SteamOS vs. Ubuntu 13.10 Linux Benchmarks

SteamOS had a strange performance increase in Xonotic with the GeForce GTX 680 over Ubuntu 13.10 and this large performance difference was not found with the GeForce GTX 780 Ti graphics card.

The GpuTests with Furmark and TessMark didn't show any dramatic performance differences between SteamOS 1.0 "Alchemist" Beta and Ubuntu 13.10.

Overall, these results aren't too surprising (aside from the GTX 680 Xonotic performance oddity) given NVIDIA's proprietary driver is generally running at comparable speeds across all supported platforms -- even between Windows 8 and Linux -- and that SteamOS hasn't deviated too much away from upstream Debian at this time to warrant any real performance changes compared to Debian/Ubuntu.

Stay tuned for additional (and more comprehensive) tests in January. If you missed it, also be sure to check out the NVIDIA Linux 2013 Year-in-Review that covered all the major NVIDIA Linux driver changes of the past year.