ATI v8.23.7 Display Drivers

As always, we could not let these drivers pass us by without taking them for a quick spin. For every new ATI and NVIDIA driver release, we perform our benchmarks to see in a particular setup the driver affects on the frame-rate gaming performance. Although the release highlights may not directly mention any frame-rate performance gains or losses, these tests are delivered to get a better understanding if users with similar systems running Linux can expect to find noticeable performance differences when upgrading. As many of our testing systems have already turned to development builds of Fedora Core 5, in preparation for the Fedora Core 5 release slated for March 15, and are in the midst of some additional previews as CeBIT 2006 begins tomorrow, we used an IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad R52 laptop to complete our driver testing.

For comparison purposes, as always, we re-executed the same set of tests using ATI's previous Linux drivers -- this month, it happens to be February's ATI v8.22.5 display drivers. The benchmarks being used for these gaming frame-rate tests are Enemy Territory, Unreal Tournament 2004, and X2 - The Threat. Since last month, Linux Game Publishing has released X2 - The Threat BETA 6 Release Candidate 1, thus this private testing copy was used. The Unreal Tournament 2004 demo was used in conjunction with UMark Linux BETA 3. During the Mobility Radeon X300 testing with the v8.22.5 and v8.23.7 drivers, the notebook was powered via the AC power adapter and ATI's PowerPlay was not in effect. On the following pages are our results from this array of tests.