After two released Linux drivers, I decided to compare those drivers to the current Windows Vista driver. Here are the first results, there are more to come in the next days!

Testsystem

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 920
Mainboard: Asrock AOD790GX/128M, AMD 790GX
Memory: 2x 2 GB OCZ (4 GB total), DDR2-800 
GPU: S3 Graphics Chrome 430 GT

Results

The first benchmark is Nexuiz, a popular Open-Source first person shooter which is available for both Linux and Windows. 

That's really a surprise: The Linux driver offer far better minimal and average frames per second than the Windows driver. The maximum rate is most times equal but sometimes the Linux driver is also faster. There are no visible visual differences and because the maximum fps are most times equal, this indicates that there are no missing visual effects which would have explained these results.

Final thoughts

Sometimes S3 Graphics really scares me and this is one of those situations: It's already rather unusual that the performance of a Linux driver is more or less equal to the Windows drivers, but that the Linux drivers offers a far better performance is really scaring. And keep in mind that S3 Graphics doesn't really care that much about Linux at all!.

I don't actually know if the Linux driver is that good or if the Windows driver is that bad... I will do more benchmarks to investigate this further. There will be results for Quake 4 and Doom 3 in the next days.