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With NVIDIAs hardware, Linux is actually faster than Windows in lower resolution and only slightly slower at 1600x1200. Quake3 benchmarks are here.

Since UT2003 is pretty CPU intensive game, I would except that Linux will be faster than Windows XP. However this only applies to NVIDIAs hardware. Other GPU manufacturers haven't released decent Linux drivers.

I have a Riva TNT2 based card in my gaming box (a 1.4GHz Athlon /w a Tbird core). This box, running Windows, could never give me decent frame rates in Unreal Tournament or Quake III with resolutions above 800x600 with decent texture quality. Now, under X, UT is silky smooth at 1024x768 with maximum detail. Quake III is only marginally better, but there is definitely an improvement. The only downside is that I have to clock the memory speed of my card down using NVclock otherwise I get random crashes (such that the mem and core speeds are the same). (But it's still faster than Windows.)

Anyway, the point is that Linux turns out to be a powerful gaming platform (duh). It's a shame that there isn't more commercial game development taking place for it. TransGaming is doing a great job, but this bit about only supporting nVidia at this point is frustrating. This line, "This could change if other graphics card vendors improve their Linux drivers, but for now Nvidia is the only game in town" seems silly to me. ATI Radeon support under Linux is pretty solid (maybe not as good as nVidia's, but it is open source and that makes a huge difference) and so more attention ought to be paid to it. Besides, what's the point of restricting development to nVidia? We're dealing with OpenGL here, which is a common interface to all 3D hardware. What difference does it make, so long as X has proper GLX support? Does TransGaming get funded by nVidia?

Seems I shouldn't upgrade my TNT2 for a while. :\

If 3d performance is any measure of the potential of X then it clearly is faster than windows. The linux Nvidia drivers outperform the windows versions with page flipping enabled on identical hardware. Linux Page Flipping

www.easylinux.com Based in Germany, I demo'd their product at LW '01 in NYC. Pretty spiffy KDE-centric distro, fairly easy tools. Just released version 2.4. Not sure how their versioning works (ie, does the 2.4 indicate a 2.4 kernel included? Dunno).

But don't take my word for it, dig Evil3d's review.

Hope this helps.

Vertex Shaders/nFiniteFX engine aren't the only new 'features' of the GeForce3 [replacing the GF2's pixel shader]. Performance is increased because it processes the data more efficiently thru the use of the crossbar memory control, z-occlusion culling, etc, which are useable in games today. When the 0.9-8 drivers are released with HRAA [High-Resolution Anti-Aliasing] support, then the GeForce3 will show it's true worth. [See our GeForce3 Guide for more details].

Also, it is cheaper than most GeForce2 Ultra cards... so it is an incredible buy. At $350USD, it is the cheapest launch of a flagship NVIDIA product in over 18-months.

Most of our reviews are accompanied with a link to our benchmarking guide that describes our methodology in detail. Since you were 'inclined to question' the validity, hopefully the above link will provide the answers.

Yeah, I had the same problem with my computer (Mandrake 7.0 + NVidia GeForce II MX). I just had to download the drivers off NVidia's website; after that X started up just fine.

Maybe this is drifting off topic a little, but I found these two links extremely helpful when trying to solve the problem you mentioned.

http://www.thedukeofurl.org/reviews/misc/3dlinux/4 .shtml

http://www.evil3d.net/articles/linux_nv4/index.sht ml