OK, I have in my hands (well, next to my desk), these:
A Mac Pro Dual Dual Core 2 (Kentfield?) 3ghz tower, 4gb RAM, GEForce 7300 yadayada
A Dell 690 Dual Dual Core 2 (Xeon 5160) 3ghz tower, 4gb RAM, x1950 ATI yadayada
In days of yore, we’d run ray tracers that ran for days, or mandlebrot sets, or fractel landscapes or whatever, that really showed if you have a faster machine, because insanely intensive stuff ran faster on your new box.
What can I download free, now, that really beats the crap out of a really good workstation, and is very cool?
A quick Google search turned up this software (free 30 day trial) that looks to do the job. I’m not geeky enough to say how comprehensive it is though.
Post your results just for kicks so I can compare it to my little ole homebuild.
Download build install and configure PearPC from source code. It’s a PowerPC emulator. Install MacOS X 10.4.x within the PearPC environment. In that environment, install Basilisk II, a 68K emulator for running older Macintosh operating systems, and install MacOS 8.1 there. Under 8.1, install and configure SoftPC with Windows for Performa, a 68K-native emulation environment for running Windows programs. Now install Photoshop 3.0 and open 500 MB TIFF files and rotate them under Windows.
That ought to make your CPUs whimper.
Better yet: install RoboHelp on the Windows emulation. That will bring your system to its knees no problem.
Or, you could keep going with the emulations:
Install VMWare on the Windows emulation.
Install Linux on one of the VMWare virtual machines (VMs) (this isn’t technically an ‘emulation’, but what the hey).
BTW, after some searching, I just tried Terragen, figuring the free version would provide some CPU-stress. And I must say, I don’t get it – the site shows lovely landscapes, but the downloadable version generates landscapes that look like… well, they look unremarkable. Bad, even. Really bad.
Been there (more or less) done that (kind of thing).
Here’s an Apple ][ emulator) running ProDOS under System 6 running in vMac under System 7.5.3 in Basilisk II under Windows NT under VirtualPC on a ‘WallStreet’ PowerBook with a G4 upgrade card.
I really wanted to run Entry-Level SoftPC under vMac and then run an MSDOS-based Apple II emulator in that, but the 68K-compatible version of vMac won’t run SoftPC, and the version that will is PowerPC only so I can’t run it under Basilisk II.
I do have UAE (the Mac version) and I have diskimages of the AmigaOS installation sw but I never got it to install properly So that one got left out also.
So that one got left out also.