SGI Performance Comparisons

Default 6.2/6.3/6.5 memory usage given varying RAM resources

Last Change: 08/May/2008

Table 10 shows the amount of memory used by the OS and base user environment, rounded to the nearest MByte. To do this test yourself, login as guest to a default installation and run gmemusage (the figures don't include the memory used by gmemusage, but do include the IconCatalog window that appears by default).

The results do not denote the memory used by IRIX on its own, but rather the amount one would typically see taken up by the system as a whole after one has logged in, ie. this table is supposed to be an indicator of available resources to an every-day user. Note that: O2 uses a large percentage of the available memory because of the UMA architecture (main RAM used for video, etc.), the 6.3 OS disk I used was not a default installation, and the video mode was always 1280x1024 72Hz on each system (32+32 visual on O2). 

O2:

   RAM      6.3   6.5

   256MB:   67    69
   192MB:   62    59
   128MB:   52    54
   64MB:    41    42


Indigo2:

   RAM      6.2   6.5

   384MB:   43    62
   320MB:   42    60
   256MB:   41    59
   192MB:   39    52
   128MB:   33    42
   96MB:    29    35
   64MB:    23    31
   32MB:    18    26


Indy:

   RAM      6.2   6.5

   256MB:   44    54
   192MB:   35    46
   160MB:   32    40
   128MB:   25    36
   96MB:    23    32
   64MB:    20    29
   32MB:    17    26

Table 10: Memory Usage