NVIDIA Performance: Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu Linux 12.10

Getting things underway with the Lightsmark OpenGL 2.1 lighting benchmark, at the two tested resolutions (1920 x 1080 and 2560 x 1600 for the Samsung 30-inch LCD display via dual-link DVI), Windows 7 was faster than Ubuntu 12.10 each time. This was when Ubuntu Linux was tested with the latest NVIDIA binary graphics driver on the Unity as well as KDE desktops. Similar to the recent Ubuntu desktop environment benchmarking results on Phoronix, when switching from the default Unity environment to KDE 4.9 yielded large performance improvements for all three tested graphics cards. Even with the KDE boosts on Linux, however, the performance still couldn't be matched to Microsoft Windows 7 with the latest WHQL driver.

When testing Nexuiz at three different resolutions from 1280 x 1024 so it's more CPU limited and then up through 2560 x 1600, the results were similar in terms of positioning between resolutions. Aside from the GeForce GT 220 where Windows was faster, for this first person shooter on the DarkPlaces engine it was faster with Ubuntu Linux. To no surprise, using the KDE desktop yielded the first place finishes with noticeable improvements over Unity. At 2560 x 1600, however, the differences between Unity and KDE were less noticeable.