Is there a way to measure the performance of 3D acceleration, java applets, firefox scrolling etc. with a tool and compare it with lets say a windows OS or other users having almost the same hardware? Maybe it is a setup issue where some fundamental drivers are missing or something?
Ubuntu – How to check system performance
performance
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I can't replicate the issues you're detailing - this seems very odd to me (and I'm speaking on the level of testing on multiple machines. This likely may be something particular with your setup.
Here are a few things that can contribute to poorer performance on a machine:
- Clean Install v Multiple Upgrades: I had a similar issue on a workstation that had been upgraded through the years from 5.10 to 9.04 the desktop would randomly restart at odd intervals with no warning - and no log entries. I ended up doing a clean install and the issue went away. Not the best scenario where Troubleshooting triumphed but an example of how older configurations can cause weird issues.
- Hardware: Far less likely - but it may just be an issue with that Firefox release and your setup (drivers, configuration, etc) might be conflicting - which would explain why Swiftfox (a Firefox derivative aimed at increasing performance of the Mozilla tool for Linux) is also responding poorly.
I would search for people exhibiting similar issues with Firefox on setups similar to yours ( You didn't provide anything so I can't really help you further ) but it may be a configuration, compilation issue.
Well, since nobody wants to answer... :)
Searching Synaptic for "bench" finds a lot of benchmarking suites capable of testing different aspects of a machine. The only one I heard about previously is phoronix-test-suite
, which I'm sure is very comprehensive although my short attention span didn't allow me to figure out how to use it.
Then I found UnixBench, which is described as
UnixBench is the original BYTE UNIX benchmark suite, updated and revised by many people over the years.
The purpose of UnixBench is to provide a basic indicator of the performance of a Unix-like system; ... These test results are then compared to the scores from a baseline system to produce an index value, which is generally easier to handle than the raw scores.
Multi-CPU systems are handled. ... The tests compare Unix systems by comparing their results to a set of scores set by running the code on a benchmark system, which is a SPARCstation 20-61 (rated at 10.0).
UnixBench is mentioned by Linode as a tool for VM performance testing in this blog post:
Using identical hardware, KVM Linodes are much faster compared to Xen. For example, in our UnixBench testing a KVM Linode scored 3x better than a Xen Linode.
The test suite is NOT in Ubuntu repositories, but it is trivial to download and compile it:
wget https://github.com/kdlucas/byte-unixbench/archive/master.zip
unzip ./master.zip
cd ./byte-unixbench-master/UnixBench
./Run
The tests take a while to finish. The output looks like
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Mon Oct 15 2012 23:55:22 - 00:23:16
4 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 12015218.4 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 2214.8 MWIPS (10.1 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 896.9 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 58968.3 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 14578.6 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 422068.2 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 70993.3 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 16001.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 1861.8 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 2525.5 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 737.8 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 432496.2 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 12015218.4 1029.6
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 2214.8 402.7
Execl Throughput 43.0 896.9 208.6
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 58968.3 148.9
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 14578.6 88.1
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 422068.2 727.7
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 70993.3 57.1
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 16001.5 40.0
Process Creation 126.0 1861.8 147.8
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 2525.5 595.6
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 737.8 1229.7
System Call Overhead 15000.0 432496.2 288.3
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 249.7
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmark Run: Tue Oct 16 2012 00:23:16 - 00:51:20
4 CPUs in system; running 4 parallel copies of tests
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 42619039.2 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone 8274.0 MWIPS (10.4 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput 3398.5 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 68332.4 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 21462.9 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 718205.6 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput 149713.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching 61968.3 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation 5321.7 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 5957.1 lpm (60.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 812.6 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead 1557391.5 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
System Benchmarks Index Values BASELINE RESULT INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables 116700.0 42619039.2 3652.0
Double-Precision Whetstone 55.0 8274.0 1504.4
Execl Throughput 43.0 3398.5 790.4
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks 3960.0 68332.4 172.6
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks 1655.0 21462.9 129.7
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks 5800.0 718205.6 1238.3
Pipe Throughput 12440.0 149713.5 120.3
Pipe-based Context Switching 4000.0 61968.3 154.9
Process Creation 126.0 5321.7 422.4
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent) 42.4 5957.1 1405.0
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent) 6.0 812.6 1354.3
System Call Overhead 15000.0 1557391.5 1038.3
========
System Benchmarks Index Score 592.5
Which means that the VPS in question has a score of 249.7 for single task and 592.5 for parallel processing.
My desktop machine, while having similar or lower specs to the physical machine my VPS is running on, produced a score of 1409.7 for single task and 5156.3 for parallel processing. Exactly the kind of metric I was looking for.
Another important metric is network speed. I've found a script which downloads test files from different locations and measures download speed. The script can be run with
wget freevps.us/downloads/bench.sh -O - -o /dev/null|bash
(although it probably would be safer to download the script and inspect its contents before running)
To monitor disk I/O latency there is ioping
utility which can be installed from Ubuntu repositories:
# ioping . -c 10
4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/disk/...): request=1 time=16.4 ms
4096 bytes from . (ext4 /dev/disk/...): request=2 time=16.1 ms
...
Best Answer
Even when this question is related to software issues you may wish to give a try to HardInfo, System profiler and benchmark, which will allow you to perform several benchmarks in order to gather information of your system and allows you to perform comparisons with other systems.
Linux should run with a considerable ease, the applications that you refer, unless the hardware is reaching its limits.
Most of the times a big memory size isn't enough if the memory speed doesn't fit your need for speed. Hard disk drives should be fast enough and facing no issues and generally: The system should be in good condition.
You don't lose anything giving this a try and may find something that would give you an idea of how is your system handling the physical resources.
Reach HardInfo at: http://hardinfo.berlios.de/HomePage
Here is a screenshot of my CPU Blowfish benchmark with two comparisons.
Additionally you can use a system monitor tool, like Conky or GkrellM in order to see your system's performance when attempting to run one of these applications. This won't fix your issues but will give you a clue on where to start.
I prefer to use GKrellM, so here is a screenshot of my system being monitored by this tool:
Here is a screenshot of Conky (from their site) featuring processes monitoring:
And when writing all this stuff I got a bulb turned on over my head, and I think that you should check what running processes are giving you problems when attempting to do what you wish. I mean: there can be a running process which can be requesting lots of processor or memory and this can cause your other applications to have problems.
Check this out in System Monitor: System/Administration/System Monitor. In the next screenshot you can see my google chrome demanding 122 MiB of the physical memory.
Who knows? you try it and let's see what happen. The more information you gather, the easier to find the solution.
Good luck!