Comparing laptops with Ubuntu

Kirill Strelkov

3 min readOct 9, 2020

Here are some points that should be considered when buying new laptop:

CPU performance
CPU throttling
GPU performance
WiFi speed
Disk speed
Display(Specs, backlight bleeding)

Preconditions

Install latest Ubuntu or use Ubuntu live CD/USB.

Use latest proprietary drivers:

Use community-maintained software:

CPU performance

User Geekbench 5 (https://www.geekbench.com/download/) for CPU testing. NOTE: don’t forget to attach power cable and set max performance mode.

Result of Geekbench:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4093785

CPU throttling

CPU throttling might happen because of bad thermal regulations(CPU heats too much). Run next command simultaneously to get CPU frequencies for all threads.

cd /tmp# Install packages:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y stress-ng glmark2echo "CPU throttling check:"
export MAX_TIME=5mstress-ng --cpu 0 --verify --verbose --timeout $MAX_TIME & timeout $MAX_TIME bash -c 'while true; do cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu MHz"; sleep 1; done &> /tmp/1.csv'sed -i -E 's/.+:\s*//g' /tmp/1.csv

Now open /tmp/1.csv in LibreOffice and plot chart using data:

Check is there are drops in CPU frequencies. In example above you can see that after 200 points CPU drops to ~800 MHz — this is bad.

GPU performance

Use next commands:

cd /tmp# Install packages:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y glmark2echo "GPU test:"
glmark2

NOTE: check that GL_RENDERER is a proper GPU card(discrete or integrated)

WiFi speed

Use https://www.speedtest.net/ for WiFi or Ethernet speed test.

Disk speed

Use built-it “Disks” tool and benchmark proper disk drive.

Display

Check specification of your display(For Lenovo you can use https://psref.lenovo.com/ to find data for your laptop). Look for resolution, panel type, refresh rate, brightness and sRGB/NTSC/Adobe RGB. Ideally display should have 100% sRGB or ~72% NTSC or ~64% AdobeRGB and 300+ nits(cd/m²).

To check backlight bleeding use open https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXHcRiSK_ys and check if your display has “white spots”.