June 23, 2008 -- We've been meaning to deliver benchmarks of the NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX under Linux for some time, but with the recent rollout of the GeForce GTX 200 series, the competition presented by the ATI Radeon HD 4850, and the introduction of the GeForce 9800GTX+, the GeForce 9800GTX is dropping in price and captivating the interest of a different segment of users. Finally we are delivering these benchmarks of the GeForce 9800GTX with Ubuntu Linux and using the most recent NVIDIA driver release, which has a number of improvements since the G92 chipset was introduced back in April. The graphics card we're using is the EVGA 512-P3-N871-AR.

June 20, 2008 -- Back in March we had looked at the Radeon HD 3200 graphics found on AMD 780G motherboards. With the Catalyst Linux driver the Radeon HD 3200 had performed about the same speed as the discrete Radeon HD 2400PRO graphics card, which we were quite pleased with considering its integrated and low-power design. The Radeon HD 3200 also offers support for DisplayPort and HDMI, but it's up to the motherboard vendor which output connections they wish to utilize. The Radeon HD 3200 / 780G certainly impressed us, but today we are looking at NVIDIA's latest IGP offering for AMD's Phenom platform. While not all of these features are available to Linux customers, the GeForce 8200 supports DirectX 10, PureVideo HD, GeForce Boost, Hybrid SLI, and other leading edge features. Though between the Radeon HD 3200 and GeForce 8200, which IGP offering reigns supreme under Linux? In this article we'll tell you our thoughts.

May 19, 2008 -- Since the introduction of AMD's new Linux OpenGL driver and their open-source strategy running in parallel, the past few months have been especially exciting for ATI Linux users and the Linux graphics scene in general. To many Linux users, ATI graphics have went from being a name synonymous with problems and poor 3D performance to being an open-source crown jewel that has set a precedence in the industry by releasing their GPU register documentation, but at the same time continuing to develop their high-performance proprietary driver for users interested in the best performance and enabling all of the bells and whistles on their graphics card.

May 12, 2008 -- Back in March we had reviewed the Quadro FX1700 512MB graphics card, which is NVIDIA's lower-end OpenGL 2.1 workstation graphics card that's based upon the consumer G84 core. In the benchmarks that had followed, we had compared the Quadro FX1700 performance under Windows, Linux, and Solaris. We had found the performance of this Quadro graphics card performed well under all three platforms, but Ubuntu Linux had led the race. We are now preparing a review of the high-end ATI FireGL V8600 1GB graphics card for publishing in the coming days, but we have stumbled upon some results from the FX1700 that never ended up making it out earlier. Specifically we had overclocked the Quadro FX1700 with CoolBits and it had actually worked out quite well. In this article are the overclocking results from this NVIDIA workstation graphics card as well as comparing the performance to an ATI Radeon HD 2900XT 512MB graphics card.

March 28, 2008 -- Earlier this month we took a look at the NVIDIA Quadro FX1700, which is one of NVIDIA's mid-range workstation graphics cards that boasts 512MB of video memory, support for CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture), OpenGL 2.1, and the power consumption for this PCI Express graphics card is less than 50 Watts. In the tests that followed, the FX1700 had performed quite well at the workstation-oriented SPECViewPerf benchmark and we had compared its Ubuntu Linux performance to Solaris Express and Microsoft Windows Vista. The NVIDIA Linux driver with the FX1700 had the best performance and it ended up being a nice graphics card for around $500 USD. Today we are looking at the NVIDIA Linux workstation performance once again but this time it's on the mobile front with the Quadro NVS 140M, which can be found in a number of business notebooks including the Lenovo ThinkPad T61.

March 24, 2008 -- Last year AMD introduced the flagship 790 Chipset series as part of their Spider Platform for use with the Phenom processors and Radeon HD 3800 graphics. Until earlier this month when AMD introduced the 780 Series, missing was any chipset with integrated graphics capabilities supporting these first AMD quad-core processors. Now we have AMD's 780G and 780V Chipsets, which are designed to be the mainstream solutions to the 790FX, but they pack the best integrated graphics processor (IGP) ever created by the combined ATI/AMD engineering talent. Since its launch at the CeBIT trade show, the AMD 780G has received rave reviews for its vehement performance due to its graphics core that's derived from the AMD RV610. The benchmarks available on launch day were only for Microsoft Windows operating systems, but this morning we have the Radeon HD 3200 Linux results from the AMD 780G. Is this IGP a crown jewel on Linux?

March 21, 2008 -- In late February NVIDIA had introduced the GeForce 9 series with the introduction of the mid-range GeForce 9600GT 512MB graphics card. Earlier this week they then introduced the GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card, which consists of two NVIDIA GPUs bridged together with SLI support. We have been quiet on how the GeForce 9 series performs under Linux, but this morning we are providing our initial GeForce 9600GT results using an ASUS EN9600GT TOP HDMI and comparing its Linux desktop performance to its GeForce 8 sibling and the ATI Radeon HD 3850 and 3870. On Windows the GeForce 9600GT has been able to outperform the Radeon HD 3850/3870, but on Linux an entirely different story is rendered.

March 07, 2008 -- Earlier this week we previewed the Quadro FX1700, which is one of NVIDIA's mid-range workstation graphics cards that is based upon the G84GL core that in turn is derived from the consumer-class GeForce 8600 series. This PCI Express graphics card offers 512MB of video memory with two dual-link DVI connections and support for OpenGL 2.1 while maintaining a maximum power consumption of just 42 Watts. As we mentioned in the preview article, we would be looking at this graphics card's performance not only under Linux but also testing this workstation solution in both Microsoft Windows and Sun's Solaris. In this article today, we are doing just that as we test the NVIDIA Quadro FX1700 512MB with each of these operating systems and their respective binary display drivers.

March 04, 2008 -- Workstation GPUs are not our main focus at Phoronix, but with the increasing use of Linux on workstation systems, we will be starting to look at professional graphics products this month and likely more of them in the future. We are beginning this expedition by looking at the Quadro FX1700, which is one of NVIDIA's mid-range workstation graphics cards. This Quadro graphics card boasts 512MB of video memory, support for CUDA, and OpenGL 2.1 support. According to NVIDIA's product literature, the Quadro FX1700 is engineered to deliver exceptional performance, quality, and price for professionals.

February 01, 2008 -- Last week AMD introduced the ATI Radeon HD 3400 and 3600 series, which are the new low-end graphics processors compared to the Radeon HD 3800 series. These budget graphics cards are branded as the Radeon HD 3450, 3470, and 3650 and are all available for under $100 USD. While they may be cheap, they are the first graphics cards to introduce support for DisplayPort. DisplayPort is the newest digital display interface standard, backed by VESA, and is direct competition to HDMI. DisplayPort has yet to be fully supported by the available Linux display drivers, but the Catalyst Linux driver already supports these new ATI graphics cards and there will be open-source support through the RadeonHD driver in the coming days. At hand today we have the Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB graphics card as we deliver the first Linux benchmarks for this RV635 GPU.