Performance Difference between 18.04 and 20.04?

[megosdog]

Hey guys, I'm just curious as to what you guys have seen, or know about, in regards to performance improvements that are being seen in v20.04 over 18.04? I've got a 4 core AMD Ryzen 3 3200G I'm running right now in my new workstation and I'm wondering how much better my performance would be with 20.04. I'm definitely looking to make the jump in the next month or two, so I'm curious what I have to look forward to. Thanks for your info.

[Don B. Cilly]

I would say... quite a bit (of an improvement).
Mainly due - from what I've seen and guess - to smoothing out quite a few things that really bogged down 18.04 on slower machines. Mostly related to update/indexing problems.
I have it on a 2-core Celeron 1.8G laptop and the difference is impressive.

Why not just try it out on a separate partition with a shared/cloned /home, though?

[megosdog]

Well, I'm on a 4 core Amd Ryzen 3600, so if you're seeing that big of an Celeron 1.8gb, then I'm probably safe going ahead with the upgrade. I was planning on doing it anyways, but was just curious how big of an improvement I would see. I'll probably do my laptop first, and work out the kinks there like I always do, then move over to the main desktop and iron out any final things there.

[megosdog]

Well, I just kicked it around today on my laptop and ended up having to revert to 18.04 for now. And it's nothing that's the fault of 20.04. The problem I ran into is that a few of the key 3rd party apps that I need for work simply weren't available yet for 20.04, which isn't actually that unexpected, as it happened with 16.04 and 18.04 as well. Overall I really, really liked the extra stability and features of the new system (the new layout is a bit weird, but negotiable), but I can't go full time with it until those other apps get ported over to 20.04, one of those being Barrier, since I use my home machine for work stuff and really can't live without that right now. Same with alarm-clock-applet and a few others. But again, not a knock on 20.04. Just a disadvantage I can't deal with right now. Either way, big four thumbs up for the new Kubuntu.

[Don B. Cilly]

In that case what you probably want is neon User edition.
It's an 18.04 base with new Plasma stuff. Best of both worlds - for me, I also have a few issues with some apps being a pain on 20.04.

There is almost no practical difference - especially performance-wise - between neon 5.18 and Kubuntu 20.04.
And the little differences there are are - to me, for the moment - advantages.

In the end, I just use neon...

[mr_raider]

Hey guys, I'm just curious as to what you guys have seen, or know about, in regards to performance improvements that are being seen in v20.04 over 18.04? I've got a 4 core AMD Ryzen 3 3200G I'm running right now in my new workstation and I'm wondering how much better my performance would be with 20.04. I'm definitely looking to make the jump in the next month or two, so I'm curious what I have to look forward to. Thanks for your info.

I wouldn't hold my breath for any meaningful performance imporvements. 20.04 is generally faster to boot up, but that seems to be limited to streamlining the system. The 3200g is a 2nd gen Ryzen (zen +) architecture that has been around (the 2x00 series) since 2018. Don't expect any CPU optimizations for this chip that will set performance records.

On the gPU side, you may get some better performance. The GPU on the ryzen 3200 is a Vega chip, and does have better performance with newer kernels (5.3/5.4) and mesa builds 20 and above. However that's only relevant to gamers.

You could easily get similar performance with 18.04 and the hwe kernel.

[GreyGeek]

My Acer Aspire V3-771G, made in 2012, has 16Gb of RAM, an i7 cpu, an Nvidia GT 650M gpu and two 500GB Samsung EVO 860 SSD's. I have a Hurricane IPv6 tunnel which is set as my default protocol. My internet connection is a 500Mb fiber optic and my AR9642 powered WIFI is giving its best, which is 256Mbps, most of the time. The GT 650M using proprietary drivers makes it appear as if the 650M was my primary GPU, which my BIOS does not allow me to set as such. The desktop and every application is running on the GT 650M. This makes my desktop really snappy. The /dev/sda SSD makes my boot time very quick: 5.3 seconds from POST to working desktop.

So, for me and my hardware, Kubuntu 20.04 is very fast. From what I read about it before it was released as Alpha, when I tried it I wasn't disappointed. I installed at near the end of Alpha testing and having had any problems which I didn't cause myself, and not many of them. As always, I use BTRFS and its ability to roll back from my many experiments.

[megosdog]

GrayGeek, sounds like you've had great success with your system, and I had a good experience with 20.04 when I installed it. The only deal breaker was that some of the apps I need for work (I work from home) aren't ported up to 20.04 just yet. So I'm cool making the jump once they are. And, if they never port them up, I might go with Don's suggestion of Neon. I mean, as long as I can have all my current work necessary apps working, I'm cool. I realize that if some don't get ported up to 20.04 and later, I'll have to find replacements. But, this'll buy me time to find acceptable replacements, which is a must, because breaking my workflow now to adjust to new things isn't really doable given our current workload. But when it all slows down again, I'll definitely be all over that as I've got a ton of stuff to catch up on in the upgrades department. Most of what I've done so far has pretty much amounted to putting out small fires just to keep myself going for the moment. But, that also doesn't mean I'm not gonna be planning for the future when I do have the time to do everything, and do it right.

[bendy]

On an AMD Ryzen, the newer kernel and mesa etc. might bring some performance improvements to the built-in Radeon graphics?

[jglen490]

I wouldn't hold my breath for any meaningful performance imporvements. 20.04 is generally faster to boot up, but that seems to be limited to streamlining the system. The 3200g is a 2nd gen Ryzen (zen +) architecture that has been around (the 2x00 series) since 2018. Don't expect any CPU optimizations for this chip that will set performance records.

On the gPU side, you may get some better performance. The GPU on the ryzen 3200 is a Vega chip, and does have better performance with newer kernels (5.3/5.4) and mesa builds 20 and above. However that's only relevant to gamers.

You could easily get similar performance with 18.04 and the hwe kernel.

Amen.

Marginal performance gains, perhaps. Comparing disparate machines is not going to prove anything other than an older machine doesn't perform as well as a much newer machine. On any specific machine, there could be some/little/no performance changes when moving to 20.04 from an earlier version. I don't think that would be the only valid reason to move.

[mr_raider]

On an AMD Ryzen, the newer kernel and mesa etc. might bring some performance improvements to the built-in Radeon graphics?

YEs. In gaming performance only. More specifically Vulkan/Proton emulation of windows native games. But if you are using a Ryzen APU, chances are you don't play demanding games. The performance improvement in desktop usage is minimal.