Guide: 3D Benchmarking with OpenArena

[Massman]

Hey guys,

 

So in the Raspberry Pi overclocking guide I published last weekend you can only find a run-down for 3D benching with HWBOT Prime. Of course the Raspberry Pi can also do 3D overclocking! So of course we want this too. So far there are not really any decent 3D benchmarks out there for ARM-based Linux devices, so we will have to stick with our regular game benchmarks. In this thread I will help you install the OpenArena benchmark. OpenArena is based on the Quake3 engine, so benchmarking is pretty much like it was ten years ago .

 

1) Install Openarena

 

Log in to your Raspberry Pi, stay in command mode. Then run the following commands:

 

$ sudo apt-get install openarena
$ wget http://www.berryterminal.com/dl/ioquake3_99.1.36-rpi01_armhf.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i ./ioquake3_99.1.36-rpi01_armhf.deb

 

The total filesize is about 700MB, so make sure you have enough space. Normally, the download packages will remain on your SD card unless you delete them yourself. You can use this command to remove the files. Don't worry, you don't need them anymore.

 

$ sudo apt-get clean

 

After this, you have installed OpenArena.

 

2) Benchmarking

 

Again, stay in command mode and run the following command to start OpenArena.

 

$ sudo /usr/games/openarena

 

The game will load now. If you were aware during the '90s you will surely recognise the interface. Now, to benchmark use the default config settings and default demo. To start the benchmark, use the following commands in the console. To enable console, press '~'.

 

timedemo 1 (enables benchmark mode)
cg_drawfps 1 (shows fps when benchmarking)
demo demo001_test1 (loads demo map)

 

Just wait until it's finished. On my default Raspberry Pi (700arm, 250gpu) it took 434.8 seconds to render 3398 frames at 7.8 fps. 7min 14.6s is a great time for Haswell 4G 32M, but horribly long for a 3D benchmark. So be prepared.

 

Results (arm/core/gpu/sdram):

• 7.8FPS at 700/250/250/500
  
• 13.2FPS at 1000/500/300/575
  
• 15.2FPS at 1050/550/350/600
  
• 15.5FPS at 1100/550/375/600
  

Enjoy!

 

 

Sources

 

- http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=8673&sid=01dcd4952ec1ce854d1367642f155265&start=25

- http://openarena.wikia.com/wiki/index.php?search=benchmark&fulltext=Search&ab=38%2C46

Edited July 29, 2013 by Massman

[richba5tard]

Cool find. Not yet tested but do you really have to run the game as root (sudo /usr/games/openarena)? Would be nice if we could integrate this in a wrapper and use it on the bot.