NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 950 Is A $150+ Bargain For Linux Gamers

BioShock Infinite was ported to Linux earlier this year and thus is still an interesting test metric that's making use of OpenGL 4. With this first test, the GeForce GTX 950 is more than twice as fast as the GTX 650 and still a significant upgrade over the GeForce GTX 750. While under Windows the GTX 950 is competitive with the R7 370, under Linux the GTX 950 has a much greater yield than the R7 370 with BioShock Infinite on Catalyst. The GeForce GTX 950 even ran measurably faster than the much more expensive AMD Radeon R9 290.

DiRT Showdown was released for Linux just this week. Interestingly, here the Radeon R7 370 comes out a few frames ahead of the GeForce GTX 950. DiRT Showdown is an eON-ported game by Virtual Programming. However, oddly, the R7 370 is faster than the R9 290 in this test... Either due to some oddity with this eON-wrapped game or just another odd Catalyst Linux issue with this game.

With Metro 2033 Redux, the GeForce GTX 950 is at the same level as the Radeon R9 290.

At least with Metro Last Light Redux, the R9 290 is able to come out ahead of the GTX 950, as it would under Windows. I can't say I'm terribly surprised by these results; the GeForce GTX 950 speeds past the R9 285 and R7 370 in our more common OpenGL tests, thanks to the crippling Catalyst Linux driver experience.