Slackware 14 doing the peacekeeper benchmark

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vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Slackware 14 doing the peacekeeper benchmark

Post by vtailor »

If you install Slackware 14 on the z550, or even the z530, using the AbsoluteLinux 3.7.1 kernel and the fbdev_drv.so from the /extra directory, you get an implementation of xfce4 as the desktop. If you then install google-chrome so that the peacekeeper browser benchmark can be run, you get something with a fairly high benchmark score, comparable to the DN2800 Cedar Trail. Please notice the "mem" memory meter on the upper taskbar. Very low memory usage makes this a candidate for the z530.
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vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Re: Slackware 14 doing the peacekeeper benchmark

Post by vtailor »

Actually, I downloaded the latest 3.9.5 kernel and compiled it using a Slackware config with CONFIG_MATOM=y so as to find out whether anything has improved vis a vis the fit-pc2 z550. Running the Peacekeeper benchmark gives a latest value of 757, but things like streaming video seem somewhat smoother, and there is all kinds of 3d acceleration with bulging widgets evident all over the screen.

So, does the Mint/Ubuntu community give you that kind of turnaround with most recent kernels?

vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Re: Slackware 14 doing the peacekeeper benchmark

Post by vtailor »

I managed to download an installable version of Slackware 14.1 and install it on the z530 with 1 GB of ram. Xorg is now more like the Xorg in the latest Mint, including the missing psb_drv graphics driver. Also, the code has changed significantly so that, if you install fbdev_drv.so, it is loaded in Xorg.0.log and then discarded in favor of a new libfb.so that seems to have some improvements over fbdev_drv.so to the extent that I suspect it is based on the leftover work on the original psb_drv.so graphics driver that was carried on under Ubuntu, then discarded. At any rate, the graphics artifacts are very powervr, meaning that moving a window around, for example, has the jerkiness of the powervr driver, and some things in my streaming graphics tests appear to run noticeably better, but not all of them. Also, the memory usage is very powervr:

bash-4.2# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1014208 644776 369432 0 18292 185528
-/+ buffers/cache: 440956 573252
Swap: 0 0 0
bash-4.2#

The above is memory usage with the google chrome browser of your choice loaded and posting to this forum. Oh yes, the new official Linux kernel is 3.10.17-smp. And, the new Peacekeeper Benchmark, with its usual changes in content that make comparisons difficult, is 421.

vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Re: Slackware 14 doing the peacekeeper benchmark

Post by vtailor »

Postscript 1: I forgot to mention that the default graphics resolution of the new kernel is 1920x1024x32. In other words, previous kernels had this default resolution at 16 bits, not this one.

vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Re: Slackware 14 doing the peacekeeper benchmark

Post by vtailor »

This libfb.so Xorg graphics driver also enables changing the display resolution, which is a major improvement, given that it does not need fbdev_drv.so at all, and it still uses swrast and does most of what the fbdev_drv.so version does.

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