ATI Radeon vs nVidia 3D accelleration

[Don Quixote de la Mancha]

Seeing as how glxgears isn't a good benchark, and that Extreme Tux
Racer won't even run on my box, I installed the Phoronix Test Suite,
then told it to install the idquake3-games benchmark suite.

A suite in Phoronix is a set of related benchmark tests.  One can
perform individual benchmarks, or all the benchmarks in a suite.

When I asked it to install the idquake3-games suite, Phoronix told me
that it would download two GIGABYTES of source code, from which the
benchmark executables would all be built.  So I got the download
started and went to work.  When I returned home, I found the
idquake3-games executables not just downloaded, but built and ready to
run on my box.

I then gave the command:

  $ phoronix-test-suite benchmark idquake3-games

It asked me a few questions such as the file name to use for the
results of that particular test run, then set into the first
benchmark.

It was some 3D video game, that went full-screen on my full-resolution
HD LCD display.  The game was rendered completely flawlessly, with
lots of nice touches such as bursts of semi-transparent smoke.

But as you will no doubt recall, 3D accelleration on my card is not
enabled at all: that 3D Quake Engine game benchmark that I ran on my
box, was rendered completely in software, with no hardware
accelleration whatsoever.

Even though it's a 2.5 GHz Core 2 Quad Xeon box with 16 GB of FB-DIMM
memory, that flawlessly-rendered video game benchmark managed to
achieve a maximum framerate of perhaps two.  Most of the it didn't
even achieve that, but had a framerate of just one.

Yes, you read that right: My Core 2 Quad Xeon box can play Quake
Engine 3 games with a frame rate of just one frame per second.

Someone has pointed out to me where I need to go to download and build
the source that might enable 3D accelleration on my ($$$) ATI Radeon
4870HD card.  I plan to give that a try next.

Best,

Don Quixote
-- 
Don Quixote de la Mancha
quixote at dulcineatech.com
http://www.dulcineatech.com

   Dulcinea Technologies Corporation: Software of Elegance and Beauty.