Linux Benchmarks, Continued

Quake 4

Quake 4 is also another game with a native Linux port, making it easy for us to compare results with the Windows edition. Unlike UT2004, Quake 4 is a 32-bit binary.

Nexuiz

Nexuiz is a popular open source first person shooter based on a modified (and very advanced) Quake 1 engine. Phoronix recently release a test suite, consisting of some of the benchmarks they commonly use when benchmarking hardware, and it's all automated through PHP scripts. I opted to run Nexuiz through their benchmark system to standardize the results.

Final Thoughts on Linux Performance

The Radeon HD3870 Toxic and Ultimate both fall behind the GeForce 8800GTX in Linux. This is mostly due to ATI's Linux drivers. While the drivers have improved significantly since AMD bought ATI, the drivers aren't quite up to par with AMD's just yet.

The Sapphire Radeon HD3870 Ultimate, which clocked only slightly slower, manages to keep up with its faster counterpart very well, and does so with a passive cooling solution.