From: wnight@cafe.net (William Night)
Newsgroups: comp.emulators.apple2
Subject: Speed Test Results
Date: 22 Apr 1995 11:19:31 GMT
Organization: Cafe.Net Internet Access System
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Message-ID: <3naoo3$9q1@scipio.cyberstore.ca>
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These are the latest results from SpeedTest 2.2.2

                AplWin2         Sim2e           Apl2em-2        Applemu
Test
CPU-Index       6.472           3.155           8.532           11.47
TEXT-Index      2.629           0.1957          4.470            6.274
VIDEO-Index     1.388           0.1957          3.990            5.271
DISK-Index      3.297           0.4715          5.690            0.9626

I will post the results from all the tests as soon as I get around to
typing it in. These highlight the actual strengths and weaknesses of
each emulator and are usefull in figuring out how fast an emulator will
run a certain class of programs.

The tests used will remain the same for each minor version level. All
patch-level changes 2.2.x etc will just be to the main program and the
results will be the same as all other patch levels with the same major
and minor versions. For example the results for 2.2.2 and 2.2.8 will be
the same, while the results between 2.2.2 and 2.3.2 are not gauranteed
to be.

These results were obtained on a 486dx4/100 with 4-Dos and QEMM loaded,
the AplWin tests were performed in Windows 3.1 with the appropriate
Win32 extensions added. I have a cirrus logic 5426 1MB VLB card
installed.

My system tests out at 195.7 in Sysinfo from Norton. I don't have any
Video benchmarks that are common enough that the results would mean
anything (see #1 below)

A few comments about the results.

1) Until I get a benchmark program for the machine the emulator is
running on that all people involved can agree on, test results do not mean
anything between platforms or even between two of the same type of machines
running at different speeds. The only way the results should be used is to
compare the relative speeds of two emulators on the same machine.

2) The relative speeds compared to a //e do not mean that the emulator
will perform that quickly or slowly on a video game or other
application, for example, Sim2e appears to be very slow, but plays games
quite well on my machine. The tests are very intensive in a specific
area, where most programs are more general in their use of system
resources.

3) These tests aren't completely fair. The CPU tests are for the most
part, but differences in the way an emulator is implemented make certain
things automatically faster or slower. For instance, both Apl2em-2 and
Applemu use IBM text for the apple text screen, therefore all text
operations are handled by the IBM graphics card, both Sim2e and AplWin2
do their own translation of text to graphics (and achieve a much more
realistic looking screen). With the video tests, Applemu will only do
black-and-white high-res graphics. This gives it an unfair advantage
over the others.


Any suggestions for the next version of speed-test or comments or
questions are welcome.

The new version of SpeedTest will be posted in the next message, and will
probably make it's way onto an FTP site soon.