When It Works, Intel Core i5 2500K Graphics On Linux Are Fast!

Warsow is our first look at a result not from an ioquake3-based game, with this open-source title being powered by the Qfusion engine. There were some odd performance differences with Warsow at some of the graphics cards at different resolutions, but again it's worth noting that the Phoronix Test Suite executes each of these tests at each of the resolutions a minimum of three times. If the standard deviation of those results exceeds a pre-defined threshold, the test run count is dynamically increased to ensure the reported results are stable. Error bars also appear on the points if there is such deviation in the results, but there were not for these Warsow results. There are just bottlenecks and other odd behavior with some of the Linux graphics drivers to cause odd behavior.

When looking at the sorted, 1920 x 1080 look at the Warsow performance, the Core i5 2500K is faster than the Radeon HD 4550/5450 graphics cards on AMD's open-source driver as well as the GeForce GT 220 on the Nouveau driver. The Sandy Bridge graphics are just about playable for Warsow at 1920 x 1080 and fall right behind the Radeon HD 4650 on Gallium3D, Radeon HD 5450 on the Catalyst driver, and Radeon HD 4830 on Gallium3D.