March 30, 2011 -- How well do AMD's FireGL/FirePro workstation graphics cards work with the open-source graphics drivers for Linux? It's something we never have really focused on up to this point, since after all, most workstation users are satisfied with using proprietary display drivers on Linux. It is the workstation market that drives the proprietary Linux driver development after all for AMD and NVIDIA, and that is really the focus of development, not Linux gamers or enthusiasts. But curiosity got the best of me, so here's what happens if you try to use an expensive FirePro graphics card with the open-source driver stack and the Mesa Gallium3D driver.

March 25, 2011 -- On Wednesday we published our first compute performance numbers for the Core i3 2100, Intel's lowest-end "Sandy Bridge" processor at this point. This ~$125 USD processor was a step-up from the previous generation Clarkdale CPUs (roughly the Core i3 530), but obviously the Core i5 2500K was still a great deal faster. How's the Sandy Bridge graphics performance though with this low-end CPU? That is the focus of today's tests.

February 23, 2011 -- In this review today at Phoronix we are testing out the Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 Vapor-X 1GB graphics card to see how this popular AMD Radeon graphics processor is performing under Linux.

February 16, 2011 -- Now that I finally have Sandy Bridge graphics working under Linux, thanks to another H67 motherboard and Core i5 2500K processor from Intel that don't exhibit the earlier problems, there's many Linux benchmarks available. Overall the Core i5 2500K graphics under Linux with the latest kernel / DDX / Mesa are fast, for being Intel integrated graphics and much improved over their previous generations of hardware. But how do these first-cut Intel Linux Sandy Bridge drivers compare to the drivers of the same age under Windows? In this article are benchmarks comparing the Intel Core i5 2500K graphics performance under Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Ubuntu 10.10.

February 11, 2011 -- Yesterday the results for the Intel Core i5 2500K graphics on Linux were finally published after receiving a new motherboard and CPU from Intel that did not encounter the earlier Sandy Bridge problems. That article included results for several ATI Radeon graphics cards using both the proprietary Catalyst driver as well as AMD's open-source Gallium3D driver, there was also the testing done from a NVIDIA GPU under the reverse-engineered Nouveau driver that's also written against the Gallium3D architecture. In this article is an even larger round up of graphics cards being tested under open-source Gallium3D drivers. There are also results from the Gallium3D-based LLVMpipe driver.

February 10, 2011 -- After a month of headaches for Intel and myself, there are now Sandy Bridge graphics benchmark results from the Intel Core i5 2500K under Linux to finally publish. Sandy Bridge was a tough launch for Intel in terms of the Linux coverage with the media having problems building a working driver stack and then when I finally got my hands on a CPU, I ran into an entirely different set of show-stopping problems. The developers still have not solved the biggest original issue yet, but Intel sent out a new motherboard and another CPU and it happens to "just work" nicely under Linux. When using the latest bits of their open-source Intel Linux graphics code, the performance on the Core i5 2500K is actually quite impressive compared to other open-source Linux drivers.

January 18, 2011 -- When Intel launched their newest "Sandy Bridge" processors earlier this month there were no Linux benchmark results available. We were not seeded with any CPU in advance and the other publications that have flings with Linux were unable to get the Linux graphics support working. There is no "out of the box" Sandy Bridge support under Linux with Ubuntu 10.10 and other distributions released in the past few months. It was not until the time that Sandy Bridge launched that there was the releases of Linux 2.6.37, Mesa 7.10, and the xf86-video-intel 2.14 DDX that are the versions reported to play well with the new Intel graphics. Because of the lack of "out of the box" Linux support, there was a very scathing review at SemiAccurate.com that went as far as calling Sandy Bridge the biggest disappointment of the year. The code was said to be ready, but there is a challenge in installing open-source GPU drivers by many Linux users.

October 26, 2010 -- Back in August we looked at the gaming performance between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 using a Lenovo ThinkPad W510, and the results were not too dramatic, but since then there has been a new release of Ubuntu (the 10.10 Maverick Meerkat) and new graphics hardware has been released. After receiving an ASRock Vision 3D system recently, which will soon be reviewed at Phoronix, we decided to compare its performance of the brand new GeForce GT 425M graphics processor under Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and Ubuntu 10.10 x86_64.

October 04, 2010 -- While AMD soon will be introducing the Radeon HD 6000 graphics cards, there is still plenty of life left to the Radeon HD 5000 series especially for those interested in open-source support with the Evergreen GPUs finally being supported by the open-source driver stack complete with OpenGL acceleration via a Mesa driver and this support will continue to mature before there is the same level of support for the next-generation Southern Island GPUs in the open-source world. In this article we are reviewing the ATI Radeon HD 5450 "Cedar" graphics card, which is AMD's lowest-end Evergreen GPU but will set you back less than $50 USD.

September 09, 2010 -- Earlier this year AMD rolled out the ATI FirePro V8800 workstation graphics card as their new high-end offering derived from their Evergreen architecture and to serve as the next-generation solution to the FirePro V8700 / V8750. The FirePro V8800 2GB though is no longer AMD's top workstation graphics card as this morning they are rolling out the ATI FirePro V9800 4GB.