Linux Performance

3D OpenGL

using 'glxgears'

on several computers

netbooks as well as desktops

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This Linux 3D Performance (with 'glxgears') page

! Note ! A few more notes and computer performance results
may be added, if/when I re-visit this page.

INTRODUCTION :

As I mentioned in a web page on my migration from MS Windows to Linux (an Ubuntu Installs web page), I have put Linux (Ubuntu or other distros) on several desktop and several netbook computers.

There is a program called 'glxgears' (www.xfree86.org link) that can be used as a rough estimate of the speed of the 3D rendering of GLX (Wikipedia link), the "OpenGL Extension to the X Window System".

That is, 'glxgears' can be used as a simplified measure of the 3D performance of your computer (the union of video card, software, etc.)

'glxgears' shows a set of rotating gears in one window (as seen in the screenshot at the top of this page) and it shows (every few seconds) the current frame rate in a separate shell window from which we have issued the 'glxgears' command --- as shown in the gnome-terminal image(s) below.


'glxgears' OLD version, running circa 2011


'glxgears' NEWER version, running circa 2023
(by default, synced to monitor vertical refresh rate)


'glxgears' NEWER version, running circa 2023
using environment variable 'vblank_mode'
(independent of monitor vertical refresh rate)
Reference:
A 'disable-vertical-sync-for-glxgears' page
at stackoverflow.com.
That page points out that the command

env   vblank_mode=0   __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=0   glxgears

will work for both Mesa and NVidia drivers.

There are many web pages that point out that 'glxgears' is too simple to be a good benchmark test --- such as this page (of the 'Unofficial AMD Linux Community') at wiki.cchtml.com.

Some of the specific complaints about 'glxgears' :

  • has an extremely low vertex/polygon count

  • does no texturing at all

  • only simple, flat shading is used (except inside the hole in each gear is simple smooth shading)

  • all vertex data is stored in a display list, so almost nothing passes between host CPU and video card once rendering is started. This mostly implies video card fill rate is limited. But, see next point.

  • the default window size is 300x300, a large part of which is not even rendered into, so it's not even a good fill rate test

  • the entire render step consists of only 21 OpenGL functions calls, of which only 6 are unique. This is not a very good OpenGL API stress test.

Hence some people say they simply use 'glxgears' to test whether OpenGL 3D rendering is working --- in a very basic form.

The bottom of the glxgears page of the 'Unofficial AMD Linux Community' indicates there are better 3D benchmark tests --- and benchmarks for GTK (Wikipedia link), such as 'gtkperf' (link to gtkperf.sourceforge.net) which one can easily install on a Linux distro (such as Ubuntu or other Debian-based distros) via the command

    sudo apt-get install gtkperf

But 'gtkperf' seems oriented toward testing the rendering of GTK+ 2D widgets (opening comboboxes, toggling buttons, scrolling text), rather than testing 3D OpenGL performance.

In any case, I present, in a table below, the frame-rate results of running 'glxgears' on several of my computers.

Since I am not running high-performance graphics games on my computers, 'glxgears' is sufficient for me to compare OpenGL performance among my computers.

Circa 2023 and beyond, there are many YouTube videos that run benchmarks (based on processing in 3D graphics games) on various 3D-game-oriented computer configurations --- mostly on Microsoft Windows operating systems rather than Linux or MacOS.

For more information on performance tests (esp. 3D and OpenGL) on Linux computers, you can try WEB SEARCHES on keywords such as:

Computer Description 'glxgears' Results
(approx. FPS = frames/sec)
Home-built *desktop* PC
with 4-processor AMD chip
on an ASUS M4A78LT-M motherboard
(manufactured circa 2012)
From 'gnome-system-monitor', System :
4 AMD Athlon II X4 630 processors
with 3.2Gig memory
From 'lspci' :
VGA compatible controller:
ATI Technologies Inc 760G [Radeon 3000]
From 'glxgears -info' :
GL_RENDERER = ATI Radeon 3000 Graphics
GL_VERSION = 2.1.9016
GL_VENDOR = ATI Technologies Inc.
From 'uname -a' :
Linux blaze-homebuilt-01 2.6.31-23-generic
#74-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 28 21:32:57 UTC 2011
i686 GNU/Linux 		~3,080 FPS = frames/sec (+/- 100)

Was a lot slower before I replaced a zapped
Nvidia graphics card and Gigabyte motherboard
(with a 2 processor AMD chip) with this ASUS
motherboard with 4 processor AMD chip and
on-board ATI graphics processor.
Acer *desktop* PC (manufactured circa 2018)
model AXC-603G-UW13
From 'gnome-system-monitor', System :
Intel Celeron CPU J1900 @1.9GHz x 4
with 3.7GiB memory
From 'lspci' :
VGA compatible controller:
Intel Corporation Atom Processor
Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display (rev 0e)
From 'glxgears -info' :
GL_RENDERER = Mesa DRI Intel(R) Bay Trail
GL_VERSION = 3.0 Mesa 19.0.8
GL_VENDOR = Intel Open Source Technology Center
From 'uname -a' :
Linux aceraxc603g 4.15.0-65-generic
#74-Ubuntu SMP Tue Sep 17 17:06:04 UTC 2019
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux 		~1,830 FPS = frames/sec (+/- 60)
using
'vblank_mode=0 glxgears'
(run in 2023)
as seen in an image above.
Acer *netbook* #1 (manufactured in 2008)
Intel Atom N270 processor
From 'gnome-system-monitor', System :
Intel Atom CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz
with 991 MB memory
From 'lspci' :
VGA compatible controller:
Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express
Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
From 'glxgears -info' :
GL_RENDERER = Mesa DRI Intel 945 GME
20090326 2009Q1 RC2 x86/MMX/SSE2
GL_VERSION = 1.4 Mesa 7.4
GL_VENDOR = Tungsten Graphics Inc.
From 'uname -a' :
Linux 2.6.28-11-generic
#42-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 17 01:57:59 UTC 2009
i686 GNU/Linux

From the box :

Aspire one A0A 150-1382
P/N: LU.S050A.280
Model: ZG5
S/N: LUS050A2808470E4582547
CPU: Intel Atom N270
RAM: 1 GB DDR2
Manufactured year: 2008
SYSTEM BD/BIOS: 47/3305 		~580 FPS = frames/sec (+/- 40)
Acer *netbook* #2 (manufactured in 2010)
Intel Atom N450 processor
(1.66 GHz, 512KB cache)
From 'gnome-system-monitor' :
Processor 0: Intel Atom CPU ? @ ? GHz

From 'lspci' :
VGA compatible controller:
Intel Corporation ?
Integrated Graphics Controller
From 'glxgears -info' :
GL_RENDERER = ?
GL_VERSION = ?
GL_VENDOR = ?
From 'uname -a' :
Linux 2.6?
From the box in which
the computer came:

Aspire one 532h-2588
P/N: LU.SAL0D.277
Model: NAV50
S/N: LUSAL0D277019075DD1601
Manufactured year: 2010
SYSTEM BD/BIOS: 1.21/NAV50 1.21

Processor: Intel Atom N450
Memory: 1GB 		~1,525 +/- 100 frames every 5 seconds
which is
~305 FPS = frames/sec
Acer *netbook* #3
(manufactured in 2010)
Intel Atom N450 processor
From 'gnome-system-monitor' :
Processor 0: Intel Atom CPU N450 @ 1.60GHz
with ? memory
From 'lspci' :
VGA compatible controller:
Intel Corporation N10 Family
Integrated Graphics Controller
From 'glxgears -info' :
GL_RENDERER = ?
GL_VERSION = ?
GL_VENDOR = ?
From 'uname -a' :
Linux 2.6.35-22-generic
#33-Ubuntu SMP Sun Sep 19 20:34:50 UTC 2010
i686 GNU/Linux

From the box in which
the computer came:

Aspire one D255-2331
P/N: LU.SDE0B.096
Model: PAV70
S/N: LUSDE0B09603755E701601
Manufactured year: 2010
System BD/BIOS: 3.05(DDR2)/PAV70 3.06(DDR2)

Processor: Intel Atom N450
Memory: 1GB 		~300 FPS = frames/sec (+/- 60)
using
'vblank_mode=0 glxgears'

Otherwise, with 'glxgears' only,
59.98 FPS (+/- 0.01) --- i.e.
~60 FPS with very little variability
(synced to monitor vertical refresh rate)

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Page history:

Page was created 2011 Apr 25.

Page was changed 2011 Jul 01.

Page was changed 2018 Dec 18.
(Added css and javascript to try to handle text-size for smartphones, esp. in portrait orientation.)

Page was changed 2023 Dec 23.
(Added data from Acer desktop model AXC-603G-UW13.
Added some info & links on using the 'vblank_mode' environment variable to avoid syncing glxgears to the monitor vertical refresh rate.)