Hardware

CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo 8500
RAM - 4 GB
HDD - Samsung F1 Spinpoint Sata2 1TB
VID - Nvidia 9500 1GB DDR2

TESTS DONE
+ Running World of Warcraft Via Latest Wine (Fullscreen and window mode)
+ Opening Firefox + Chrome with 10 Tabs each
+ Opening Folder Viewer (Nautilus / Dolphin)
+ Simple Installation ( How much is used without installing anything else)
+ Respond Rate (How fast the system responds when opening programs, moving windows, copy, cut...)
+ Booting & Shutdown (Using standard installation)
+ Running Banshee ( I like Banshee more than Rhythmbox or Amarok)
+ Opening OpenOffice with 10 Documents ( Between 20 and 500 pages)
+ Playing a Flash game on Kongregate & Armorgames
+ Watching an h264 movie with 1280 resolution on VLC
+ Watching 4 movies with high resolution on VLC
+ Learning Curve (Tested with 10 Windows XP/7 users. 5 for KDE, 5 for Gnome. Afterwards they switched)

NOTE - On Memory or CPU Usage, the loading part is not taken into consideration since when the program finishes loading it drops to the percent that continues while the program is running.



GNOME CPU USAGE

+ Running World of Warcraft Via Latest Wine - 3%
+ Opening Firefox + Chrome with 10 Tabs - 2%
+ Opening Folder Viewer - 1%
+ Running Banshee - 4%
+ Opening OpenOffice with 10 Documents - 8%
+ Playing a Flash game on Kongregate & Armorgames - 4%
+ Watching an h264 movie with 1280 resolution on VLC - 2%
+ Watching 4 movies with high resolution on VLC - 3%



GNOME MEMORY USAGE

+ Running World of Warcraft Via Latest Wine - 380 MB
+ Opening Firefox + Chrome with 10 Tabs - 280 MB
+ Opening Folder Viewer - 60 MB
+ Simple Installation - 180 MB
+ Running Banshee - 70 MB
+ Opening OpenOffice with 10 Documents - 180 MB
+ Playing a Flash game on Kongregate & Armorgames - 15 MB ( Plus What Firefox or Chrome use)
+ Watching an h264 movie with 1280 resolution on VLC - 35 MB
+ Watching 4 movies with high resolution on VLC - 70 MB



KDE CPU USAGE

+ Running World of Warcraft Via Latest Wine - 5%
+ Opening Firefox + Chrome with 10 Tabs - 3%
+ Opening Folder Viewer - 1%
+ Running Banshee - 4%
+ Opening OpenOffice with 10 Documents - 10%
+ Playing a Flash game on Kongregate & Armorgames - 3%
+ Watching an h264 movie with 1280 resolution on VLC - 2%
+ Watching 4 movies with high resolution on VLC - 3%



KDE MEMORY USAGE

+ Running World of Warcraft Via Latest Wine - 380 MB
+ Opening Firefox + Chrome with 10 Tabs - 300 MB
+ Opening Folder Viewer - 20 MB
+ Simple Installation - 790 MB
+ Running Banshee - 50 MB
+ Opening OpenOffice with 10 Documents - 150 MB
+ Playing a Flash game on Kongregate & Armorgames - 15 MB ( Plus What Firefox or Chrome use)
+ Watching an h264 movie with 1280 resolution on VLC - 30 MB
+ Watching 4 movies with high resolution on VLC - 50 MB



KDE USAGE

+ Respond Rate - Less than 2 seconds most of the apps. Including apps from GTK (Gnome) and Windows (Via WINE). Copying/Moving was about 25% faster than gnome using the same hard drive.

+ Booting & Shutdown - Took more or less a second more than Gnome (Ubuntu) in both, booting and shutting.

+ Learning Curve - 30 Minutes for all 5 windows users to feel like in home while using Kubuntu. They specially liked the options they had to change several aspects of the desktop and other features that are shown in the System Settings. They did not get any help in the 30 minutes since they had to learn from scratch. After 30 minutes they knew how to use the messenger, configure the keyboard, change desktop options and start working on a office document. All while listening to some alizee song. Some loved klipper while others love the idea of having the desktop in a folder (which i don't, i like it kde 3 style ). Overall the 5 testers that used KDE first enjoy how it worked and how easy it was for them.
The 5 users that used gnome, when coming to KDE took around an hour to get used to it. The desktop folder confused 2 of them. For the other 3, 2 said they enjoyed KDE more while the last one liked more Gnome since it was simpler. The 2 that got confused after the hour 1 of them liked more KDE and the other Gnome.




GNOME USAGE

+ Respond Rate - Les than 5 seconds for most of the apps. Starting Nautilus or starting a hard drive via Nautilus takes about 4 seconds more. Compared to Dolphin which is 2 seconds in the 5 tests i made. Copying/Moving was a fixed 25% slower than KDE and sometimes it went to 40%, not many but it happened.

+ Booting & Shutdown - Loading was faster than kde by a second or 2. shutdown down was the same, about 1 to 2 seconds.

+ Learning Curve - The 5 tester that started with Gnome found the 2 bars confusing but it took only a minute to realize what each one was for. Took about 15 minutes to learn everything. From using firefox, opening openoffice to work, playing some games to copy, cut, paste, changing desktop, etc.. They even started controlling each others pc with vinagre and vino. They had to learn from scratch with no help from me. The 5 user the used KDE first and then went to Gnome learned gnome in about 10 minutes also. but started missing some features that are in KDE, klipper for example (They did not know about glipper) and the extra options made then feel like they were in some kind of windows version (they explain that it was because of the lack of options that they did not have some many as KDE).


Of the 5 testers that used first GNOME, 2 stayed with GNOME after using KDE.
Of the 5 testers that used first KDE, 3 Stayed with KDE after using GNOME.

Of the 10 testers, 4 stayed with GNOME. 6 stayed with KDE. mostly because of how they view or how it helped them accomplish something.


Please continue with other benchmarks by yourselves. Remember to use the same PCs for both tests.

The conclusion here is what and how the user wants and likes. Basically i have been using KDE for 3 years, then moved to Gnome because KDE started with the 4.x branch and right now moved back to KDE to discover that i missed this baby SO LONG!.

I want to make clear that even though i have used both for several years the difference in performance viewed by the end user would be that, even if kde uses more memory it performs faster in everything i tested. From opening any program to anything performance aggressive like opening several programas, using several intensive apps, etc.. Yes, it consumes more but yes it performance really fast. Did not even install the binary nvidia drivers when it was working excellent. After installing the nvidia it was awesome.

So basically, if you like they way KDE presents to you usage vs performance in the linux world, and gives options vs simplicity then go with KDE. If you have a low memory computer (Both are not CPU intensive as you can see) and like simplicity over many options then go with Gnome. Gnome is faster to learn since it focus on simplicity over complexity of desktop options. KDE focuses on giving the user more options vs what the user can do at the end.

Enjoy.

CPU - Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo T5500
RAM - 2 GB
HDD - Tohiba MK1234GS 120GB
VID - Intel 945GM
MOD - HP Pavillion dv6000

GNOME - Benchmarks did not differ much in comparison to the above post. Basically they were the same.


KDE CPU USAGE

+ Running World of Warcraft Via Latest Wine - 5%
+ Opening Firefox + Chrome with 10 Tabs - 3%
+ Opening Folder Viewer - 1%
+ Running Banshee - 3%
+ Opening OpenOffice with 10 Documents - 10%
+ Playing a Flash game on Kongregate & Armorgames - 2%
+ Watching an h264 movie with 1280 resolution on VLC - 2%
+ Watching 4 movies with high resolution on VLC - 4%



KDE MEMORY USAGE

+ Running World of Warcraft Via Latest Wine - 360 MB
+ Opening Firefox + Chrome with 10 Tabs - 250 MB
+ Opening Folder Viewer - 20 MB
+ Simple Installation - 450 MB
+ Running Banshee - 40 MB
+ Opening OpenOffice with 10 Documents - 170 MB
+ Playing a Flash game on Kongregate & Armorgames - 20 MB ( Plus What Firefox or Chrome use)
+ Watching an h264 movie with 1280 resolution on VLC - 20 MB
+ Watching 4 movies with high resolution on VLC - 40 MB

Tip: make a graph. People like graphs. Bar charts please (no pie charts).

CPU USAGE
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/5981/92480048.png

MEMORY USAGE
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/8859/24412777.png

NOTE - Had to put url instead of img since there is some limit about 720 pixels wide. i thought there was the thumbnail thingy in this forum. That shows a smaller version if the image is too big.

Muuch nicer. It definitely looks as though KDE would like some optimisations. I'd like to see this again when 4.6 beta comes out.

Just interested, how are these measurements done? On all processes running as the user, or on specific processes? Which tool was used to make the measurements?

System Monitor was used. The system monitor on gnome and the one in kde. Also used free and top. For the CPU i took 10 seconds after the program was loaded to measure. For the memory i waited until the program had finished loaded.

Is a basic benchmark actually which you can do yourself if you got 30 minutes to spare.

I think a better measurement would be using exmap, especially as KDE has a lot of shared libraries.

Yes i took into consideration the shared, MANY SHARED libraries. What am showing here is the sum of all memory used and the sum of all cpu used for that specific task which can be seen in the system monitor since it makes a small summary of all memory and cpu usage related to a particular process.

Also to update the benchmark above. The latest (From about 1 week till now) KDE has seen a huge improvement regarding speed and memory usage. Am seeing right now a drop from around 800Mb usage after installation (With vanilla Kubuntu 10.10) to 430Mb usage using KDe with the updates till now.

Second am also seeing a perceptible change in the speed of how windows move, manage, appear, mouse movement, dragging/dropping.

Last games like WoW and L4D2 in KDE using wine run strangely faster than the same nvidia drivers and all in Ubuntu. Now you tell me what is that all about since i was only testing the memory and cpu usage but for example, i can turn all graphics to the max in KDE but not in Ubuntu.

Yes, I have heard the a lot of memory usage has been optimised in 4.6. With the nvidia pixmap caching bug fixed for windeco and widgets, as well as the incoming stabilisation of that 200 line kernel patch, I'm really, really looking forward to January

Correct. That was Exactly what i was trying to say. you made my point hehe.