| About Duplicate Results |
| What is a Duplicate Result? |
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A duplicate result occurs when two or more results are submitted on essentially identical hardware and software. There are several reasons why vendors may do this. For example, one vendor may resell systems manufactured by another vendor. The reseller may choose to "rebadge" a TPC result submitted by the original vendor rather than rerun the performance test. Another common scenario is that a vendor sells the same essential system in different form factors, such as rack-mount and free-standing. The vendor may choose to submit the same TPC result for each form factor. |
| Top Lists |
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Duplicate results are completely legitimate within the TPC's rules. And yet, they do present a dilemma for the Top Ten lists. The TPC wants the Top Ten lists to reflect the top ten results in a given category. A result that appears multiple times on a Top Ten list because of duplicates has the effect of reducing number of distinct results shown on the list. To address this issue, duplicate results which appear on any of the Top Ten lists are marked with an asterisk (*) in the Rank column. On the Performance Top Ten lists, a duplicate result always immediately follows the original since the two results will necessarily have the same performance. The results can be thought of as being tied for a particular position on the list. On the Price/Performance Top Ten lists, a duplicate result is not necessarily adjacent to the original result. Since the duplicate result may have a price/performance significantly different than the original, the duplicate may be anywhere on the list or possibly not on the list at all. In practice, though, most duplicate results have a price/performance very similar to the original. With duplicates included on the Top Ten lists, a given list may actually show more than ten results. Original results occupy numbered positions on the list, while duplicates hold positions marked with an asterisk (*). |
