Quick, overall system performance suite?

[mendieta]

Anandtech article:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

It is a very long article, but very educational. Read it all.

Great Read, I really need an ssd in my new desktop ! I'll wait for prices to drop though!

But that is the point, Disk may be a bottleneck if it is TOO SLOW, but once it is fast enough (or the CPU is slow enough) it doesn't matter anymore.

Hence the compiling test does not scale with disk performance past a certain point.

Agreed!

So, we need to measure disk better, and an alternative for 3D when Unigine fails. Any thoughts, Michael?

[Michael]

So, we need to measure disk better, and an alternative for 3D when Unigine fails. Any thoughts, Michael?

Instead of using Unigine, another alternative could be to just use Nexuiz. But even there that usually runs slow (or not at all) with the Mesa stack.

[grigi]

Nexuiz runs on both the Intel and ATI mesa stack (unbelivably slow on the intel one, but very playable on the mobility x1600), so that is probably a very valid benchmark.

I wonder if we could get a nexuiz download to be smaller than the 600-odd megabyte that the current one is?
Maybe ask the nexuiz guys if they can make a smaller benchmark distribution?

[mendieta]

Nexuiz runs on both the Intel and ATI mesa stack (unbelivably slow on the intel one, but very playable on the mobility x1600), so that is probably a very valid benchmark.

I wonder if we could get a nexuiz download to be smaller than the 600-odd megabyte that the current one is?
Maybe ask the nexuiz guys if they can make a smaller benchmark distribution?

Yes, that's my biggest concern with nexuiz. All we need is a small demo, really.

[mendieta]

We have a test candidate !

http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...-4549-6954-342

If anyone could run their systems against this, it would be great. Just do as below, and please post a link to the results here

phoronix-test-suite benchmark mendieta-4549-6954-342

In particular, I'd like to set a benchmark so we can compute also machine scores according to the algorithm in the first post (we can do it manually for now). Maybe an atom based netbook (I think you need at least 9 inch display for the 3D test to run). Can someone please run in such a system?

It's not the last word (we can still change/modify/improve the test), but here are my thoughts:

• Added fio "server load" test, which does lots of random read/writes all over the place. This should give the disk a run for its money :-) I think it's along the lines of Grigi's suggestion.
  
• Since we have a separate test for the disk, I used openssl for a multicore cpu test. It runs faster, it's a small download, and scales very well with CPU speed and number of processors
  
• For 3D I am using Norsetto-Shadow, because it's a small download. It won't push the newest cards to the limit, but it should run on pretty anything, and should scale with GPU speed and bandwidth (the size of the GPU memory won't matter).I think it's a lot better than glxgears, but small/fast enough to fit the goal of this test.
  
• For 2D I think the gtkperf combobox tests are more stable and scale better than the gtkperf "draw" tests, so I used one of these.

[Michael]

http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...759-5235-18676

Norsetto Shadows didn't work on it. That's really not a good test.

[mendieta]

Thanks for running this!

http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...759-5235-18676

Norsetto Shadows didn't work on it. That's really not a good test.

Ok, why don't we do it the other way around, we find some not too large 3D test that runs in the mini in a reasonable amount of time? Also: I had to symlink libGL.so to libGl.so.1.2 in my machine to be able to compile Norsetto.

What happened with fio? Do you have little space left in the disk?

I wonder why gtkperf was so close in both tests. I thought the Radeon HD 3200 would beat the mini's Intel embedded, maybe it's ok.

[nickgretsky]

There is currently no system-quick suite, but if you propose a suite with what tests to include and such, I would be happy to make it. Or if you run: phoronix-test-suite build-suite you can create the suite and I would be glad to push it upstream.

[kdlucas]

Has anyone considered using UnixBench 5.1.2? Ian Smith updated the older UnixBench in Dec, 2007, and added in some graphics testing as well.

[mo0n_sniper]

Michael: let's summarize where we are, and there are a few questions that you haven't seen above:

• CPU_S = Single Core CPU plus RAM. Test: Scimark2, Composite test [1]
• CPU_M = Multiple Core CPU plus disk. Test: build-apache, one pass [2]
• GUI_2D = 2D Performance. Test: gtkperf draw circles. [3]
• GUI_3D = 3D Perfomance. Test: Unigine Sanctuary [4]

The global test scores would be as follows:

• system-quick = power(CPU_S*CPU_M*GUI_2D*GUI_3D, 1/4)
• system-quick-cli = power(CPU_S*CPU_M, 1/2)
• system-quick-gui = power(GUI_2D*GUI_3D, 1/2)

Note that the score of system-quick is also the geometric mean of the other two. When you run a test, besides the global score we can show the individual scores, like in geekbench: a big number, and details beneath.

Questions:

[1] Does the composite aggregate all the individual tests od scimark2? That would be best.
[2] The regular test for build-apache builds it 3 times, way too long for this. Can we build it just once in this test?
[3] Draw circle may be limited. Can we run all "draw" tests sequentially and aggregate? (maybe not)
[4] What do we do in cases where Unigine fails? (older cards). Maybe we should only show the cpu score in that case.

I think we are getting there. Best!

The direction looks good.
keep it up