Phoronix Test Suite

Sometime there is the need to determine if a computer is "fast" and thus capable to run specific operations.

Is not easy to set up, run and interpret results of tests.
There are many way to do tests on machines, this one is open source, covers Linux, MacOs and Windows, is based on PHP so is highly portable and is quite complex to master just because is HUGE !

I collected in this article some of the direct experience learning and using this system to "assign a number" to a machine to understand if is decent or not.

What is it ?

Every operating system has some tools that allow to determine and measure some characteristics, like CPU speed, Networking, Memory management, etc.

In order to have some numbers related to the performance I decided to install on the machine the Phoronix Test Suite.

This test suite can run on Linux, MacOS and Windows.
These notes are mostly about Linux systems since is what I mainly use, especially on the DreamQuest machine.
The plan is to install the same tests suite on :

DreamQuest machine
Dell Precision T3600 machine
MacOs machine

and then run the some tests on these machine and compare the results.

Installation

To start, go to the Pts github and clone it on the machine.
Open a terminal and digit :

git clone https://github.com/phoronix-test-suite/phoronix-test-suite.git

Be sure to have installed PHP with some extensions, in my case no PHP was installed so :

sudo apt install php
sudo apt install php-xml

In case of MacOs install PHP using brew :

brew install php

On Linux, once cloned and PHP installed, go in the cloned project and :

sudo ./install-sh

For MacOs :

sudo ./install_macos <somewhere-accessible>

On MacOs by default is trying to install in /usr but usually is forbidden, thus is necessary to install the suite somewhere else.

Usage

To use it, simply run :

phoronix-test-suite

command and if everything is OK (no errors or missing PHP extensions) will be possible to install some tests and execute them.

Note that for MacOs you must use the entire path indicating after the installation.

Tests

The Phoronix allows to do a lot of different tests, unfortunately is not easy to obtain a single number indicating "how good" a computer us, so different tests need to be performed and eventually compared.

Tests can be added to the default ones, lot of configurations are possible (and eventually necessary) but the first goal is to easily run"something" on different machines and then trying to compare the results.

Btw, associated to the Phoronix suite there is a open source website, OpenBenchmarking.org that can collect the tests results and compare them with many other systems.

At the moment however I was unable to register to the website, it has some problems. Will be material for another article.

Note ! When executing some tests, the first time is possible the suite will install libraries and other stuff

So to start the exploration, I choose to follow some interactive setting for tests, executing :

$ phoronix-test-suite interactive

A menu appears and allow to execute different tests (note, this example is from the Dell machine)

$ phoronix-test-suite interactive
Phoronix Test Suite v10.8.5
Interactive Benchmarking

PROCESSOR: Intel Xeon E5-2670 0 @ 3.30GHz
Core Count: 8
Thread Count: 16
Extensions: SSE 4.2 + AVX
Cache Size: 20 MB
Microcode: 0x621
Core Family: Sandy Bridge
Scaling Driver: intel_cpufreq schedutil
GRAPHICS: ASUS NVIDIA GeForce GT 710 2GB
Frequency: 954/2505MHz
BAR1 / Visible vRAM: N/A
OpenGL: 4.6.0
Display Driver: NVIDIA 470.256.02
Monitor: HP 22xi
Screen: 5760x1186
MOTHERBOARD: Dell Precision T3600 08HPGT
BIOS Version: A14
Chipset: Intel Xeon E5/Core
Audio: Realtek ALC269VB
Network: Intel 82579LM + D-Link RTL8139
MEMORY: 4 x 4GB DDR3-1333MT/s M393B5170EH1-CH9
DISK: 2000GB CT2000BX500SSD1
+ 2000GB Western Digital WD20EZAZ-00L
+ 3001GB My Book 1230
File-System: ext4
Mount Options: errors=remount-ro relatime rw
Disk Scheduler: MQ-DEADLINE
Disk Details: Block Size: 4096
OPERATING SYSTEM: Linuxmint 22.1
Kernel: 6.8.0-64-generic (x86_64)
Desktop: Cinnamon 6.4.8
Display Server: X Server 1.21.1.11
Compiler: GCC 13.3.0
Security: gather_data_sampling: Not affected
+ itlb_multihit: KVM: Mitigation of Split huge pages
+ l1tf: Mitigation of PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes SMT vulnerable
+ mds: Mitigation of Clear buffers; SMT vulnerable
+ meltdown: Mitigation of PTI
+ mmio_stale_data: Unknown: No mitigations
+ reg_file_data_sampling: Not affected
+ retbleed: Not affected
+ spec_rstack_overflow: Not affected
+ spec_store_bypass: Mitigation of SSB disabled via prctl
+ spectre_v1: Mitigation of usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
+ spectre_v2: Mitigation of Retpolines; IBPB: conditional; IBRS_FW; STIBP: conditional; RSB filling; PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected; BHI: Not affected
+ srbds: Not affected
+ tsx_async_abort: Not affected

1: Run A Test / Benchmark
2: Run A Suite [A Collection Of Tests]
3: Run A Stress Test [Concurrent Benchmarks For Heavy System Load]
4: Show System Hardware / Software Information
5: Show Available System Sensors
6: List Available Tests
7: List Recommended Tests
8: Search Tests / Suites / Results
9: Backup Results To Media Storage
10: Exit
Select Task:

I did ask for a list of recommended suite tests.

A suite test is actually a group of tests built around some specific goals.

Here the list. (can be seen executing :

$ phoronix-test-suite interactive

then selecting the choice 6 or 7 or directly, as in this example, the choice 2) :

Select Task: 2

1: pts/audio-encoding

2: pts/av1

3: pts/bioinformatics

4: pts/browsers

5: pts/cad

6: pts/chess

7: pts/compilation

8: pts/compression

9: pts/cpu

10: pts/cpu-massive

11: pts/creator

12: pts/cryptocurrency

13: pts/cryptography

14: pts/database

15: pts/desktop-graphics

16: pts/disk

17: pts/electronic-design

18: pts/encoding

19: pts/finance

20: pts/game-dev

21: pts/hpc

22: pts/imaging

23: pts/internet-speed

24: pts/java

25: pts/java-opengl

26: pts/kernel

27: pts/linear-algebra

28: pts/llm

29: pts/machine-learning

30: pts/memory

31: pts/molecular-dynamics

32: pts/mpi

33: pts/network

34: pts/nvidia-gpu-compute

35: pts/ocr

36: pts/oneapi

37: pts/opencl

38: pts/opengl-demos

39: pts/productivity

40: pts/programmer

41: pts/python

42: pts/quantum-mechanics

43: pts/raytracing

44: pts/renderers

45: pts/scientific-computing

46: pts/sdr

47: pts/server

48: pts/server-cpu-tests

49: pts/speech

50: pts/steam

51: pts/telephony

52: pts/texture-compression

53: pts/unigine

54: pts/video-encoding

55: pts/vulkan-compute

56: pts/vulkan-rt

57: pts/workstation

58: pts/system

59: pts/processor

60: pts/disk

61: pts/graphics

62: pts/memory

63: pts/network

64: pts/os

65: pts/other

I choose 2 of them, running a suite (option 2 of the menu) select :

suite n. 9 - pts/cpu

it requires the installation of 16 tests
it takes about 5-6 hours to be completed

suite n. 40 - pts/programmer

it requires the installation of
it takes about

Especially the first time expect LOT OF TIME to execute the test, because the huge download and installation of the tests.

I noticed that both of the suite chosen have some tests in common and also not necessarily all the tests are available on different machines.

For example on MacOs not all the CPU tests in the CPIU suite are available.
16 on Linux, 10 on MacOs.

In order to have a set of tests comparable between different machines, is necessary to build a suite test tha can target the "purpose" and "similar tests".

Purpose

One important thing to determine is the "purpose" of the tests.

The Phoronix Test Suite has hundreds of tests and "collection" of tests (the "suites") and each test measure some specific things.

For example some tests can determine how fast a CPU can be executing a standard set of operations, other tests can determine how fast the system access memory or hard disk, other tests can calculate how fast the machine perform some specific tasks (like graphic rendering, etc.).

So is important to determine "what" exactly we are going to measure, especially if the ultimate goal is to compare different machines.

A machine is a sum of hardware (matherboard/CPU/memory/drive/peripherals/etc.) and software (OS/type of OS/application/etc.)

Different tests are necessary to measure a "machine" rather than specific part of it.

Thus it is mandatory to clearly define the "purpose" of the test in order to have a meaningful comparison.

Conclusion

The idea is to build specific set of tests to determine about how good a machine can be.

The Phoronix Test Suite is a great starting point for this, a great tool and can be expanded in many ways, including the possibility to store results in an open source database online for further comparison between systems.

But some work is necessary to set up the system and prepare the right set of tests.

To sum up is necessary :

install the Phoronix Test Suite on all the systems to compare
pick up the right set of tests based on the test purpose
execute the tests on all the machine
store the results (possibly on the OpenBenchmarking.org server)
finally compare the results

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Sunday, June 1, 2025