I don't see such behaviour. I've tried a few combinations with tiny messages and 1kb message, single node and cluster, everything local and on Kubernetes (with stream-perf-test on a separate node). In all cases, --rate 100000 behaved as expected. For example, single-node, everything local:
```
> java -jar stream-perf-test-latest.jar --max-length-bytes 1000000000 -z 10
Starting producer
1, published 871210 msg/s, confirmed 861348 msg/s, consumed 857301 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 10/14/50/75 ms, chunk size 1499
2, published 913132 msg/s, confirmed 915558 msg/s, consumed 919658 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 10/15/24/29 ms, chunk size 1874
3, published 1016344 msg/s, confirmed 1017901 msg/s, consumed 1007959 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 9/13/23/30 ms, chunk size 1893
4, published 1215694 msg/s, confirmed 1218995 msg/s, consumed 1217315 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 9/11/14/18 ms, chunk size 2070
5, published 961930 msg/s, confirmed 960976 msg/s, consumed 967091 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 9/14/24/27 ms, chunk size 2010
6, published 850836 msg/s, confirmed 844584 msg/s, consumed 845992 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 11/16/23/28 ms, chunk size 2027
7, published 864251 msg/s, confirmed 869032 msg/s, consumed 871082 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 11/16/24/32 ms, chunk size 2066
8, published 789121 msg/s, confirmed 787530 msg/s, consumed 787530 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 14/21/25/30 ms, chunk size 2047
9, published 1116097 msg/s, confirmed 1116399 msg/s, consumed 1114734 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 9/12/19/25 ms, chunk size 2081
10, published 923390 msg/s, confirmed 922524 msg/s, consumed 926239 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 11/16/25/27 ms, chunk size 2067
Summary: published 951918 msg/s, confirmed 950921 msg/s, consumed 950512 msg/s, latency 95th 25 ms, chunk size 2067
> java -jar stream-perf-test-latest.jar --max-length-bytes 1000000000 -z 10 --rate 100000
Starting producer
1, published 107771 msg/s, confirmed 107672 msg/s, consumed 107474 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/5/31/32 ms, chunk size 72
2, published 99931 msg/s, confirmed 99931 msg/s, consumed 99995 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/3/3/4 ms, chunk size 68
3, published 100039 msg/s, confirmed 100139 msg/s, consumed 100075 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/3/4/4 ms, chunk size 68
4, published 100008 msg/s, confirmed 99872 msg/s, consumed 100008 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/3/4/5 ms, chunk size 69
5, published 100129 msg/s, confirmed 100165 msg/s, consumed 100229 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/3/3/4 ms, chunk size 68
6, published 100090 msg/s, confirmed 99990 msg/s, consumed 99890 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/3/3/4 ms, chunk size 68
7, published 100000 msg/s, confirmed 100064 msg/s, consumed 100100 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/3/4/4 ms, chunk size 68
8, published 100002 msg/s, confirmed 100038 msg/s, consumed 100066 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/3/3/5 ms, chunk size 69
9, published 99929 msg/s, confirmed 100029 msg/s, consumed 100065 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/3/4/4 ms, chunk size 69
10, published 100140 msg/s, confirmed 100140 msg/s, consumed 100040 msg/s, latency median/75th/95th/99th 2/3/4/4 ms, chunk size 68
Summary: published 100789 msg/s, confirmed 100779 msg/s, consumed 100759 msg/s, latency 95th 4 ms, chunk size 68
```
There is a significant difference in the chunk size and small chunks may lead to poor performance (
https://github.com/rabbitmq/osiris/pull/115 addressed this to some extent but there's only so much we can do when the chunks are very small).
Given I can't reproduce this, please provide full details of how you run these tests. It might be easier through github.
Best,