5 ms·

Ubuntu 21.04 significantly faster than windows 10 on Threadripper

42 points by marcodiego 5y ago

marcodiego 5y ago
This is probably because Linux has a much finer tuned scheduler for multiples cores and multiples threads per-core. Linux dominates the HPC market for more than a decade and, as current workstations approach features of supercomputers from decades ago, the better scheduler begins to shine. Also, considering how much Linux dominates on servers, it is very likely that IO latency or throughput, depending on the case, is top. I don't expect windows to be better except for some memory heavy applications given it is mostly used on the desktop and has probably memory management features that are adequate for this use case. It is a shame that for AAA games we still live with a virtual monopoly controlled by the option which is not the highest performant. Specially considering how gamers like to brag about their machines and setup to extract the last drop of performance. It would be interesting if gamers forced the industry to bow to the most advanced solution. Developers, HPC, servers and embedded people were successful doing exactly that.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  As long as Joe schmo with no time to figure that stuff out exists, it won't happen.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  If your theory about Linux's historic use means it is a better fit for modern desktop CPUs, shouldn't the same be true for memory? I don't see why Windows should be better (according to the theory) as servers have also been the place of most memory intensive applications.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    By memory-intensive I mean applications that have to do frequent allocations and de-allocations. This is very common on the desktop. In HPC I think the more common case is a big allocation at program start and then lots of processing to de-allocate only after the number-crunching part is finished. On servers it boils down to how quickly you can respond to network events and fire new processes.
- tehbeard 5y ago
  Forgive the roughness of this reply.. but.... When I want to play games, I want to click on heads till they're not heads anymore, or think with portals, or race around a city with friends. Not trying to debug why pulse audio is having issues and refusing to send audio to the front jack, again. Maybe this has changed of late, and I'm just burned by these previous "adventures", but video/audio always felt like a bit of an afterthought in Linux to me.
  - qalmakka 5y ago
    Pipewire is replacing PulseAudio and I can finally say, it works great. Pulse was a great idea for its time, but it was poorly written and it took 10 years for it to get to a point it didn't make you wish you could avoid using it.
    - qalmakka 5y ago
      Also I think it's crucial to clarify that in my experience the vast majority of audio troubles on Linux are due to how buggy and shitty (and ubiquitous) Realtek soundcards are. Those integrated cards are junk, and they are buggy like hell, if you read the source code the drivers have to resort to doing what's basically black magic to get them to work, each single damn configuration has its own quirks, etc. This is also true for Realtek NICs though, almost everything those guys do is shitty as heck.
    - deeblering4 5y ago
      This is a great example of the blessing/curse of gnu/linux. On the one hand, freedom and infinite flexibility. On the other hand... There’s is no high level structure or plan as a whole. Linux is only the kernel, and distributions set up the userspace in varying ways. So development is inherently fractured into numerous similar projects. These projects leap frog and replace each other over time. But there is a lot of effort spent in reinventing the wheel. Sometimes I wish that, for example, we could all settle on one window manager. Everyone could put efforts in the same direction, and make it awesome. Of course in reality that would never work, but in some ways it would be nice to see the same amount of refinement and consistency in the userspace as in the kernel.
- aseipp 5y ago
  Developers, HPC, and hyperscalers have vast amounts of money to fund these investments, and are overall a relatively few number of companies. They did not come for free; Linux only supports those systems as well as it does due to decades of investment from the top players in those fields, and that investment created inertia and cost savings to appear. Sorry, but it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how resources are allocated to think anyone (who wasn't named Sun) was "forced" into accepting Linux as some superior option, rather than seeing the writing on the wall that Linux was going to dominate purely by virtue of its cheapness and the ability to hire for it (case in point, many people adopted Linux despite its objectively inferior storage solutions for many years until recently). Linux isn't a person, it can't choose anything. But people will choose Linux if a widget that was $1.50 is now $.50, and they can pocket the $1. Completely different scenarios. The idea "Gamers" can do almost anything other than start shitfits online is some weird "individual responsibility" pipedream. "Gamers" can't even stop major studios from getting shuttered after giving them tons of money (successful sales for games) and at high praise. The problem is structural, not one individual consumer choices are going to fix.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    Linux won the academia and hobbyists by being cheap. But more advanced unices like solaris (which had dtrace and zfs), irix and aix it won by being faster.
snicker7 5y ago
Nothing new or surprising. Anyone who regularly uses both systems knows about the Windows performance tax. Most notable is the performance improvement of the recent Windows update. I wonder what happened.
- RachelF 5y ago
  However, looking at other Phoronix benchmarks, Windows beats Linux on Intel systems.
  - marcodiego 5y ago
    Considering https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=11900k-windows-linux&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=11900k-w... , Core i9 has only 8 cores, Threadripper has 64. The AMD processor also has also the 8x the number of threads compared to the intel one. AFAIK, AMD has been faster than intel to tune the power governor on linux. Considering the benchmark shows no comparison on how much electricity the system is eating and is using default settings, it is possible that windows lead in this case can explained by the power governor still needing some updates. We'll have to wait newer kernels to be sure.
Dah00n 5y ago
That's... quite the difference.. >"If taking the geometric mean of all 79 benchmark results, Ubuntu 21.04 on this AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X workstation was 25% faster than Windows 10 for this set of workstation-minded benchmarks"

42 points by marcodiego 5y ago

This is probably because Linux has a much finer tuned scheduler for multiples cores and multiples threads per-core. Linux dominates the HPC market for more than a decade and, as current workstations approach features of supercomputers from decades ago, the better scheduler begins to shine. Also, considering how much Linux dominates on servers, it is very likely that IO latency or throughput, depending on the case, is top. I don't expect windows to be better except for some memory heavy applications given it is mostly used on the desktop and has probably memory management features that are adequate for this use case. It is a shame that for AAA games we still live with a virtual monopoly controlled by the option which is not the highest performant. Specially considering how gamers like to brag about their machines and setup to extract the last drop of performance. It would be interesting if gamers forced the industry to bow to the most advanced solution. Developers, HPC, servers and embedded people were successful doing exactly that.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
As long as Joe schmo with no time to figure that stuff out exists, it won't happen.
Dah00n 5y ago
If your theory about Linux's historic use means it is a better fit for modern desktop CPUs, shouldn't the same be true for memory? I don't see why Windows should be better (according to the theory) as servers have also been the place of most memory intensive applications.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  By memory-intensive I mean applications that have to do frequent allocations and de-allocations. This is very common on the desktop. In HPC I think the more common case is a big allocation at program start and then lots of processing to de-allocate only after the number-crunching part is finished. On servers it boils down to how quickly you can respond to network events and fire new processes.
tehbeard 5y ago
Forgive the roughness of this reply.. but.... When I want to play games, I want to click on heads till they're not heads anymore, or think with portals, or race around a city with friends. Not trying to debug why pulse audio is having issues and refusing to send audio to the front jack, again. Maybe this has changed of late, and I'm just burned by these previous "adventures", but video/audio always felt like a bit of an afterthought in Linux to me.
- qalmakka 5y ago
  Pipewire is replacing PulseAudio and I can finally say, it works great. Pulse was a great idea for its time, but it was poorly written and it took 10 years for it to get to a point it didn't make you wish you could avoid using it.
  - qalmakka 5y ago
    Also I think it's crucial to clarify that in my experience the vast majority of audio troubles on Linux are due to how buggy and shitty (and ubiquitous) Realtek soundcards are. Those integrated cards are junk, and they are buggy like hell, if you read the source code the drivers have to resort to doing what's basically black magic to get them to work, each single damn configuration has its own quirks, etc. This is also true for Realtek NICs though, almost everything those guys do is shitty as heck.
  - deeblering4 5y ago
    This is a great example of the blessing/curse of gnu/linux. On the one hand, freedom and infinite flexibility. On the other hand... There’s is no high level structure or plan as a whole. Linux is only the kernel, and distributions set up the userspace in varying ways. So development is inherently fractured into numerous similar projects. These projects leap frog and replace each other over time. But there is a lot of effort spent in reinventing the wheel. Sometimes I wish that, for example, we could all settle on one window manager. Everyone could put efforts in the same direction, and make it awesome. Of course in reality that would never work, but in some ways it would be nice to see the same amount of refinement and consistency in the userspace as in the kernel.
aseipp 5y ago
Developers, HPC, and hyperscalers have vast amounts of money to fund these investments, and are overall a relatively few number of companies. They did not come for free; Linux only supports those systems as well as it does due to decades of investment from the top players in those fields, and that investment created inertia and cost savings to appear. Sorry, but it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how resources are allocated to think anyone (who wasn't named Sun) was "forced" into accepting Linux as some superior option, rather than seeing the writing on the wall that Linux was going to dominate purely by virtue of its cheapness and the ability to hire for it (case in point, many people adopted Linux despite its objectively inferior storage solutions for many years until recently). Linux isn't a person, it can't choose anything. But people will choose Linux if a widget that was $1.50 is now $.50, and they can pocket the $1. Completely different scenarios. The idea "Gamers" can do almost anything other than start shitfits online is some weird "individual responsibility" pipedream. "Gamers" can't even stop major studios from getting shuttered after giving them tons of money (successful sales for games) and at high praise. The problem is structural, not one individual consumer choices are going to fix.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Linux won the academia and hobbyists by being cheap. But more advanced unices like solaris (which had dtrace and zfs), irix and aix it won by being faster.

snicker7 5y ago

Nothing new or surprising. Anyone who regularly uses both systems knows about the Windows performance tax. Most notable is the performance improvement of the recent Windows update. I wonder what happened.

RachelF 5y ago
However, looking at other Phoronix benchmarks, Windows beats Linux on Intel systems.
- marcodiego 5y ago
  Considering https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=11900k-windows-linux&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=11900k-w... , Core i9 has only 8 cores, Threadripper has 64. The AMD processor also has also the 8x the number of threads compared to the intel one. AFAIK, AMD has been faster than intel to tune the power governor on linux. Considering the benchmark shows no comparison on how much electricity the system is eating and is using default settings, it is possible that windows lead in this case can explained by the power governor still needing some updates. We'll have to wait newer kernels to be sure.

Dah00n 5y ago

That's... quite the difference.. >"If taking the geometric mean of all 79 benchmark results, Ubuntu 21.04 on this AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X workstation was 25% faster than Windows 10 for this set of workstation-minded benchmarks"