LGP X2 v1.4

When we had heard that X2 would finally be ported over to Linux from the talented folks at LGP (Linux Game Publishing) we were simply ecstatic. However, now that the first BETA of the game has reached its closed testing community we are even more rhapsodic. With the game still in development stages, there are of course a few bugs but many of these gaming volunteers have found poor frame-rate performance with their various systems. In fact, some have reported the game is even more strenuous than Quake 4. Although the frame-rate performance is likely to change significantly before the retail version ships, upon fixing the bugs that are presently running amuck, hitting the bench today are various graphics cards to study the level of complexity for this upcoming Linux-native game. For reference, X2 was originally developed by EGOSOFT with its X-lineup of games from X - Beyond the Frontier to X3 - Reunion. X2 requires a level of trading, fighting, building, and thinking in order to make the correct moves and battle the new race forming - Khaak.

Fortunately, the Linux port of X2 contains the same benchmarking possibilities as its Windows version that was originally released back in December of 2003. Presently the Linux Game Publishing CEO, Michael Simms, states a NVIDIA GeForce 4 64MB can handle the game with 512MB of system memory and a 1GHz processor; if you are to turn off the bump-maps and shadows while running at a lower resolution. However, poor performance has already been reported on GeForce FX and six series graphics cards. To examine the demands of X2, we will be running its in-game benchmark with a eVGA GeForce FX 5200 128MB (PCI), Leadtek PX6600GT 128MB (PCI-E), eVGA GeForce 6800GT 256MB (PCI-E), and Leadtek GeForce 7800GTX 256MB (PCI-E).

Above are the system components and software versions used throughout testing. Due to a bug affecting the dialog box from being displayed with some Linux distributions, one of which to be effected is Fedora Core 4, we turned to OpenSuSE 10.0 for the testing today as it is not prone to this problem. All visual settings during the benchmarking process were controlled through the in-game options.