June 2009 BitTorrent Client Shoot-Out

Test torrent: http://www.linuxmint.com/torrent/LinuxMint-7.iso.torrent (697.15 MB)

Methodology: Each client used its default, out-of-the-box settings. The stopwatch began when the LinuxMint torrent was added, and stopped when it finished downloading. The tests were executed one at a time, each right after the previous, to help ensure each test's swarm was roughly the same. uTorrent's test was run on a Windows Vista box; the rest were on Fedora 10 box. Both boxes were connected to the net through the same otherwise-idle router. Of course, a compeletely full test would run each client multiple times in an unchanging swarm. If you have the time, and an immutable swarm, I'd like to hear from you. ;)

Full disclosure: I'm one of the Transmission developers. I didn't skew the tests or results in any way -- If I had, Transmission's upload amount wouldn't've been so bad -- and used a public .torrent so that anyone can retest.

Client	GUI?	Download Time	Avg. DL Speed	CPU Seconds Used	Memory: RES[1]	Amount Uploaded	Memory: VIRT[2]	Memory: SHR[3]	Seeders and Leechers known by the Tracker[4]
Deluge 1.1.6 (Total)[5]	Yes	7m 50sec	1.48 MB/s	0.33.88	78 MB	8.2 MB	955 MB	44 MB	314, 44
Deluge 1.1.6 (Daemon only)[6]	No	7m 50sec	1.48 MB/s	0.23.83	31 MB	8.2 MB	418 MB	26 MB	314, 44
KTorrent 3.2.1	Yes	11m, 9sec	1.04 MB/s	0:47.32	58 MB	1.2 MiB	690 MB	21 MB	308, 48
rTorrent 0.8.4	No	Gave up after 20m. Got 350.4 MB	0.29 MB/s	0:06.55	16 MB	Unknown[7]	182 MB	14 MB	298, 49
Transmission 1.71 (GTK+)	Yes	8m 5sec	1.44 MB/s	0:12.66	30 MB	128 KB	481 MB	13 MB	323, 48
Transmission 1.71 (Daemon)	No	6m, 29s	1.79 MB/s	0:13.82	8.6 MB	896 KB	167 MB	2.8 MB	309, 43
uTorrent 1.8.2	Yes	10m, 29sec	1.06 MB/s	Unknown[8]	10.5 MB[9]	58.4 MB	Unknown[8]	Unknown[8]	250, 35
Vuze 4.2.0.2 + Java 1.6.0_10	Yes	9m 15sec	1.26 MB/s	1:42.58	38 MB	9.09 MB	1,336 MB	349 MB	287, 54

Winners:

• Fastest DL: Deluge and Transmission
• Most UL: uTorrent
• Least Memory Used in a GUI: uTorrent, Transmission
• Least Memory Used in a non-GUI: Transmission
• Least CPU Used in a GUI: Transmission, Deluge
• Least CPU Used in a non-GUI: rTorrent

• Slowest DL: rTorrent, KTorrent
• Least UL: Transmission
• Most Memory Used in a GUI: If you count Java overhead, Vuze and Deluge. Otherwise, Deluge and KTorrent
• Most Memory Used in a non-GUI: Deluge
• Most CPU Used in a GUI: Vuze, KTorrent
• Most CPU Used in a non-GUI: Deluge

Notes:

• I don't understand rTorrent's terrible DL speed (3x slower than its nearest neighbor). Many people swear by rTorrent. I started a second rTorrent test, but its speeds did not improve. As you can see in the screenshot, the up and down throttles were both off. As with every test, this was with first-time-user default settings.

Footnotes:

1. RES is Resident size. This is the non-swapped physical memory a task has used.
2. VIRT is the total amount of virtual memory used by the task. It includes all code, data and shared libraries plus pages that have been swapped out.
3. SHR is the amount of shared memory used by a task. It simply reflects memory that could be potentially shared with other processes.
4. Seeder + Leecher counts are included to show that the swarm was mostly homogenous during the tests.
5. Deluge's latest release, 1.1.8, isn't available prebuilt on my Fedora 10 box. This row shows total CPU and memory use of deluge and deluged.
6. This is taken from the same test run as the previous row. Deluge and deluged are separate processes so, it's easy to tell how much CPU and memory is used by each.
7. I forgot to check. :/
8. I don't know how to measure these on Vista.
9. Source: Task Manager. I don't know if this is a fair comparison to RES or not.

Screenshots!