Alpha owner John McCulloch has posted some benchmarks, produced using RISCOSmark, to csa.hardware. "I got mine yesterday, it is very impressive, in all sorts of ways" says John. "It is very well made, and functioned as expected right out of the box".

The following table shows the results of the Alpha running RISCOSmark with Virtual Risc PC; John's 202Mhz Risc PC is included as a comparison, as well as the results provided on the RISCOSmark web site (note these are run in a less intensive screen mode, which is significant for computers without VRAM, such as the A7000+).

Machine (see below)	Alpha	SA202	SA287	A7000+	A4	Iyonix
Resolution, colour depth	1024x768, 32K		800x600, 256 (A4: 16 cols)
Processor - Looped instructions (cache)	41%	99%	141%	12%	5%	261%
Memory - Multiple register transfer	245%	98%	98%	83%	54%	201%
Rectangle Copy - Graphics acceleration test	169%	1149%	101%	66%	74%	5786%
Icon Plotting - 16 colour sprite with mask	51%	10%	117%	22%	9%	32%
Draw Path - Stroke narrow line	36%	40%	142%	16%	8%	101%
Draw Fill - Plot filled shape	50%	7%	139%	20%	10%	75%
HD Read - Block load 1MB file (Mb/sec)	99	1.8	3.3	1.9	1.3	18.0
HD Write - Block save 1MB file (Mb/sec)	66.3	0.75	3.1	2.0	1.2	13.8
FS Read - Byte stream file in (Kb/sec)	649	820	315	141	74	1101
FS Write - Byte stream file out (Kb/sec)	328	281	306	140	62	1020

Alpha	2.0GHz Celeron (VRPC) RISC OS 4.02	A7000+	48MHz ARM7500FE, RISC OS Select 4.33
SA202	Risc PC SA 202Mhz, RISC OS Select	A4	ARM3, RISC OS 3.1, 16 Colour greyscale
SA287	Risc PC SA 287MHz, RISC OS 4.02	Iyonix	600MHz, RISC OS 5.03, DMA enabled

What do the numbers mean? Well, the percentages compare the machine to a 202Mhz SA Risc PC running RISC OS 4.02 (100%). So 200% would be twice as fast as the "base machine". We haven't had chance to verify these (unofficial) figures, and it's worth remembering that benchmarks don't necessarily reflect use in the real world. Pinches of salt, and all that.

When John visited his dealer he played with a production Omega, and although he didn't run any benchmarks he "would guess it is about twice as fast as RiscPC overall till you use the disc drive, then wow it zooms."

While on the subject of MD and the Omega, Desk (MicroDigital Europe) reveal in their latest newsletter (translated) that MD had been secretly negotiating with Pace prior to Castle's purchase of RISC OS. Desk expect their first bulk shipments of Omegas this week.

Link: Alpha benchmarks