on the Freescale MPC5121 could reduce the power uptake significantly to below 10W, while offering a increased system performance. A board based on the Freescale MPC 8610 could be a good basis for a very power saving system which would deliver performance above the Mac mini. At 1330 MHz an uptake below 20W at typical usage would be expected. Currently the Mac mini offers the best ratio of computing power/Watt. For non demanding computing tasks the Efika with an uptake less than 15W offers a nice alternative.

©[ujb] 2010
last change: 12-12-2015

back to index page