NVIDIA vs. AMD 2D Linux Drivers: Catalyst Is Getting Quite Good At 2D

Our latest Linux graphics driver benchmarks are taking a look at the binary NVIDIA and AMD Catalyst drivers using the latest versions while running on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. It's been a while since last time we closely compared the two proprietary GPU drivers with 2D workloads on an array of graphics cards so these results should be definitely interesting.

Our Monday afternoon review is benchmarking a handful of NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon graphics cards while using the latest NVIDIA (v343.22) and AMD Catalyst (fglrx 14.40.1) drivers atop Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS. Via the Phoronix Test Suite 2D-only benchmarks including QGears2, Render Bench, and GtkPerf were run. If you're interested in just 3D benchmarks, see last week's GeForce GTX 980 Linux review where a large range of GPUs were tested with the latest drivers in a similar configuration.

The graphics cards being exploited for this review included:

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 520
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 610
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
- AMD Radeon HD 6950
- AMD Radeon HD 7850
- AMD Radeon R7 260X
- AMD Radeon R9 270X
- AMD Radeon R9 290