Postgres is faster on Windows XP (on AMD only)

(an e-mail i wrote to my peers last july 23, guess it's better to post this on blog. these are all out-of-the-box installation)



this is my latest benchmarkings from fresh installation i performed last saturday, i use the same drive on all installation. Western Digital 160 GB.

Core 2 Duo E6700 2.67 GHz vs AMD64 3400+ 2.0 GHz

select * from technicalsheet_color order by techsheetid, recid limit 100:

c2d 2.67 GHz + ubuntu64 + postgresql = 6 seconds
amd64 2.0 GHz + ubuntu64 + postgresql = 9 seconds

c2d 2.67 GHz + winxp32 + postgresql = 12 seconds
amd64 2.0 GHz + winxp32 + postgresql = 8 seconds


as you can gloss from the results, the speed differences are not symmetrical, it is hard to draw one-sweeping-generalization™ conclusion ;-)

PostgreSQL on laptops doesn't bodes well for Windows XP users, because most of laptops are Core 2 Duo than AMD64/Turion. PostgreSQL runs two times faster on Core 2 Duo if you only use Linux.


upsides:
* PostgreSQL on Ubuntu64 is faster on Core 2 Duo
* PostgreSQL on WinXP32 is faster on AMD64


downsides:
* PostgreSQL on WinXP32 slow down miserably on Core 2 Duo
* on AMD64, PostgreSQL is only marginally faster on WinXP32 than its Ubuntu64 counterpart


it is interesting to note that Dave Cutler (Windows NT,2000,XP,Vista,2003 chief engineer) have work closely/co-developed AMD64 with AMD, this could explain why Windows runs marginally better on AMD64 than Core 2 Duo.
and also, maybe AMD64 or Athlon X2 runs better than Core 2 Duo, i haven't yet pitted AMD's 2.6 GHz against Core 2 Duo 2.67 GHz :-)


on Core 2 Duo, WinXP to Ubuntu gains two-fold speed increase, from 12 seconds to 6 seconds. at first, i thought AMD64 WinXP to Ubuntu would gain the same twofold speed increase (8 to 4 seconds), but as i benchmarked it, it wasn't.
AMD64 seems was designed to run Windows well, Microsoft's Dave Cutler and AMD collaboration at its best :-)






just draw your own conclusions :-)

i'll just choose the best combo of processor + os + database




p.s.


these are the results without the ordering:

select * from technicalsheet_color limit 100:

c2d 2.67 GHz + ubuntu64 + postgresql = 11 seconds
amd64 2.0 GHz + ubuntu64 + postgresql = 16 seconds


c2d 2.67 GHz + winxp32 + postgresql = 19 seconds
amd64 2.0 GHz + winxp32 + postgresql = 13 seconds