Linux Graphics Utilities

There are a handful of utilities for tweaking the parameters of both ATI and Nvidia cards running on Linux platforms. The two tables provided below summarize a handful of these utilities for both vendors. Bear in mind that rovclock and nvclock are both no longer maintained, so your mileage with either will vary according to card and capability set.

Final Thoughts

The bottom line is that the top-of-the-line graphics cards from both ATI and Nvidia do work (and work well) with Linux. While Nvidia currently exposes more of its underlying card capabilities under Linux than does ATI, the latter has made significant strides. Beyond simply getting its X1000-series and other recent graphics card families to work in Linux environments, ATI is still negotiating with top-tier Linux distributions to incorporate its proprietary drivers into mainstream products. At the same time, the Linux gaming community is getting a major boost from continued support and development efforts from both parties. Mere months ago, much of this capability was nonexistent.

Using only default settings, ATI's visual clarity and color richness is superior to default Nvidia settings. However, the Nvidia settings utility enables a variety of options for configuring general OpenGL library performance, and the many fine-grained antialiasing and anisotropic properties of the underlying graphics card. Either way, both cards exhibit excellent responsiveness under normal gameplay and during the UMark bench testing. A brief sampling of street prices puts a GeForce 7800 GTX at about $100 less than a Radeon X1900 XTX.

For Linux gaming enthusiasts everywhere, the message is clear: your prayers have been answered.

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