FreeBSD 8.0 Benchmarked Against Linux, OpenSolaris

We began our FreeBSD 8.0 testing adventure by using the video-cpu-usage test profile in the Phoronix Test Suite to analyze the CPU usage when playing back a 1080p H.264 video file in MPlayer using X-Video acceleration. To some surprise, OpenSolaris had performed the best with the lowest CPU utilization overall and its peak usage was also the lowest. Both FreeBSD 7.2 and 8.0 had also lower CPU utilization than the two Linux distributions tested (Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12), but they did have a higher peak. Between Fedora and Ubuntu, Fedora 12 performed better for video playback. Again, all operating systems had the NVIDIA 190.42 display driver installed.

Turning to look at the MP3 encoding performance under the BSD, Linux, and OpenSolaris operating systems, Fedora 12 came out in the lead with Ubuntu 9.10 coming in second. There was not a measurable difference in performance between FreeBSD 7.2 and 8.0 when it came to measuring the time to run LAME. The 2010.02 development snapshot of OpenSolaris was the slowest in this test.

Linux won again with Ubuntu 9.10 and Fedora 12 being effectively tied for first with the Ogg encoding performance. This time OpenSolaris came ahead of FreeBSD 7.2/8.0. There was less than a half-second improvement in the encoding time between FreeBSD 7.2 and 8.0.