The PDP-11/34 scored a lowly 240 in the Dhrystone 2.2 Benchmark, but a Mac Pro M2 Ultra achieves 47,808,764 in the same single-threaded test.
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(Image credit: Dave Plummer on X ) Veteran Windows dev Dave W Plummer has run a simple performance test on all his computer lab systems and drawn up a fascinating comparison chart. Across his 25 computers, released between 1976 and 2023, he observed a huge 200,000X CPU performance delta. Moreover, it is admitted that the difference could have been much greater if the ancient Dhrystone benchmark performance code wasn’t resolutely single-threaded. The benchmark code also uses simple math, so the gains could be even more pronounced if it tested vectorized code.
I restore old computers, and am always curious how their classic performance compares to modern PCs. Are they a hundred times faster? A thousand? A million?Here are the stats. I wrote a Dhrystone test in K&R C that runs on everything I own, unmodified, from the PDP-11/34… pic.twitter.com/63ooTz2rke November 10, 2025
If you’ve owned several generations of computers over the years, it can be interesting to step back and consider whether the newest is really that much faster than the oldest computer you owned. Veteran Windows dev Dave Plummer may have gone through a similar thought process recently, to drive him to create a code-portable Dhrystone benchmark and complete the tests. However, Plummer is blessed with an extensive computer lab featuring at least 25 computer systems spanning the 1976 vintage DEC PDP-11/34 to the Apple Mac Pro with M2 Ultra processor, released in 2023.
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/veteran-devs-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#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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