Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 Benchmarks: Is Ubuntu Getting Slower?

[ebird]

I have found that ETQW performs worse since Ubuntu Hardy (Intrepid is the worst performer in Linux with this game) FPS stays very low (on Lenny I get more FPS but there are slowdowns),

Have you some data? Is it like 80 -> 40 or 80 -> 70 ?

and Intrepid "included" nvidia driver (177.80) has graphical glitches that don't appear when installing the driver manually.

That's another thing. Intrepid is using the xorg 1.5 server. The driver should be nearby beta status. Perhaps there are some more fixes in the official driver?

[ebird]

As you can see Hardy was really a bit slow in comparison to Gutsy. But you can see that Intrepid is faster than Hardy, which implies that Ubuntu is not getting slower all the time.

The problem exists since gusty or 2.6.20 kernel. I don't have made any phoronix tests, but my system become slow with gusty. Intrepid is reaches an awful responsiveness. Try to copy a big file or to install some apps and working with gimp, firefox or even gedit. Using disc intensive application is an horror since gutsy.

[marakaid]

I have found that ETQW performs worse since Ubuntu Hardy (Intrepid is the worst performer in Linux with this game) FPS stays very low (on Lenny I get more FPS but there are slowdowns), and Intrepid "included" nvidia driver (177.80) has graphical glitches that don't appear when installing the driver manually.

[ebird]

Hello!

to show the contrary to Phoronix results I did same testing on my own computer with different Ubuntus.

Your tests only show, that your machine is slow for an 1.92 GHz processor. There is an MP3 encoding on a 1.99GHz Athlon, which is nearby twice as fast as yours. I know is not really comparable.

Hello!
As you can see, the trend of the Phoronix results can not be affirmed. Some of them even show Ubuntu is getting faster!

I can see the same trends in your test. The "Bandwidth 0.13" test losses 25% speed. And audio encoding takes longer, on intrepid. The differences are not as big as in the phoronix test, but your machine is much slower. Your memory bandwidth is only 1300MB/s compared to 3300MB/s.

[Beleriand]

As you can see Hardy was really a bit slow in comparison to Gutsy. But you can see that Intrepid is faster than Hardy, which implies that Ubuntu is not getting slower all the time.

[MetalheadGautham]

Awesome.... NOT.

I don't need a test to prove the difference between my first distro, Ubuntu 7.04, and my worst distro, Ubuntu 8.04. The difference is HUGE on my P4 2.66GHz machine with 256MB DDR1 400MHz ram and GMA 900 onboard graphics, where ubuntu 7.04 was the best thing ever.

[Beleriand]

Is the Phoronix Test wrong ?

Hello!

to show the contrary to Phoronix results I did same testing on my own computer with different Ubuntus.

Hardware:

• CPU: AMD Athlon M XP 2500+ (Barton) @ 1920 MHz (Mainboard doesn't get the name correctly)
• RAM: 2GB MDT DDR2-800
• GPU: Asus N6600GT 128MB (Nvidia 6600GT)
• MB: MSI K7N2-Delta
• HDD: Samsung SpinPoint P120 SP2514N 250 GB

Software:

• Ubuntu 6.06, Ubuntu 7.10, Ubuntu 8.04, Ubuntu 8.10
• all are standard installs and up-to-date (10-30-08), means for Intrepid it is final release
• graphic card works on all systems with the latest nvidia-glx available in official restricted repository
• extra packages are only build-essential and libgtk2.0-dev and dependencies and
• phoronix-test-suite 1.2.2 (DEB) from Phoronix and
• gtkperf 0.40 (DEB) from Sourceforge

Sure, these are only few tests. I will do some more testing when I have the time do to it.

Benchmarks:

• ffmpeg http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...12-22916-20690
• audio-encoding http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...62-27698-13221
• memory http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...63-12840-24973
• gtkperf GtkComboBox http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...153-4925-18338
• gtkperf GtkRadioButton http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...1462-6117-5310
• gtkperf GtkDrawingArea-Circles http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...39-22033-20656
• gtkperf GtkDrawingArea-Pixbufs http://global.phoronix-test-suite.co...6404-21546-599

Because of the gtkperf TotalTime taking too long I installed the DEB from Sourceforge gtkperf 0.40:

• gtkperf 0.40

As you can see, the trend of the Phoronix results can not be affirmed. Some of them even show Ubuntu is getting faster!

Greetz,
Beleriand

[obscurite]

You missed my point.

Note that I ... didn't attempt to make any blanket claims, and I didn't start pointing any fingers around.

Michael, thanks for the response, much appreciated. However, consider that when you ask if there is something wrong in a headline, that you are making a form of blanket claim and pointing fingers. The claiming and the pointing is implicit, but it's enough to confuse a whole lot of people who take headlines at face value. This technique is used for character assassination all the time in politics and entertainment journalism to discredit someone without having to back up any claims. In fact, it's being used quite a bit in the US presidential race right now. Perhaps it's just the political climate that's making me a bit more sensitive to truth and disclosure than normal.

Anyway, thanks for a great site and for the work you're doing, and I hope I won't be complaining again any time soon.

[deanjo]

One thing that occurred to me is that possibly some thermal throttling was going on which is possible if the system was being stressed for a long period of time.

[Michael]

For those interested, the ThinkPad T60 we used in testing was a 2006 model, 2613-EJU.

Fedora benchmarks will be out tomorrow and more to come next week.