NVIDIA's Linux Driver On Ubuntu Is Very Competitive With Windows 8

The NVIDIA Windows driver used was the GeForce 326.19 Beta driver while on Linux it was the NVIDIA 325.09 Beta, both of which were the latest NVIDIA beta drivers at the time of benchmarking. The Nouveau driver testing happened under the Linux 3.11 Git kernel, xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.8, and the Mesa 9.2.0-devel Git code as of the time of testing while exposing OpenGL 3.1 support.

The same hardware was used throughout all of the testing and the Windows 8 Pro x64 installation had all available updates at the time of testing as did the Ubuntu 13.10 development installation used for the Nouveau and NVIDIA binary blob testing.

All benchmarking was handled in a fully automated and streamlined manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.