Nouveau Linux 4.5 vs. NVIDIA OpenGL Performance: Open-Source Not Up To Par

While Nouveau was running well with low image quality settings for the open-source Xonotic game, the performance was very poor out of this open-source driver when increasing the visual intensity.

Xonotic with ultimate image quality settings was significantly behind the NVIDIA proprietary driver.

The GTX 680 was running well for Furmark... The others, not so much.

If you want to dig through more results, including some extra synthetic OpenGL benchmarks from this latest NVIDIA vs. Nouveau comparison, visit this OpenBenchmarking.org result file. Long story short, until the Nouveau re-clocking situation is fully sorted out and other shortcomings addressed, this open-source NVIDIA Linux driver really isn't good for a Linux gaming box. If you are a NVIDIA GeForce owner planning to run Linux games, the only really reliable choice is using NVIDIA's official, high quality proprietary graphics driver.