Csabi's blog

From today on, I decided to give up on tests made with "glxgears" since they are inconclusive. Instead I tested the drivers with Unigine, both Sanctuary 2.1 and Tropical 1.1.

To remind you and inform new readers, the hardware is:
- PC model: HP DX2300
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 4300 @ 1800Ghz each core
- GPU: NVidia FX8600GT with 512MB DDR3 video RAM, made by Assus, port PCIE 16x and passive cooling system
- System RAM: 1GB

Software setup:
- Mandriva Linux 2009.0
- Kernel: Linux 2.6.27.19-desktop-1mnb i686
- KDE 4.2.1 with 3D Effects turned ON
- Desktop resolution: 1600x1200@85Hz
- Running KTorrent, only upload
- Running Kopete with 2 accounts online, no chat window open
- 3 plasmoids on desktop + Panel

Testing setup of Unigine:

Sanctuary demo benchmark edition v2.1 Settings Render:opengl Mode:640x480 windowed Shaders:high Textures:high Filter:trilinear Anisotropy:16x Translucence:enabled Parallax:enabled Reflection:enabled DOF:disabled HDR:disabled

Tropics Demo v1.1 Settings Render:opengl Mode:640x480 windowed Shaders:high Textures:high Filter:trilinear Anisotropy:4x Occlusion:disabled Reflection:enabled Refraction:enabled Volumetric:enabled

Sanctuary:
Tropics:
Personal Conclusion:
- both 180.37 PreRelease and 185.13 Beta are somewhat faster than the latest official release 180.29
- the differencies are minimal, but the Sanctuary test shows clear increase of performance
- the more sophisticated Tropics test has a slight drop for 185.13 Beta, but this may be OK with my somewhat old Graphics Card
- for the time being, and if there will be no problems, I'll stay with 185.13 Beta.