VMWare virtual machine benchamarking

[sy247]

We are comparing a physical to a virtual machine hosted on VMWare ESX 4.0.

The differences in CPU are expected because the virtual machine has less CPU than the physical machine but the 2D graphics results are a little strange. The physical machine has an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 290 but it is outperformed by the virtual machine. Both benchmarks were run at the console.

The disk results are also interesting becuase the Random Seek + RW appears to be better on the virtual machine. But the physical machine out performs it on all other disk tests.

What could the reason for this be?

Many thanks,

Simon

PassMark(TM) PerformanceTest 7.0 (http://www.passmark.com)
Results generated on: 12 January 2010

Benchmark Results

Test Name: PHYSICAL
CPU - Integer Math: 287.5
CPU - Floating Point Math: 1102.0
CPU - Find Prime Numbers: 804.2
CPU - Multimedia Instructions: 5.1
CPU - Compression: 3375.9
CPU - Encryption: 9.4
CPU - Physics: 172.3
CPU - String Sorting: 2035.3
Graphics 2D - Solid Vectors: 3.0
Graphics 2D - Transparent Vectors: 0.4
Graphics 2D - Complex Vectors: 144.8
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text: 138.0
Graphics 2D - Windows Interface: 129.5
Graphics 2D - Image Filters: 538.9
2D Graphics - Image Rendering: 211.6
Memory - Allocate Small Block: 3025.8
Memory - Read Cached: 2324.5
Memory - Read Uncached: 2166.9
Memory - Write: 2194.9
Memory - Large RAM: 759.0
Disk - Sequential Read: 103.9
Disk - Sequential Write: 100.3
Disk - Random Seek + RW: 2.9
CPU Mark: 2085.2
2D Graphics Mark: 321.3
Memory Mark: 803.4
Disk Mark: 748.8
PassMark Rating: 1030.3

Benchmark Results

Test Name: VIRTUAL
CPU - Integer Math: 136.4
CPU - Floating Point Math: 792.9
CPU - Find Prime Numbers: 259.2
CPU - Multimedia Instructions: 4.3
CPU - Compression: 1627.7
CPU - Encryption: 6.6
CPU - Physics: 92.1
CPU - String Sorting: 1102.8
Graphics 2D - Solid Vectors: 6.4
Graphics 2D - Transparent Vectors: 2.8
Graphics 2D - Complex Vectors: 80.2
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text: 49.1
Graphics 2D - Windows Interface: 43.0
Graphics 2D - Image Filters: 230.5
2D Graphics - Image Rendering: 157.9
Memory - Allocate Small Block: 2292.9
Memory - Read Cached: 1211.0
Memory - Read Uncached: 894.7
Memory - Write: 1023.5
Memory - Large RAM: 258.0
Disk - Sequential Read: 23.8
Disk - Sequential Write: 18.9
Disk - Random Seek + RW: 55.6
CPU Mark: 1191.4
2D Graphics Mark: 414.4
Memory Mark: 390.6
Disk Mark: 355.1
PassMark Rating: 636.9

[David (PassMark)]

The virtual machine most must be doing additional disk caching.

The 2D test is more interesting. I don't know for sure as we haven't looked into it, but one possibility is that the device drivers in the physical machine don't do any hardware acceleration for the 2D tests. That is to say most of the work in done in software and not hardware. And maybe the drivers supplied in the VM are just better. Or maybe there is less work to do in the VM. For example the color depth might be lower.

[TarikB]

Did you have Aero switched on in the tests on the host? If you did that would explain the higher results for ESX as it would have Aero switched off.