Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 11:07:19 -0700
Newsgroups: alt.os.linux.suse, comp.os.linux.misc

> I have two computers running SuSE Linux 7.3 Pro, with KDE 3.x as the desktop
> environment.  Anybody seen a good system performance benchmark utility/app
> that does a good job testing the various aspects of a system's hardware
> (CPU, memory, hard disk, etc.)  I want to compare the two system's relative
> performance.

I don't know of anything for testing the CPU, offhand. You could look at the "bogomips" field in /proc/cpuinfo, but that tends to vary greatly between different processor families. In particular, AMD Athlons are rated at about twice their clock speed, while Intel Pentiums' ratings are roughly equal to their clock speed. That difference may be genuine for tight timing loops, but not for typical programs.

To test the memory, I suggest running memtest86. This program must be run standalone (instead of the Linux kernel), so you can only run it by rebooting and selecting it from your boot menu. I know SuSE 8.0 has it installed by default, and I think 7.3 does too, but if not then you can fetch it from http://www.memtest86.com/.

For disks, use "hdparm -t /dev/hda". This will test the disk hardware, but not the filesystem. I can't suggest anything for testing the filesystem speed… which is a shame, really, since it would be cool to see the difference between ext2 and reiser.

For 2D graphics, use "x11perf" with the options of your choice. There are dozens of tests that it can run, and some of those tests take a while. If you want to do them all, then wait until the end of the day and then run "x11perf -all >times".

For 3D graphics, just run a game with "frames per second" displayed. You might also find something useful in /usr/share/glutdemo, but I didn't.

Steve Kirkendall @dsl-only.net