"Jon A. Cruz" wrote:

> Chris C wrote:

>

> > Nieminen Mika <war### [at] cctutfi> wrote:

> >

> > >  I wonder how is this done. Unless unix overclocks the cpu without telling

> > >you... :)

> >

> > It's quite obvious, if you think about it. Any application on a modern OS must

> > share the CPU with - at the very least - the OS, if not other applications. In

> > addition, the application will typically depend on the OS for various services.

> >

> > The more efficient the OS is in keeping out of the application's way, and the

> > more efficiently coded the services it offers are, the more time the

> > application has to do its work.

> >

> > Windows 95/98 are woeful in that respect - they still have chunks of 16-bit

> > code in them, which causes a contect switch every time they're called from

> > 32-bit mode.

> >

> > Windows NT - while a true 32/64-bit OS - still has more overhead than modern

> > unixes.

> >

> > So, a good Unix such as FreeBSD or Linux will typically run (compiler

> > optimisations not considered) the same code on the same hardware faster than

> > Windows.

> >

> > -- Chris

>

> And another factor is how memory and drive space are handled. NTFS was originally

> hyped as not ever needing defragmentation. NT5 is going to include a third-party

> developed defragmenter. Hmmm. Convey anything about their file system design?

>

> Also, the swapping in NT is horrible. Well, OK maybe not that bad, but it can be a

> factor. Especially with a program like PovRay.

>

> And Win9X is another big problem. Any 16-bit process executing will block all

> 32-bit processes until it complets. In windows multimedia development, I've had

> simple test cases where a timer callback for MIDI playing could get a 2100ms

> latency! 2.1 seconds of non-callback just because I happened to be accessing

> ethernet at the time. Ouch!


Hi. I've compared the speeds. On NT and 9x are exactly the same. And with a well
configured kernel, Linux is about 40% faster than NT, and with a bad configured
kernel, it's about 25% faster.

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