FreeBSD 13 BETA Benchmarks - Performance Is Much Better

[nist]

In your dreams.

When I dream I don't use any PC.

[nist]

If you configured your graphical environment yourself, which seems to be necessary on FreeBSD, then you might have done a X11 session with no compositor. It is a faster response because there's no buffering to the video output. A compositor tends to add about one frame of latency.

It isn't the way I prefer to run graphics, but it works OK.

I never use to use compositors.
Moreover, what kind of configuration do you think FreeBSD need? It's the same as Linux.

[Zan Lynx]

I never use to use compositors.
Moreover, what kind of configuration do you think FreeBSD need? It's the same as Linux.

It's been a while but the last time I tried using FreeBSD the binary package system didn't work at all and just broke everything. It seemed impossible to get it working with anything mixed in from a ports source build. So I removed everything but the base system and used ports to build everything else from source.

[k1e0x]

Awesome. I got interested in FBSD due to TrueNAS, but got put off by how backwards Bhyve is compared to KVM, and how barebones energy control is on it compared to Linux. Then I looked how many people actually work on it, and I have nothing but respect that so much gets done with so little manpower. The HWP support is very much welcome and should fix my biggest fear in using it (well, once TrueNAS rebases on top of FBSD13)

Bhyve is a different type of hypervisor than KVM (or ESXi) in that it by design is just run from the command line.. there is no qemu emulation and no top layer, no virsh etc. From other things out there in the field it is very simplified and gives it a place in my eyes. it's a nice, light, simple, fast hypervisor. It's not right for everything but it has a place.

I did see patches for bhyve (and zfs zvol) support in libvirt.. but they seem to need some work. If they worked in libvirt tho you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between KVM and Bhyve really.

Also FreeBSD has power control??? hehe (it has a server focus so.. power doesn't get a lot of attention, sorry)

[k1e0x]

Cool, really cool. Intersting what really brough this?

Thought I'd add it does have all the new ZFS unified code in it, perhaps we are seeing a performance boost there as well.

[k1e0x]

What I was getting at is that on OpenBSD one can't run Linux with graphics nor Windows anything and since the OS doesn't support 32bit on 64 and therefore wine and the linuxemulator was stripped out in version 6.0 good luck running most games and/or chrome for streaming media. FreeBSD finally got Chrome working via Linux jails so you can run some things that only work in full Chrome. I feel like OpenBSD would be my daily driver if I could play games on it and stream content from streaming platforms but right now I triple boot windows 10, Freebsd 12.x, and OpenBSD. I am truly in awe of what the r/openBSD_gaming community has been able to do on such a gaming crippled OS.

Yes, and I like the OS in general. I like FreeBSD's simplicity compared to Linux.. (you install it and it's entire top fits in one terminal screen, simply doing less stuff is a huge value and win)

However, It's best to view it as a server / workstation OS.. I don't know if it will ever get the desktop focus or not, and it isn't a huge deal if it doesn't, but it's not there yet for sure. Just use Ubuntu / MacOS if you want Unix on the desktop.. you'll be happier using that to connect to your armada of FreeBSD servers.

OpenBSD on the other hand is pretty much a research OS. It's value comes from showing other OS's the right way to do security. It has some applicable use (firewall vpn etc) but due to their policies of "rip it out if it's insecure" it makes it quite difficult to ever use in production. I may be one of the few people here that ever has used it in production, I know the pains.. And.. I wouldn't suggest they ever change that policy. We need OpenBSD to show us the right way.

[antnythr]

Love seeing the positive FreeBSD news

[areilly]

Let me play the devil's advocate a little - are you sure that for example a game benchmark on Linux+Nouveau vs Linux+NVIDIA should give the same results, because the hardware is the same and the tested binary is the same? If not, why and why doesn't that reason apply for this article too?

I've picked this specific example because I suppose that the P-State support could provide this performance increase (it's similar to the blocked re-clocking on Nouveau, which is the #1 reason for Nouveau being so slow). On the other hand, I originally came here with a question similar to yours - would big name companies use FreeBSD if it was running on ~50% of other platforms performance, would the added stability be worth it anyway?

I agree that's a possibility. If it's true though, then it's a pretty sorry indictment of the way new processors are going. They used to be able to look after their clocks and thermals all on their own. That's what the secret "system management core" started out doing, after all. I know that older (most) Arm SoCs had the main processors running CPU frequency duties, but that was never the case in x86-land. These benchmarks are running on fancy industrial fan-less kit. Perhaps there's some new magic involved in enabling boost frequencies. The rated frequencies (1.99GHz and 2.0GHz respectively for the Xeon and i7) are certainly not the maximum frequency of either CPU.

My own FreeBSD-12 system is running with all of the CPU P-states disabled in the BIOS, at a nice steady 3GHz, because allowing the others would let it get into a state where it would go to sleep and not wake up (it's an AMD 1700 or there abouts: an early model). Modern computer systems all barely work.

[Space Heater]

Cool, really cool. Intersting what really brough this?

Given how conservative FreeBSD code base is I doubt it have anything to do with kernel or core system libraries. So that would leave only newer clang as a fix.

There are always a lot of core changes to FreeBSD between major releases (in this case 12.2 -> 13.0). For example FreeBSD 13.0 moved to using the upstream OpenZFS (formerly ZoL), and Netflix's NUMA optimizations should also be in 13.0-RELEASE.

You can also look at the quarterly status reports for details on other changes.

[k1e0x]

My own FreeBSD-12 system is running with all of the CPU P-states disabled in the BIOS, at a nice steady 3GHz, because allowing the others would let it get into a state where it would go to sleep and not wake up (it's an AMD 1700 or there abouts: an early model). Modern computer systems all barely work.

I've used GhostBSD on the same processor, I had no real issues with pstates, the processor would scale.. but I would never allow (or expect) a FreeBSD system to sleep. crazy talk. On or Off.

The very very early 1700's though are broken. I had to RMA mine to AMD with due to linux issues.