NVidia Advantage on Linux?

Question

I've heard anecdotal reports that on Linux systems, nVidia graphics cards, despite having a disadvantage in performance, hold an advantage in graphical quality in some manner, possibly with shaders.  Can anyone give me more information on this?

Answer 1

Hmm, I had just expected slower performance, but now that I look into it, I see reports that nVidia performance on Linux is either equal to or greater than that on Windows.  ATI cards, however, DO have a performance disadvantage.  Stability as well, as I can attest to both from personal experience.
EDIT: Now that I think of it, my low perception of nVidia performance was based on Second Life and Elder Scrolls IV.  Second Life, however, has horrendous performance because it is poorly coded, and Elder Scrolls IV was running under Wine and is also inefficient.  I run some native games like Sauerbraten, and the performance is much different.  They don't even break 60fps my video card, a GeForce 9800 GT with a gig of GDDR3 memory and factory overclocking.  I can run games like Sauerbraten on my system at my monitor's native 1600x1050 resolution with maximum graphical settings, and see no visible performance hit at all.
Last edited by Falcata (2009-08-09 15:09:30)