How many FLOPS does the average computer run at?

Answer 1

This varies wildly from processor to processor, and dependant on the actual amount of the computer you're measuring!

CPUs are very complex, and as such, they tend to execute highly specified, complex 32-bit or 64-bit code (and some 128-bit special operations) at a rather slow pace. They're very powerful, due to multithreading and multitasking capabilities. But their overall raw firepower is relatively low.

The average Intel Core i750 can push 7 GFlops maximum without overclocking. The Intel Core2Quad 6.9 GFlops. The AMD Phenom II X4 can push 7.5 GFlops.

Phenom II X3 can push 4.5 GFlops.

Phenom II X2 at 3.3 GFlops. Core2Dup E8200 at 2.9 GFlops.

Celeron M 540 at 0.9 GFlops and Pentium4 at 0.74 GFlops.

(Results from MaxxPi^2)

However other components, such as the GPU, can be much faster. This is because their calculations are simpler and require less degree of accuracy and floating point precision.

An nVidia GeForce 8800GS can pull 264 GFlops, and a GeForce 9800GT clocks in at 336 GFlops.

(Any cards before the 8k series did not have 32-bit floating point precision and thus couldn't be measured in flops)

An ATI HD 2400 series is 56 GFlops. 3400 series is 64 GFlops. A 3690 is 428.8 GFlops and 3870 is 496 GFlops. 4890 is 1360 GFLops (1.36 TFlops)

(Cards before the HD 2400 series didn't have floating point precision, except the 9800 series which sorta did.. kinda)

However, FlOPs are not the best measurement of true speed, only raw execution rate. Actual processor speed is dependant on many other factors such as response time, number of pipelines, pipeline length, cache size, cache latency, cache associativity, instruction sets, register size, number of registers, and more. And as such, Flops should NOT be used as a measurement of CPU performance except when comparing two similar processors (such as identical architecture, like AMD vs. Intel x86 with equal cores)

Ultimately, in CPUs alone, it can range from 0.25 GFlops to 7.5 GFlops in the average consumer computer, and up to 20 GFlops for x86 servers [12-core].

GPUs can vary to as much as 2.5 TFlops or more, and changing weekly, or as little as 10 GFlops.

Total, you can expect a PC, all in all, to be capable of 2 to 2600 GFlops in a modern computer, based on hardware configuration. [Ultra-efficiency systems like 533 MHz VIA systems with onboard Unichrome graphics would get maybe 2 GFlops tops, due to their ultra-low power design)