A Massive SteamOS Graphics Card Comparison Is Coming

With Steam Machines shipping next month and more gamers potentially giving SteamOS a shot on their system or custom-built living room PC, a large AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce graphics comparison with SteamOS 2.0 "Brewmaster" is in the works. Here's the details.

I'm in the middle of running this large Linux graphics comparison atop the latest Debian-based SteamOS 2.0 Brewmaster build with the proprietary AMD/NVIDIA graphics drivers.

Some details for this testing include:

- All tests are done with SteamOS 2.0.

- Only Steam-based games are being tested such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, DiRT Showdown, Metro Last Light Redux, Team Fortress 2, and the other Steam-based tests that I'm able to fully-automated with the Phoronix Test Suite.

- The graphics cards being tested are those that I have available to me: basically, every single modern NVIDIA GPU and then the random assortment of AMD GPUs I have within my possession. It should end up being at least a 12 graphics card comparison but could be a 20+ way comparison based upon how well the AMD cards are running with the SteamOS Catalyst driver build (still testing all of the NVIDIA hardware at the moment).

- The article will include cost analysis / performance-per-dollar graphs.

- The Phoronix Test Suite is monitoring each graphics card's GPU core temperature and AC system power consumption draw. This is for seeing the most energy efficient cards tested, delivering performance-per-Watt metrics, and seeing which GPU is the easiest to cool.

- Testing is being done at 1080p given it's the most common for monitors/TVs. However, pending sufficient interest and support from this first article and incorporating any feedback, I'd be happy to then carry it out at 4K too.

I hope to have out the first article by the end of the week. I'm mentioning this now as something for Linux/SteamOS gamers to look forward to as well as encouraging those who are not yet Phoronix Premium subscribers to please consider subscribing or even a PayPal tip. Based upon the contributions from readers, decreases in ad-block usage, and similar improvements, allow me to focus more work on these longer, well-tested, and very interesting Linux articles at Phoronix. Any feedback or wishes for the testing can be directed to the forums or Facebook or Twitter.