Csabi's blog

Recently I switched to Mandriva 2009.1 Free x86_64. Unfortunately there is no 64 bit version for Unigine, so I've run the 32 bit version on my 64 bit driver. Here are the results and setups...

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

First chart is Sanctuary, second is Tropics
Personal Conclusion:
- on 64 bits operating system and NVidia driver, the 32 bit Unigine performs somewhat slower
- the difference on the simpler Sanctuary demo is almost negligible, but on the more sophisticated Tropic demo there is a slightly bigger difference
- still, the feel of the desktop is smoother. KDE4.2.2 works well with it's compositing 3D window manager on 1600x1200 resolution. The difference from 32 Mandriva 2009.0 and same NVidia driver is huge.
- for an everyday user I still recommend the beta driver, both on 32 and 64 bits
- I tried Tremulous on 64 bits, it was as fast as on 32 bits. I could see no difference, and the FPS was maxed out almost all the time at 90FPS