NVIDIA's Linux Driver On Ubuntu 14.10 Can Deliver Better OpenGL Performance Than Windows 8.1
Our final tests are the synthetic GpuTest OpenGL benchmarks.
In these tests the NVIDIA Windows performance was superior to that of Linux. However, that's usually the case when running GpuTest between Windows and Linux. In communicating in the past with GpuTest's author, he says that the code-paths are the same between Windows and Linux, but for whatever reason the Windows driver tends to perform better for GpuTest. Unfortunately I can't shed much light on this situation with GpuTest being a synthetic, binary-only application.
Ignoring the GpuTest results, the NVIDIA Linux driver performance was terrific and in many cases superior to that of NVIDIA's latest Windows WHQL driver. In several of the demanding Unigine OpenGL benchmarks along with Xonotic, the latest NVIDIA Linux driver on Ubuntu 14.10 tended to outperform Windows 8.1.
If you appreciate this often exclusive Linux benchmarking done at Phoronix.com, please consider subscribing to Phoronix Premium and/or considering a PayPal tip to allow more tests to happen in the future. If you haven't already, check out yesterday's Windows vs. Linux Intel HD Graphics results while coming up shortly will be the AMD Radeon cross-platform numbers with the latest open and closed-source drivers.
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