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Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark?

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On 10.04.20 08:26, dalios wrote:
> (...)
>      CPU Cache: 3 MB
> (...)
Working with much older hardware than you and using Debian as a Desktop 
with GUI (KDE) and not as a Server, I found the CPU Cache to be the most 
important piece of hardware letting you "feel" your desktop "responding" 
slow or fast. Nowadays I claim that 1 MB of cache is insufficient for 
experiencing a satisfying "responsiveness" when interactively working 
with the desktop. I do have a system with 2 MB cache and it is "usable", 
although not "comfortable". My 3 MB cache system is fine and I am 
working with it as my main system for my daily work, using heavily 
Firefox with usually some 5 to 15 tabs open AND additionally having a 
second Firefox with a different Firefox profile open for there running 
web apps of Microsoft Office 365 in usually 3 tabs. In parallel I always 
have open Thunderbird, RIOT (the matrix.org messenger client), 
Cherrytree, Kate, and some times also LibreOffice Writer or even ImageJ 
for some scientific image processing. This system has (only) the 
following hardware specifications and runs all this:

CPU: Intel Core2Duo P7450 2.13 GHz
Cache: 3 MB
RAM: 4 GB

Note that my 1 MB, 2 MB and 3 MB CPU Cache systems all have an almost 
identical CPU of type Core2Duo and CPU speed, and I also have another 2 
MB CPU cache system with a slower CPU speed. I clearly "feel" strongly 
the different amount of cache at my hands, but I do not feel the CPU 
frequency differences!

The last hardware upgrade was to recently extend it to now have 2x 4 GB 
RAM, but this was more because of having received the RAM free of cost 
than having felt a need to search for it. Instead, what really becomes 
an every day annoyance is a missing USB3 port, with the desire to have 
USB3 Gen2 available for the necessary (highly recommended) everyday data 
backup to some external storage media.

What I am about to say: with your hardware I would not worry too much 
about benchmarking the RAM. Simply add as much RAM as you can, following 
other people recommendations on how to best combine them (which RAM 
mounted to which slot of your motherboard), but then instead of loosing 
time with benchmarking better spend time on fine tuning some parameters 
which are needed to adjust in order to let Debian run with nice 
"responsiveness" as a desktop on not so fast hardware. Keep in mind, 
that not used RAM is a waste of resources. If your system is constantly 
using as much RAM as possible, but of course without ever to start to 
swap data to slow bulk storage media, then it best uses your hardware 
for you. Linux is intelligent towards this goal. It uses free RAM and 
there caches data which you might need again, in order to then be able 
to deliver you this data quickest. If your activity, some application, 
needs the RAM, then immediately some cached data is thrown away (cached 
data is considered to be able to become loaded in newly, if needed) and 
the freed RAM is immediately available for your activity. So, the cache 
will not impact your application's needs. Cache is used when possible 
and not used when there is no vacancy for it. Now, this explains why you 
will always see high RAM usage on your system. Whatever is unused by the 
user activity will be used for a performance increase and for this will 
be filled by the cache system. If you have 4 GB mounted to your 
hardware, then it will be used almost completely, and if you now mount 8 
GB (or 12 GB) to it, then you will (and want to) see that the 8 GB (or 
12 GB) are used almost completely. Nice!


I always consider Debian to be the Linux distribution which 
out-of-the-box comes well tuned for server applications, while not being 
preconfigured nicely for desktop usage. The configurations which in this 
regard I am mainly having in mind are the ones which adjust how the 
Linux cache system should work, how the RAM which is not used by your 
applications is meanwhile used. Afterwards it might also be worth to 
consider the many logs and statistics which by the Debian default 
configuration become generated, and how I/O to the bulk storage media is 
used, but for the moment I won't have a look at that.
For now, maybe simply consider to adjust the following parameters for 
the cache system and see if your system comforts you better:


create a file  /etc/sysctl.d/99-SettingsByMyself.conf  with the 
following content, which will adjust the 2 main parameters 
"vm.swappiness" and "vm.vfs_cache_pressure" influencing the cache system 
towards the needs of running a Desktop with GUI on not so fast hardware:


# responsiveness of system preferred over data treatment speed:
# decrease from default=60 towards 0
# or
# data treatment speed preferred over responsiveness of system:
# increase from default=60 towards 100
#
# 0 = disable any swap activity
# 1 = minimum swap activity, helps to avoid running out of RAM
vm.swappiness = 1

# lower value in order to prefer inode/dentry cache to stay in cache
# for finding files faster; (default=100) (could be > 100)
vm.vfs_cache_pressure=25



Good Luck! Marco.

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Thread

New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? dalios <dalios@eumx.net> - 2020-04-09 20:30 +0200
  Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2020-04-09 20:40 +0200
  Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-04-09 23:20 +0200
  Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? dalios <dalios@eumx.net> - 2020-04-10 08:30 +0200
    Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? Marco Möller <talby@debianlists.mobilxpress.net> - 2020-04-10 12:40 +0200
    Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2020-04-10 14:40 +0200
    xpdf woes, was Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-04-10 17:20 +0200
    Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-04-11 05:10 +0200
      Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? Tixy <tixy@yxit.co.uk> - 2020-04-11 11:50 +0200
        Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed (was: Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark?) rhkramer@gmail.com - 2020-04-11 15:10 +0200
          Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed (was: Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark?) deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2020-04-11 15:40 +0200
            Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed (was: Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark?) rhkramer@gmail.com - 2020-04-11 16:20 +0200
              Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2020-04-11 17:30 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2020-04-11 21:10 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2020-04-12 01:30 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-04-11 22:30 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2020-04-12 01:50 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-04-12 09:40 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2020-04-12 20:40 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed "007@caiway.net" <007@caiway.net> - 2020-04-12 00:20 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2020-04-13 15:30 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2020-04-13 17:50 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2020-04-13 18:30 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> - 2020-04-13 19:10 +0200
                Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2020-04-13 20:20 +0200
              Re: Improving performance: RAM or CPU speed (was: Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark?) deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2020-04-11 21:20 +0200
        Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-04-12 00:30 +0200
          Re: New RAM, does Debian has a tool to benchmark? deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2020-04-12 10:40 +0200

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