Physical Vs Virtual

Mark Duggan's Avatar

Mark Duggan

06 May, 2011 04:43 PM

Hi,

Just wanted to post an interesting result. I ran geekbench on a 32-Bit Windows XP VM and got a score of 2601. I then ran the test on the host system with is Ubuntu 10.10 x64_86 and originally got a score of 2225. This struck me as a little odd considering that the Linux install is installed on bare metal. Digging into the results the integer results on Linux were significantly below that of Windows

I reran the test and Linux got 3030, which is obviously much bettter, but interestingly the integer results on Linux were still lower. Closer to the Windows, but still lower.

Is this expected? Does Windows just handle integer arithmetic better than Linux in general?

Tempted now to spent the $20 on the 64-bit version to do some further testing, and to run the test against a Windows 7 VM that I have.

For those interested

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view?id=406335 (Linux Test 1)
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/406338 (Windows Test)
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view?id=406348 (Linux Test 2)

  1. Support Staff 1 Posted by John on 09 May, 2011 03:06 AM

    John's Avatar

    Hi Mark,

    Thanks for your message. I took a look at your Linux results and there's something interesting going on with the first and second Linux results:

    http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/compare/406348/406335

    Note that some of the integer and floating point results are much lower in the first result than in the second result. However, the memory and stream results are virtually the same in both results. Were any other processes running (that is, using lots of processor time) when you collected the first Linux result? That would explain the drop in the integer and floating point section of the first result.

    Cheers,
    John

  2. 2 Posted by Mark Duggan on 16 May, 2011 02:53 AM

    Mark Duggan's Avatar

    John,

    Like an idiot I didn't point out that the second result was run when I had shut down the the Windows VM running on the Linux host. So in essence the first Linux test is pure garbage. What is still interesting to me though, is that the integer score on the Linux test is still lower than the Windows VM.

    I did have some issues with the disk that the Windows VM is running on lately so if you'd like me to re-run the test again let me know.

    Great tool by the way. Thanks

    Mark

  3. Support Staff 3 Posted by John on 19 May, 2011 09:24 PM

    John's Avatar

    Hi Mark,

    Ah! That would explain why the first Linux result was rather low! Note that results tend to differ between operating systems due to a number of factors (the compiler used to build Geekbench, optimizations in the operating system, etc) so differences on the same hardware with different operating systems isn't unusual.

    Let me know if you have any other questions and I'd be happy to answer them!

    Cheers,
    John

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