I’m going to nerd out for a minute. You may want to skip this post.
I picked up a new video card today and tweaked my Linux box for a huge increase in performance. Installation with Ubuntu Linux couldn’t be easier. I just took out the old card and popped in the new one. There were no CDs to mess with, no downloads, no installs. Well, to be fair I’d already installed the nVidia drivers for my last card and no update was needed but even that process is easier than dealing with Windows.
A quick run through glxgears turned up some pretty huge FPS numbers:
63689 frames in 5.0 seconds = 12737.690 FPS
84148 frames in 5.0 seconds = 16829.510 FPS
86075 frames in 5.0 seconds = 17214.957 FPS
83976 frames in 5.0 seconds = 16795.182 FPS
87929 frames in 5.0 seconds = 17585.611 FPS
89133 frames in 5.0 seconds = 17826.453 FPS
A quick test with Nexiuz showed 90-170 FPS at 1280×1024 with all of the eyecandy maxed out. The Quake4 demo is capped at 60 or 64 FPS (I think). Anyway my machine stayed pegged at the limit during a 30 minute run. Enemy Territory, which is nice looking but not exactly cutting edge in the graphics department had even better performance at 1600×1200 with everything maxed out. Not bad. My tech specs for those interested:
CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ – 1GHz FSB 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
Motherboard:
nForce4-A939 – nVRAID, K8HT2000, Gigabit Ethernet LAN, nVidia Firewall, PCI Express, Dual-Channel DDR 400, SATA, ATA133, onboard 6-channel audio and USB 2.0.
Video:
BFG nVidia GeForce 7600gt OC (Overclocked)
Ram:
1GB DDR 400
Storage:
Dual Seagate Barracuda 160GB SATA drives
120GB external firewire drive
Memorex Dual Layer DVD±RW Writer
Case:
LL Warrior – (Lian Li PC-61 modded w/ 6 fans & 500w power supply)
Operating System:
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS w/ K7-SMP Kernel (Symmetric Multiprocessing)
Software Used for BoW Production:
Firefox
GIMP
gFTP
Photos:
Workstation
Desktop screenshots
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