March 13, 2006 -- Since the public launch of the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 series this past week (March 09, 2006) we have been assisting Roderick Colenbrander, or better known as NVClock's Thunderbird, in appending support for this card under this Linux NVIDIA utility. For those that have never used NVClock, it is a text-based and graphical (GTK or Qt) utility released under the GNU General Public License and was originally designed as the lone NVIDIA overclocking utility. Today we have been testing some new NVClock code and have additional information available in regards to the 7900GT and other information to assist developers.

March 08, 2006 -- Released from ATI today are the new Windows CATALYST v6.3 display drivers as well as the now monthly Linux fglrx display drivers. The new ATI Linux v8.23.7 display drivers continue to lack X1000 series support but there are a few improvements in this release when it comes to OpenGL, FSAA, and X800/850 compatibility improvements. Today at Phoronix, we have taken these drivers for yet another spin to display its gaming performance abilities on this exciting eve of CeBIT 2006.

February 22, 2006 -- Accelerated Indirect GL X, or more easily known as AIGLX, has been in the technology spotlight this week after Fedora had made its presence known on this Monday. AIGLX serves in the Fedora Rendering Project with a key focus of enabling OpenGL-accelerated effects onto a standard desktop. This software runs off a slightly modified X.Org server, with a couple extensions, Mesa update, and a version of Metacity with composite manager. According to Fedora representatives, AIGLX is not meant to compete with Novell's Xgl. Accelerated Indirect GL X is still very much in development stages and only compatible with a limited number of video cards running Fedora Core 5 Test 3. Today we fired up FC5T3 on an ATI Radeon 9200 and have a limited number of rudimentary screenshots of the present effects with window minimization and fades.

February 20, 2006 -- Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth's brainchild, has overcome another feat this morning with the advent of Ubuntu v6.04 (Dapper Drake) Flight 4. Dapper Drake Flight 4 is the fourth milestone release in a series of development builds with the release candidate coming out April of 2006. In addition to a host of new extras, the focus of our attention today is on its Xgl and Compiz capabilities. Xgl is the X server architecture layered on top of OpenGL while Compiz is the composting manager to the X.Org project. Both of these projects were largely contributed by Novell. With a few modifications, as well as configuration for the NVIDIA device, we had Xgl and Compiz running on the Ubuntu Dapper Drake Flight 4 LiveCD! The plug-ins utilized were cube, decoration, fade, minimize, move, place, resize, rotate, scale, switcher, wobbly, and zoom. Unfortunately, the Gconf Compiz abilities were not accessible from the Dapper Drake repositories during our testing time. At hand today are a wealth of images demonstrating the various graphical abilities, as well as a few looks at the newly introduced Ubuntu Espresso LiveCD installer. Keep in mind, the Compiz Wobbly shots are quite aliased, thus we are working on an animated preview by the time Xgl + Compiz is largely introduced to Linux.

February 09, 2006 -- Yet again, the red has its monthly ritual of pumping out new display driver for its Microsoft Windows and Linux users. The drivers this month are version 6.2 for CATALYST and 8.22.5 for Linux fglrx. On the Linux side of things, support for the 2.6.15 kernel has finally been appended as well as fixing up a few IDs and preventing some crashes. Meanwhile, Windows CATALYST is prominent with its various amendments. Striking the scene this morning is our usual array of ATI Linux gaming benchmarks.

February 04, 2006 -- When it comes to a multi-headed environment under Linux, there are two popular options for consumers -- Xinerama and TwinView. Although TwinView was developed by NVIDIA for allowing multiple monitors to be powered by a single GPU with their array of GeForce graphics cards, Xinerama was originally developed by Digital Equipment Corporation under the name of PanoramiX, and was later incorporated into the X Window System. Today at Phoronix, we have studied the frame-rate gaming performance under multi-headed NVIDIA TwinView and Xinerama configurations as well as a traditional single-head design.

January 18, 2006 -- Making a late appearance for the month is ATI's first display drivers out in 2006, on the Windows side is the CATALYST v6.1 while GNU/Linux users are greeted by the v8.21.7. Is there anything noteworthy in this latest batch of drivers? We have executed yet another performance examination with the latest drivers, and have our findings here today.

December 29, 2005 -- In continuation of our previous piece entitled ATI AYiR 2005 (A Year in Review), where we looked at ATI's features implemented this year into their drivers as well as thoroughly examining the frame-rate performance, today we have turned the tables yet again and today are taking another look at NVIDIA's gains this year...

December 26, 2005 -- As 2005 comes to an end, both NVIDIA and ATI have both fought a competitive battle not only when it comes to their hardware lineup but also display drivers for alternative operating systems. When discussing this subject matter, GNU/Linux users have been quick to criticize ATI Technologies whether it is due to poor installation support, distribution compatibility, rudimentary control panel, or simply the performance level of its drivers. On the contrary, even though NVIDIA had unveiled its GeForce 7 series, 2005 has not been the best year for the green developers...

December 22, 2005 -- A mere seventeen days after the launch of NVIDIA's 1.0-8174 display drivers that finally delivered Scalable Link Interface support to Linux, the green guys have delivered yet another driver for the penguin users on the heels of the holidays. Coincidently, the driver release comes on the same day as the Xorg X11R6.9 and X11R7.0 launch after a decade of no major releases. As the 1.0-8178 version implies, there is not much in the way of significant advances but there is enough to call for a new performance article, which we will be sharing with you today.