After a couple of month, I decided it was enough, I was sick of this dirty stripes on screen. I tested every ATI driver one after one … (ATI opensource drivers have too bad performances to be used on a every days desktop, could you live without google-earth ? ) .. so I decided to go to other side, and bought a Nvidia 8600GT from ASUS. This card perform quite as the ATI in 3D, and have a affordable price. So I switched from ATI to Nvidia.

ATI offers better opensource support, but Nvidia binary driver is really nice to use and have better support today from stuffs like Compiz and Co.. and NO MORE STRIPES !! :)

A couple of weeks ago, I upgraded my Ubuntu Gusty to Hardy. Everything was Ok, since I played with firefox. Some heavy loaded pages (like Amazon, or Gmail) was damn sloowwwww ! Playing with scroll was a source …… grrrrrr ….Firefox on Hardy is 3.0b5. This version has a major “feature” the use a Xrender for the page display. And this looks like Xrender is dawn slow on Nvidia cards .. In fact, Nvidia has already work on this kind of issue before. Without looking forward I decided to run a little benchmark, with the help of friends with Xrenderbenchmark. So here the results.

Benchmarks

Benchmarks was done by me and 2 firends, on Q6600 or E6600 Intel CPU running at 2.4Gh, with kernel 2.6.24.1. The graphs only show the Plain results (not Plains + Alpha, or Transformation) but the results are quite the same anyways.

Legend:

• 8600GT/nv : Nividia 8600GT / Xorg 1.4.1git 32 bits / Nvidia GPL driver
• 8600GT/nvidia : Nividia 8600GT / Xorg 1.4.1git 32 bits / Nvidia binary driver ver: 169.12
• 8600GT/nividia-64 : Nvidia 8600GT / Xorg 1.4.1git 64 bits / Nvidia binary driver ver: 169.12
• Intel GMA X300 : Intel GMA 3000 / Xorg 1.4.0.9 64 bits / Intel GPL driver
• ATI HD2600PRO : ATI HD 2600 Pro / Xorg 1.4.1git 64 bits / ATI GPL driver

I split the results into two graphs for convenience.

As you can see on this first part, numbers are really small, the Nvidia GPL driver is the worst : 5 times slower than any other one. Not a good news, and the binary one have some bad results on 2 tests. ATI HD and Nvidia drivers offer quite the same results, but remenber this is the GPL ATI driver ! … The Intel doesn’t have a lot of linearity on this part.

But the next graph give us absolutely different picture !

For every graph, Nvidia drivers (GPL, or binary, 32 or 64 bits) are at least 6 time slower. Intel perform very well, no surprise, this card are damn cool, perfect driver for linux.. but to slow in 3D to really rock. And ATI GPL driver is the clear winner of this benchmarks tests.

As my issue is the Nvidia one, I can comment the results, the GPL driver performs better than the binary one. This is not a big surprise cause, I can see it in Firefox, even it’s slow. There is difference between 64 bits and 32, but I guess this is more kernel related than the driver itself.

I’m not a video guru and only do that figure out what’s going on my computer. I publish in the hope it might help somebody else, and to find help.

Update : The numbers can be found here

Thanks to Ludo and Christian for their help !

Important update : Check the new driver results !!

My new box description:

• CPU: Intel Q6600 Quad Core at 2.4Ghz (G0 => it’s running at 1.6Ghz on idle)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R (Intel P35 Express)
• A massive big CPU cooler Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
• Case: Cooler Master Centurion 534
• Hard-drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA – 320 Go 7200 RPM 16 Mo SATA II
• 2Go of generic DDR2-SDRAM DDR800 PC6400
• Power Supply: Seasonic S12II-430
• A passive Radeon HD2600
• A nice (and big) Samsung Syncmaster 223BW
• A Asus DVD player: DRW-1814BLT

Here a little photo:

So let’s take a look closer.. I bought the Q6600 because it has a good price right now.

For the motherboard I wanted to buy a serious brand (I had some bad issues with ASRock ..). And Asus build some good ones, but doesn’t have a PS2 keyboard plug. I choose the Gigabytes because the bridge cooler is on the right, so I can use a big fan in the case back (no cpu-fan) without the bridge fan issue.

For the harddrive, I already have this type of Seagate on another box (in ATA, not SATA), and it’s damn cool ! Low noise and great performances .. a substain 58Mo/sec (a little bit more than my previous LVDS-SCSI config at 10 000 rpm !)

The perfect box should have two 120mn fans. So this CoolMaster is fine.
I only use the front fan right now, but this may change in future. The case is quite big (too much for my needs), easy to mount, and serious quality. The hard-drive combo stuff, isn’t really easy to use but it does it’s job.

For the power-supply, after reading a lot of website, I bought the Seasonic. This stuff cost a little money, but it’s a really silent one, and seems to be robust.

As I bought a silent power supply, I needed a silent cpu cooler two. Everybody knows that default Intel fan are awfully noisy, so I decided to test this Freezer. And that was a good choice. On idle, the fan runs at 450 rpm, (hey that’s low!!) and CPU is at 31°. At full load, the fan runs at 1000 rpm (still really low!!) and the CPU is at 46°. My initial plan was to remove the fan on the cooler and to place a big 120 mn on the case back, but haven’t done this yet.

For the video card, I was looking for something with good bench on Linux, so ATI was a good challenger (beside it only works with the latest ATI binary shit). And finding a passive HD2600 is a bit hard.

For the DVD, I didn’t have any ideas. Most DVD players I used are noisy, have unstable speed. My previous Samsung was a real bullshit. I went to me local computer store, and bought the cheaper they have on stock. And this is a really good surprise. This DVD burner is really cool. So, if someone ask, give it a try :)

So, as you can imagine, this little stuff is quite silent and powerfull :)

I will upload some pictures soon …

Update: I took some photos

Enjoy cores