Why are sun machines slow?

[fisher99]

Just wondering why a $5k machine is slower in terms of performance then a $400 budget PC.

Heres an example.
I currently own a Sun ultra 10 333, 386mb, 30gb 7200rpm, creator3D.
Running simple apps such as openoffice or netscape, the performance drags. My P233 laptop with 64mb ram can do thing faster.
Is is solaris, the hardware design or what.
However compared to a PC, the ultra's are cooler(temperature and the geekness factor) quiter, and has never crashed randomly. It's doing a good job as a MP3 server.
But I want to use it as a general use machine.
But the speed is halting that progress.

 

[comtec17]

You have to take in mind what you are doing. A SUN Machine is not a desktop PC. Solaris is Java intense when loading a desktop or Netscape and so on. SUN/Unix workstations are not meant to replace the standard PC desktop but to enhance your experience when working with other Unix servers.

 

[mattrumik]

maybe this makes you happy again:
take a 100+ MB zip file and unzip it on your PC and on the SUN; assuming you have Sol8 installed you should get convincing results

as comtec17 said: Sun is good as server, I/O, DB ...
PC is good as a GUI.

matt

 

[Wonboodoo]

Remember what you are doing is CPU intensive (except the MP3 server).
Some points:
1) Your $5K Sun has 333MHz processor. Your $400 budget PC is probably over 1GHz. There's a triple performance increase right there.
2) Windows gives priority to the GUI for CPU execution. That too, it gives priority to the Window you have highlighted over all other windows. Most Unixes (including Solaris) assume the Windows manager and all of it's windows are just another process. It doesn't discriminate between any of the processes it's running and they all get the same share of CPU.

Sun is getting killed by Linux for the very reason you bring up (price/performance). Sun is in deep deep trouble.