Carrying on with standards set in our previous reviews, I'll be testing the system in Linux utilizing Unreal Tournament 2004, the Phoronix Test Suite, and glxgears. We installed Ubuntu 8.04 as our operating system of choice for the unit. Ubuntu had no issues detecting the hardware, and all I was required to do was install the restricted ATI driver.

Unreal Tournament 2004

As I mentioned earlier, my de-facto benchmark for gaming is Unreal Tournament 2004. It runs natively in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Since UT2004 is a somewhat older game, it should make for an excellent benchmark in Linux to show graphics performance.

glxgears

Since AMD bought ATI, Linux support for ATI products has greatly increased. In Windows, the Radeon X1250 managed to take the lead. However, I'm somewhat suspect about the card's performance in Linux.

Phoronix Test Suite

To compare the two similar systems, I've selected out usual benchmarks using gzip compression, LAME audio compression, and ogg audio compression. Since both machines are also using the same model hard drive, I've also included hdparm results to compare the buffered read speeds.

Conclusion on Linux Usage

In graphics tests, the 6100SM-M board had a clear advantage with a better-supported video card. This is what I expected to see for the two integrated graphics chipsets. Although the Radeon X1250 is only slightly slower, the GeForce 6100SM-M takes the crown for graphic performance in Linux.

As far as Linux productivity and multimedia go, however, the P2-M2A690G comes away as the winner. Although data and audio compression are heavily dependent on raw processing power, the 690G chipset of the P2-M2A690G gives a slight edge in speed.

Finally, the P2-M2A690G's onboard SATA controller also manages to edge slightly past the 6100SM-M in buffered hard drive reads. One thing to take in to account with these benchmarks however, is that these are open source, non-official drivers. Certains pieces of hardware may be supported better than others.

It can also be noted that the P2-M2A690G's HDMI port works exactly as if it were a DVI port. Linux and the Xorg X11 server have no issues detecting and configuring the port for usage. Unfortunately, we aren't in possession of a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD drive, so we were unable to test high definition playback in Linux.