Benchmarks I would like to see

[Joshua Dickerson]

Some 'not so SMF related' benchmarks that I would like to see are:
mysql *vs* mysqli (that includes speed relationships with using prepared statements)

memory and speed differences with closing the database connection as soon as we are done with it.

ordering by PHP as opposed to MySQL

'light' webservers like thttpd, lighthttpd, etc compared to Apache. Including features comparisons, speed comparisons for use with PHP, and most importantly load comparisons (CPU and mem usage).

eaccelerator *vs* APC and other opcode caches. I want to know the speed at which it caches and the memory usage.

I would also like to see SQL benchmarks. Comparing separating queries into small but fast chunks as opposed to larger queries with joins. I have heard from some people that no joins is the way to go, but I don't see how that would help with the issue of webserver -> database bottleneck. Interested to see what goes on with that.

I want to see benchmarks on the BBC functions of SMF. I want to also see them compared to other BBC functions. Considering that SMF is the only one that does the output properly (AFAIK), I am interested to see speed differences. Also memory and CPU tests should be done with that.

I want to know how much memory SMF uses for each of your basic page loads (boardindex, messageindex, display, post, sending the post, searching). I want to see that tested against the memory usage of other forum software. Especially interested in the difference between SMF and YaBBSE.

I also want to see bandwidth testing for the above. I am also interested to know if stylesheets are cached enough to actually be saving bandwidth.

All benchmarks should monitor load. All variables should be documented. All programs and scripts should be documented. Any usage of the server including outside access, other running processes, user activity (moving the mouse, changing program focus, etc), etc should be documented.

[Joshua Dickerson]

Add: Using query cache as opposed to not for forums. A forum's queries change very often.