FPS Comparison Between Same Viewer, Settings and Hardware in Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04

[Corin Clary]

Here is my system in Windows 7:

Second Life 3.2.4 (246439) Dec 8 2011 14:02:44 (Second Life Release)

Release Notes

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+ (2411.11 MHz)

Memory: 4095 MB

OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)

Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation

Graphics Card: GeForce GTS 450/PCI/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0012.8562

OpenGL Version: 4.2.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1

J2C Decoder Version: KDU v6.4.1

Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000

Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)

Voice Server Version: Not Connected

Built with MSVC version 1600

In Ubuntu 10.04 it is similar except the viewer is: Second Life 3.2.1 (244864) Nov 10 2011 18:33:25

OS Version: Linux 2.6.32-36-generic #79-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 8 22:29:53 UTC 2011 x86_64

Graphics driver: NVIDIA 290.10

I have found in Windows 7 only small amount of my graphics card capability is used. It has a power setting for 3d applications either for maximum speed or adaptive speed according to demand, in the Nvidia settings. When set at adaptive the memory clock hardly ever goes above 325Mhz and gpu clock at 405Mhz. The diferend grades are 135, 325 and 2000 Mhz for memory clock and GPU clock 50, 405 and 930Mhz respectively.

In Ubuntu 10.04 the memory clock and GPU clock mostly at 2000 and 930Mhz respectively. It runs much more smoothly in Ubuntu than Windows 7 because of this.

My graphic settings are set at the automatic suggested setting of high. I have also ticked a few more boxes like Ambient Occlusion, increased the sky setting from low to high and the trees setting from medium to high in both OS's

Why would Windows 7 seem to throttle back the capabilities of my graphics card Is it the drivers versions or something about the diffefent OS's or the viewer in the different OS's.

 

[Corin Clary]

I tried the driver from ubuntu repositories not the latest from nvidia.com. I tried:

version 195.36.24-0ubuntu1~10.04.1 because a software update from ubuntu installed a new kernel that cased the latest nvidia driver I already had installed to become disconnected from the new kernel. I thought this is an opportunity to try the older driver.

With that older version it calls my geforce GTS 450 a different name and the FPS are quite a bit lower. Similar to windows. I also noticed the adaptive speed setting was not stepping up to maximum most of the time just like in windows.

It seems more like a driver problem although I was using late version driver in windows. Not the latest as in ubuntu but definitely not as old as 195.36.24.

In Windows 7 I set SL viewer to start SL in no composition and basic theme to free up resources but this seems to have no major impact.

[leliel Mirihi]

The 195.x driver was released a year before the GTS 450 came out so I'm surprised it worked at all. The first driver to support the GTS 450 was 260.x.

[Theresa Tennyson]

Corin, what are the actual frame rates you're getting on Windows 7 as opposed to Ubuntu? If you're getting higher framerates on Ubuntu as well then Windows 7 may be holding your video card back, but if they're about the same it may be that Ubuntu is actually making your video card work harder than it needs to.

[Kristin Burner]

meow

 

one word, CAS9

 

Poof, instant performance boost. So you spend 1000L on that great attachment, hahahaha

[Corin Clary]

Performance in Ubuntu

 Performance in Windows

 Settings Windows & Ubuntu

Hardware Settings Windows & Ubuntu

 

[Corin Clary]

For Windows I was also going to show an image of the GPU usage but I somehow lost it. The image would have shown the GPU at the second step position with the memory clock at 325Mhz ang GPU clock at 405Mhz. The full step  is 2000Mhz & 930Mhz. It mostly runs at the full step in Ubuntu with the settings I showed in the images.

[Corin Clary]

What is cas9?

[Corin Clary]

I sort of realised that the 195 nvidia driver would have been before the release of the Geforce GTS 450 but that was the only driver available from the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid repositories without using the latest directly from the nvidia web site.

Ubuntu 10.04 was released in April 2010. Although it is still supported until April 2012 the driver has not been updated past that. Probably because of library interdependencies. To get the latest from Ubuntu I would have to upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 or maybe 11.04 and I have already tried them but there is problems.

[Cerise Sorbet]

Yes, it is pretty much the same story with ATI graphics. SL really benefits from faster file and process creation on Linux too, so the cache and media parts zoom along.

[Corin Clary]

Here is two more images of SL in Ubuntu showing graphics card using maximum clock rates and the FPS when the SL window has top focus.

[Corin Clary]

The actual FPS is on average a bit lower than the last picture in Ubuntu at that location in SL (Bay City). I varies from about 12 FPS-21FPS. Still quite low but higher than Windows 7 (about 5.6 average)

[Corin Clary]

What driver do you use the driver from AMD/ATI or the open source.

[Cerise Sorbet]

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Corin Clary wrote:

What driver do you use the driver from AMD/ATI or the open source.

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It is with fglrx, the open drivers for AMD are not up to running SL viewers at all.

I should add that the differences I am seeing are not with graphics, the frame rates are within 1 or 2 fps once all textures are loaded and there are no web pages or other media active. Once the disk access hits in for cache, or an slplugin instance tries to load up, SL performance stays good for me on the Linux side but tanks under Win7. At some point I will experiment with alternative filesystems on Win7 and see how much of the bottleneck is at that level.

[Oz Linden]

It sounds like a better comparison would be to set the driver to maximum on Windows...

[Corin Clary]

I think I tried that but I will verify it.

 

[Corin Clary]

I did verify some advantage in having graphics clocks at maximum with exactly the same scene and position in SL. I tried in Firestorm viewer and latest Linden viewer. The frame rate were a bit higher in Firestorm. In both viewers when I moved my avatar the FPS would drop a lot. Probably because I cannot get high enough network speed with my ISP.

Here is a couple more pictures with statistics.

[Corin Clary]

All I want to do is try and get more advantage out of Windows but also to compare in as fair a way as possible.

Why do you say put graphics clock at maximum for Windows? I had it at adaptive in Linux.

[leliel Mirihi]

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Corin Clary wrote:

In both viewers when I moved my avatar the FPS would drop a lot. Probably because I cannot get high enough network speed with my ISP.

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Your 7 year old CPU may have something to do with it as well. Just saying that pairing up a CPU from 2005 with a GPU from 2010 is not something any gamer would do.

[Nalates Urriah]

You may be blottlenecked on the CPU. In Windows you can open the Performance Monitor and watch memory to see how many hard faults you are getting. Anything over 0 is slowing you down. You can see some trends in the information here: How Fast is Your Viewer? - Second Life It is not very scientific, but older duel cores are not providing good performance. Add your information if you will.

Running anything that forces more page faults hits the SL Viewer hard on a duel core. You may see more performance gain by over clocking the CPU. Or getting a quad core if your MB will handle it.

[Corin Clary]

I have looked at Opterons for socket 939 maniboards but the fastest I can see run at the same speed as AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+. They do have 2x the L2 cache but would that do much?. Cannot really afford to get something like a AM3 socket mainboard new DDR3 and of course the AM3 CPU or and intell socket board. People are almost forced to upgrade their whole systems about every two years if they want to play second life and other things.

I suppose I could try and stick to older versions of second life but if they were too old I might need to have older operating system and would they be supported..

[leliel Mirihi]

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Corin Clary wrote:

I have looked at Opterons for socket 939 maniboards but the fastest I can see run at the same speed as AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+.

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Just because they run at the same clock speed doesn't mean they perform the same. A modern CPU is around twice as fast as the one you have per core.

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Cannot really afford to get something like a AM3 socket mainboard new DDR3 and of course the AM3 CPU or and intell socket board. People are almost forced to upgrade their whole systems about every two years if they want to play second life and other things.

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I'm not telling you to go out and buy a new machine, I'm just saying that the GPU can only draw things as fast as the CPU tells it to. When you move the camera around the viewer has to shuffle a lot of date around in addition to loading any textures it doesn't already have. It doesn't matter how fast your GPU is, if the CPU can't keep up you will see a large drop in the frame rate. This is true in any game not just sl. That's what gamers update their CPUs almost as often as their GPUs.

 

 

[Corin Clary]

If I could be certain that I was not wasting my money on a Opteron I would probably go out and get it. I just might after I really look at other peoples experience upgrading a similar system to mine.

Even so I some times wonder if computer technology and comercialism is doing much good and if I am been sucked along in an endless chase that will just lead to glossier games and programs that basically do the same thing as always.

I also have a suspicion that some of the hardware available now and maybe some obscure programs could support AI but because of fear and the radical change, that it may cause, computer hardware is been eaten up with the glossiest graphics first. Also things like aero in Windows 7, 3d effects in Linux. It seems that we might be on the edge of a new order but the system that supports the present is bulking.

[leliel Mirihi]

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Corin Clary wrote:

If I could be certain that I was not wasting my money on a Opteron I would probably go out and get it. I just might after I really look at other peoples experience upgrading a similar system to mine.

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Don't both upgrading the machine you have, it's just a waste of money. Save up for however long you need to until you can buy a new machine. 7+ years is a good life for a computer, some cars don't even last that long.

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Even so I some times wonder if computer technology and comercialism is doing much good and if I am been sucked along in an endless chase that will just lead to glossier games and programs that basically do the same thing as always.

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Depends on your point of view. You don't need a new machine to do the same things you're doing now, but the new machine will let you do new things you never dreamed of before. 20 years ago it was unthinkable that we'd one day be able to play games with 3d graphics rendered in real time but look at us now. 25 years ago no body would have believed you if you said one day we'd be able to watch movies on our computers from over the internet. 10 years ago people would have laughed at you if you said one day normal people would be able to edit home movies on their computers and add special effects yet it's happening right now.