Technology

Veteran dev’s newest computer is ‘200,000 times’ faster than his oldest in custom benchmarks — single-thread Dhrystone performance charted across 25 systems released between 1976 and 2023

Source

Tom's Hardware

Published

Nov 11, 2025

TL;DR

AI Generated

Veteran Windows developer Dave W Plummer conducted a performance test on 25 computers spanning from 1976 to 2023, revealing a 200,000X difference in CPU performance. The benchmark code used for the test is single-threaded, potentially underestimating the performance gap. Plummer's chart includes iconic systems like the DEC PDP-11/34 and Apple Mac Pro with M2 Ultra processor. The benchmark code, available on GitHub, is optimized for older systems but can be compiled for modern platforms. While older systems may perform well in certain tasks, modern systems benefit from advanced instructions like AVX-512 for significant performance gains.

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Veteran dev’s newest computer is ‘200,000 times’ faster than his oldest in custom benchmarks — single-thread Dhrystone performance charted across 25 systems released between 1976 and 2023

TL;DR

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Veteran dev’s newest computer is ‘200,000 times’ faster than his oldest in custom benchmarks — single-thread Dhrystone performance charted across 25 systems released between 1976 and 2023

TL;DR

Similar Articles

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Taiwanese startup FormulaV Line wants to break into US market with two new unique cases — company expects products to become available on Newegg later this year

G.Skill explains how AMD EXPO ULL unlocks additional performance — expanded profiles allow memory makers to include subtiming tweaks for the first time

Huawei-led team claims it post-trained DeepSeek's 1.6-trillion-parameter model — 1,000 Ascend 910C chips used in training