Some users asked me to benchmark the VideoCore IV, the GPU of the Raspberry Pi (RPi 1 and 2). The hard part of this test was to find other level entry GPUs in my lab. I selected a GeForce G 105M (8 CUDA cores!) and an Intel HD Graphics 4600. I also added a GeForce GTX 660 in the test just to have results with a decent GPU.
I coded four small tests with GLSL Hacker: a simple static mesh test (a torus), a particle test (20’000 particles), a 100% math test (a pixel shader from shadertoy) and a simple texture test (a 2048×2048 texture). These benchmarks are available in the gles2/benchmarks/ folder of the code sample pack. Each test lasts 60 seconds.
These tests give only a rough overview of the performance of the VideoCore IV GPU. These tests are CPU-bound for a recent PC with a mid-level GPU like the GTX 660, because they have been designed for the VideoCore IV and then are ultra-light for a desktop GPU. On the Raspberry Pi, the overall CPU usage was very low during these tests (around 1 or 2%).
Compared to the Raspberry Pi GPU, Intel integrated GPU is a monster 😉
Test 1 – Static Mesh Rendering
The test renders 6 torus for a total of 136’806 vertices and 270’000 triangular faces.
1041 points / 17FPS – Raspberry Pi VideoCore IV |
| 4272 points / 71FPS – NVIDIA GeForce G 105M |
| 24347 points / 405FPS – Intel HD Graphics 4600 |
| 97954 points / 1632FPS – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 |
Test 2 – Particles
The test renders 20’000 particles.
| 1252 points / 20FPS – Raspberry Pi VideoCore IV |
| 4022 points / 67FPS – NVIDIA GeForce G 105M |
| 60360 points / 1006FPS – Intel HD Graphics 4600 |
| 136463 points / 2274FPS – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 |
Test 3 – Math Test
The test renders a heavy math-based pixel shader (pixel shader source: ether). This is a pure GPU processing power test (no texture or GPU buffer access).
| 138 points / 2FPS – Raspberry Pi VideoCore IV |
| 2126 points / 35FPS – NVIDIA GeForce G 105M |
| 26631 points / 443FPS – Intel HD Graphics 4600 |
| 137995 points / 2300FPS – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 |
Test 4 – Texturing
The test renders a 2048×2048 (max texture size on the Raspberry Pi) texture on a fullscreen quad.
| 4750 points / 80FPS – Raspberry Pi VideoCore IV |
| 10487 points / 175FPS – NVIDIA GeForce G 105M |
| 39228 points / 653FPS – Intel HD Graphics 4600 |
| 195877 points / 3260FPS – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 |
Nice job.