Windows 7 vs. Linux With Sandy Bridge New Acceleration Architecture

When running Nexuiz at the five resolutions up to the HP EliteBook's native panel resolution, enabling "Sandy Bridge New Acceleration" had not boosted the Linux frame-rate at all, since it was not likely swap limited. The 8.15.10.2361 Windows driver now though is slightly faster than the Linux driver. At the 1280 x 1024 and 1400 x 1050 resolutions there was also an odd unexplained jump in performance, likely due to a driver bug or other regression. Such an odd jump was not encountered last time conducting Intel SNB Windows tests with a pre-8.15.10.2361 driver.

Intel's new Linux driver acceleration architecture did boost the OpenArena frame-rates. When SNA was enabled, the average frame-rate went up by an average of 26% across the five resolutions that were tested. The latest Windows driver still continued to slightly edge out the latest Linux code. With OpenArena, the Linux driver was now edging higher too at the 1280 x 1024 and 1400 x 1050 resolutions in an odd manner.