Ryan Marcus — It’s all Frank’s fault!

A benchmark — when used in terms of computers — is a statistic for comparison, whether it be two different sets of graphics cards, two different processors, two different motherboards, etc. It is a rare occurrence when benchmarks can be used to determine the difference between two operating systems.

WINE (Wine Is Not An Emulator) is compatibility layer for Linux, giving Linux users the ability to run Windows applications with X (the Linux window server) and OpenGL (a free kind of OpenGL). Quite a few people say things like “it is impossible for Wine to ever run faster then Windows,” but it turns out that is not always the case.

With the newest version of Wine (as of 12/03/07) is 0.9.50. Some kind Wine user has ran quite a few pieces of benchmarking software on an equivalent Windows XP and Wine. Wine is compared to XP and not Vista because Wine only supports DirectX 9, and XP is considered to have MUCH better performance then Vista.

If you’d like to read the benchmarks yourself instead of my interpretation, or you’d like to refer to the benchmarks as I go through them, you can find them here: http://wiki.winehq.org/BenchMark-0.9.5.

On the first set of benchmarks (3DMark2000v1.1 1024×768x16), showed that, overall, Wine preformed 7.5% better then Windows XP. Now, let’s break it down into individual tests to see where Wine gets its lead from:

1. CPU Speed: Linux Leads by 12.5%: Linux is known for its process and memory management. It is just a little known fact that Linux runs about 15% faster then Windows XP does, and about 35% faster then Vista. The 12.5% is a reflection of that difference. Linux simply has done it right, Windows hasn’t. Linux is a lot less bloated, and everything is written smaller and more compactly then in Windows.
2. Helicopter: Windows leads by 2% at low detail, 11% at medium detail, and 33.8% on high detail: While Linux is known for process and memory advantages over Windows, Windows is known to have rendering advantages over Linux. OpenGL, while faster if written correctly, really slows down DirectX stuff when Wine has to channel all of an applications DirectX calls into OpenGl. The helicopter demo is a demonstration of a fast moving, many polygon model. Linux falls behind drastically in this respect.
3. Adventure: Linux leads 56.7% in low detail, 26.1% in medium detail, 13.7% in high detail: These are some rather interesting numbers, as they illustrate my last two points quite well. An adventure game is much more processor intensive then the helicopter. These numbers show how much Linux’s processor and memory advantages can show over Windows, and how quickly Windows catches up when the graphics level is bumped. Still, Linux rains supreme even at higher ends due to flat out bad process and memory management in Windows XP.
4. Single texture filling: Windows leads 11%: Single texture filling is one of those things that DirectX has going for it. It is all done on the graphics card. Single texture filling is mostly common with older games, so the level of graphical intensity probably won’t be enough to be effected by this.
5. Multiple texture filling: Linux leads 74.5% When you are filling with multiple textures, the processor starts to become a factor. Calculations of what texture to put where are not done on the card, they are done on the processor. Apparently, enough of the work is done on the processor to give Linux a huge lead in this area. Most newer games use this method, but because of Linux’s polygon difficulties, that doesn’t mean that all newer games run better in Wine.
6. Many polygons: Windows leads 50% – 54%: Rendering polygons and models is something left up to the graphics card, thus Windows will get better performance until the Wine folks get their act together. Most 3D first person games (World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Counterstrike) included many polygon models, so Wine might have some trouble there. Hopefully its multiple texture filling advantage will earn you some of your lost frames back. Some games, like RTS’s (real time strategy, Supreme Commander, Command and Conquer, Starcraft (1 & 2), Warcraft III) tend to use much less polygons then 3D first person shooters, so you should get better performance in those games.
7. Texture rendering speed: Linux leads 5.9% on 16 MB, 9.4% on 32 MB, 11.4% on 64 MB: One of the few areas where OpenGL surpasses DirectX is texture rendering. OpenGL is designed to render movies and slower paced animations as well as games, so the texture storage and rendering system is must farther along then DirectX. Once again, large textures are normally used in RTS’s and RPG’s, not in 3D first person games. You’ll see quite a difference when your playing your non-shooter games in Wine then in Windows XP.
8. Bump mapping: Linux leads 1.7% on 3 pass, Windows leads on 2 pass by 1.2%, Windows leads by 4.9% in one pass, Linux leads by 37.9% in environmental: Sadly, bump mapping is used in most games, and normally single pass. RTS’s and large, zoomed out games, luckily, tend to use environmental, so, once again, you’ll get some boosts there.

Overall, Wine is making progress on Windows XP, and is ahead of Windows in many ways already. I can only encourage you to get Linux and try it yourself. Wine will continue to make progress, and maybe even surpass Windows XP entirely in the near future. Watch and wait!

You are welcome to look through the rest of the benchmark, but I don’t believe there is anything else there to change the conclusions I made.