Benchmarking

This article describes various methods of system benchmarking on Linux. It covers CPUs, power usage, RAM, and graphics.

Power usage

sys-power/powertop can guess the computer's current power usage in watts.

root #powertop -d | grep usage

Power usage (ACPI estimate): 15.7W (0.5 hours)

CPU

time

root #time emerge -1 coreutils

real	2m33.483s
user	2m6.310s
sys	0m55.257s

RAM

ramspeed

user $ramspeed -b1 -m4 | grep 4096 && ramspeed -b2 -m4 | grep 4096

INTEGER & WRITING      4096 Kb block: 1948.94 MB/s
INTEGER & READING      4096 Kb block: 5208.66 MB/s

Hard drive

hdparm

root #hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing cached reads:   1076 MB in  2.00 seconds = 538.08 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 242 MB in  3.01 seconds =  80.32 MB/sec

time

user $time bzip2 -c patch-3.3 > patch-3.3.bz2

real	0m13.272s
user	0m7.606s
sys	0m0.054s

user $time eix search

<snip>

real	0m0.363s
user	0m0.066s
sys	0m0.008s

OpenGL

Warsow(Outdated information)

The information in this section is probably outdated. You can help the Gentoo community by verifying and updating this section.

Warsow is great game and decent openGL benchmark. Its based to Qfusion engine which supports Normal Mapping, GLSL shaders (including bump mapping and cel shading) and much more.

Install

Note
The game package is no longer available

root #emerge --ask games-fps/warsow

Configure for benchmarking

Start warsow to create ~/.warsow-1.0 directory.

user $warsow

Install benchmark demo.

user $cd ~/.warsow-1.0

user $mkdir basewsw/demos

user $wget http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/benchmark-files/pts-warsow-10-1.zip

user $unzip pts-warsow-10-1.zip

user $mv pts-demo10.wd15 basewsw/demos/

Benchmark

user $warsow +exec profiles/high+.cfg +timedemo 1 +cg_showFPS 1 +cl_maxfps 999 +cl_checkForUpdate 0 +demo pts-demo10 +next "quit" +r_mode -1

899 frames, 76.4 seconds: 11.8 fps

The possible profiles are high+, high, medium, low, ultralow.

Nexuiz

Install

root #emerge --ask games-fps/nexuiz

Reset default options

If you have played nexuiz you should reset to default options for canonical benchmark results.

user $rm -r ~/.nexuiz/

Benchmark

user $nexuiz-glx -benchmark demos/demo1 -nosound 2>&1 | egrep -e '[0-9]+ frames'

1910 frames 42.0330749 seconds 45.4404063 fps, one-second fps min/avg/max: 35 46 63 (90 seconds)

Xonotic

Install

root #emerge --ask games-fps/xonotic

Reset

If you have played Xonotic you should reset to default options for canonical benchmark results.

user $rm -r ~/.xonotic/

Benchmark

user $xonotic-glx -benchmark demos/the-big-keybench 2>&1 | egrep -e '[0-9]+ frames'

12568 frames 556.0637400 seconds 22.6017255 fps, one-second fps min/avg/max: 19 23 27 (207 seconds)

OpenGL (ES) 2.0 benchmark (glmark2)(Outdated information)

The information in this section is probably outdated. You can help the Gentoo community by verifying and updating this section.

Install

root #layman -a x11

Note
The glmark2 package no longer builds

root #emerge --ask app-benchmarks/glmark2

Now select benchmarking profile by running glmark2 or glmark2-drm, glmark2-es2, glmark2-es2-drm. For wayland you can run glmark2-es2-wayland or glmark2-wayland.

user $glmark2-*

glxgears

Note
glxgears is a very basic OpenGL support test, it is not a real benchmark tool!

Obtain glxgears by emerging x11-apps/mesa-progs.

user $vblank_mode=0 glxgears & sleep 15 ; killall glxgears

5762 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1152.369 FPS
5806 frames in 5.0 seconds = 1161.017 FPS

See also

• PowerTOP — a Linux utility that can monitor and display a system's electrical power usage.

External resources

• http://lbs.sourceforge.net/ - A SourceForge site dedicated to listing benchmark utilities for Linux.