Ubuntu 13.04 Desktop Comparison: 6 Desktops, 5 Driver/GPU Combinations

This article is focusing upon the OpenGL performance of the different desktop environments but not to compare the graphics card / GPU driver performance. The default package settings were used for testing. The same Intel Core i7 3770K system was used with Ubuntu 13.04 x86_64 throughout the testing process with only switching out the desktop, graphics card, and driver between the 30 test runs conducted.

Benchmarks carried out included Doom 3, Nexuiz, OpenArena, World of Padman, VDrift, Warsow, and Xonotic. All benchmarking was handled via the Phoronix Test Suite open-source automated benchmarking software.