NVIDIA AYiR 2005

It is quite evident that from the seven NVIDIA Linux drivers we studied, there certainly was some frame-rate improvements made over time. The frame-rate gains made over the year were somewhat minimal, yet noticable, in the benchmarked games as a majority of NVIDIA's Linux attention is upon providing application and workstation support. Also, compared against the latest official and BETA ForceWare drivers the Linux NVIDIA drivers are certainly on track when it comes to the frame-rate performance. In fact, in some of the benchmarks the Linux drivers were faster than the Windows counterpart while the rest of them they remained relatively close. However, as we had mentioned in the ATI AYiR 2005, NVIDIA still has a lot of work ahead of them to improve the quality of its alternative OS drivers. Although their frame-rate performance may be on track for catching up with the Windows display drivers, it continues to lack some critical features and tools presently available in the latest ForceWare drivers. These options range from Scalable Link Interface to AA/AF settings and profiles. Similarly, ATI's Linux Control Panel may be dismal but offers various graphical configuration settings for configuring TV output support. Of course, many of us would like to simply see timely releases where months do not go by without a new Linux release. We wish all Linux competitors best of luck for 2006 and we can only guess what next year will have in store for enthusiasts.