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Earlier this month we published an article looking at the Linux versus OpenSolaris performance when using the new AMD Shanghai Opteron CPUs. Ubuntu Linux was faster than OpenSolaris 2008.11 in nearly all of the tests, but as mentioned in that article, OpenSolaris is still dependent upon GCC 3.4 where as Ubuntu and most other Linux distributions are now shipping with the newer and much-improved GCC 4 series. Following that article being published, Sun Microsystems had requested some compiler tests since they were confident the results would be different had their Sun Studio compiler been used. Well, in this article we now have some OpenSolaris benchmarks from the same AMD setup using GCC 3.4, GCC 4.0, and Sun Studio 12.

Last week S3 Graphics had released the Chrome 540 GTX, which is their newest and fastest PCI Express graphics card . Similar to when announcing the S3 Chrome 540 GT, in the Chrome 540 GTX press release they once again mention Linux support along with OpenGL 3.0 capabilities. However, they talk up Linux support, but fail to provide the support. We have just heard back though from S3 Graphics' Benson Tao, which is the one that previously told us there would be Chrome 500 Linux support in December along with a beta OpenGL 3.0 driver. What though did he have to say this time?

When announcing Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope, Mark Shuttleworth had hoped to make this next Ubuntu Linux release perform better and to boot "blindingly quick", in particular with Ubuntu beginning to appear on more mobile devices. Well, with Alpha 4 have been released earlier this month, are Canonical developers and the community in the right direction with making Ubuntu 9.04 boot quickly? We have boot-time benchmarks of the latest Ubuntu 9.04 work along with Linux desktop benchmarks comparing it to its predecessor, Ubuntu 8.10.

During the X.Org meetings at FOSDEM, Stephane Marchesin had discussed what he and other open-source developers are doing by using a code compiler (LLVM) and interweaving it with the Gallium3D driver architecture. By strapping the Low-Level Virtual Machine to Gallium3D, developers are hoping they can use the power of this relatively new compiler infrastructure to provide advanced GPU shader optimizations. This is not exactly an easy task, but it is believed it can be accomplished with beneficial results and they are making progress.

S3 Graphics has announced this afternoon the release of the Chrome 540 GTX, which they advertise as "The World's Most Connected Hi-Def Card" with its HDMI, DisplayPort, and DVI connections. The Chrome 540 GTX runs at 850MHz, uses GDDR3 memory, and shares other features to the Chrome 530 GT that was introduced in the fourth quarter of 2008. In the press release announcing the S3 Graphics Chrome 540 GTX they once again mention Linux support... But is there any Linux support?

Back in September we reviewed the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 graphics card that offered 512MB of GDDR3 memory. Overall, this RV730-based graphics card had performed well under Linux and not a bad investment with it retailing for about $80 USD. Sapphire Technology though has now introduced a new version of the Radeon HD 4670 that sports 512MB of GDDR4 memory. Will switching out the GDDR3 for GDDR4 memory have much of an overall impact on this graphics card? We have the results in this article.

In January we published a review of the AMD Shanghai Opteron CPUs on Linux when we looked at four of the Opteron 2384 models. The performance of these 45nm quad-core workstation/server processors were great when compared to the earlier AMD Barcelona processors on Ubuntu Linux, but how is their performance when running Sun's OpenSolaris operating system? Up for viewing today are dual AMD Shanghai benchmarks when running OpenSolaris 2008.11, Ubuntu 8.10, and a daily build of the forthcoming Ubuntu 9.04 release.

The first X.Org talk at FOSDEM 2009 was on version 1.3 of the Resize and Rotate extension. Matthias Hopf talked about RandR 1.3 and then Keith Packard demonstrated the transformations and panning operations using this soon-to-be-released version of RandR. Among the features for RandR 1.3 are querying state without output probing, multi-monitor panning, display transformations (translation, scaling, rotation, projection), and support for standard outputs.

Just over a month ago we shared that patches had emerged to support Intel's VA-API in MPlayer and FFmpeg. VA-API supports popular video formats such as MPEG-4 and VC-1 and is able to accelerate IDCT, Motion Compensation, LVC, bit-stream processing, and other functions, but this video API has not picked up much speed yet. The only display driver to have implemented support for VA-API in the hardware is Intel's closed-source driver (the one that's a bloody mess) for the Poulsbo chipset, which is found in a few select netbooks/nettops. However, it is now possible to use Intel's VA-API with NVIDIA hardware (the GeForce 8 series and later) and soon will be possible to use this video API on ATI/AMD hardware too.

AMD has just released its first official Catalyst driver update for the new year. AMD had delivered several key improvements to their proprietary Linux driver stack last year as we shared in our AMD Linux 2008 Year in Review, but what's there to get excited about in Catalyst 9.1? Well, first and foremost there is improved Composite support during video playback, Hybrid CrossFire support, and a number of fixes. Oh, and there's also OpenGL 3.0 support!

Intel has been at the forefront of producing hardware for netbooks and other mobile devices thanks to their Atom processor family, but they are also looking at being a key part of the mobile software ecosystem. Back in 2007 we witnessed the launch of the Moblin project, which is Intel's open-source venture for creating a complete stack of software for these mobile devices. Originally, the Moblin core was based upon Ubuntu, but Intel ended up rebasing off Fedora last year and they have been preparing for the second version of their core operating system. Just this week they released Moblin V2 Core Alpha, which we are looking at in this article. Specifically, we are looking at how fast this Intel software is able to boot!

In late December, AMD had released open-source R600/700 code used to begin supporting 2D and 3D acceleration for the latest ATI graphics processors under Linux using an open-source stack. This code in its initial form just provided basic but fast 2D acceleration and on the 3D side was only able to draw triangles. This month an AMD Video BIOS Disassembler was released by Novell, which is one of AMD's open-source partners. This evening, however, AMD has released its R600 3D specifications to the general public.

A month ago we compared Intel's graphics performance between Ubuntu 8.10 and the latest Ubuntu 9.04 daily snapshot at the time. With those tests we found Intel's performance had degraded significantly. However, with many new graphics packages having been released since then, we have carried out some additional tests this morning to look at where the Intel Linux graphics performance stands today.

Earlier this week we delivered results from a comparison between the Catalyst and X.Org Radeon drivers looking at the R500 2D performance. With a lot of interest having been generated from that, we have now carried out the same set of tests again but this time using an ATI Radeon HD 4850 (RV770) graphics card and the experimental EXA support.

Four months after Mesa 7.2 was released, Mesa 7.3 has now officially surfaced. Mesa 7.3 has been in testing since earlier this month with it having gone through three release candidates. The new features found in this latest version of the standard Open-Source OpenGL stack is proper support for GLSL 1.20 and the Intel DRI driver now supports the Graphics Execution Manager and Direct Rendering Infrastructure 2.

Phoronix Media today released Phoronix Test Suite 1.6, which is an incremental update to its flagship testing software. Phoronix Test Suite 1.6 (codenamed "Tydal") makes it easier for ISVs, IHVs, OEMs, and independent users to benchmark Linux, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X computer systems. Introduced in this update are new options to autonomously carry out tests and to analyze the generated results, expanded test coverage, and other features to more effectively test software and hardware on supported operating systems.

One of the common complaints about the ATI Catalyst Linux driver is slow 2D performance, but is this really the case? Does AMD's binary-only Linux driver have 2D performance issues that could actually make it run slower than the open-source driver developed by the X.Org community through specifications released by AMD? In this article we have run a total of 28 benchmarks looking squarely at the 2D performance between the Catalyst (fglrx) driver and the xf86-video-ati (Radeon) drivers on Ubuntu Linux.

One of the items being worked on by Red Hat for Fedora 11 is making the GNOME volume control and sound preferences area more intuitive and easier to use. With Fedora and most other distributions now using PulseAudio, they are beginning to take advantage of some of the features available through this sound server. Some of this work involves reworking the user interface for controlling GNOME Sound Preferences, which we are providing a glimpse of in this article. Among other benefits, there is finally the ability to adjust the volume level on a per-application basis.

As we shared last month, at Phoronix we will begin delivering reviews of retail netbooks and notebooks with all testing (of course) being done under Linux. Earlier this month we looked at the Samsung NC10 Netbook and are in the process of working on a few other reviews currently, but in this review we are looking at Dell's Inspiron 1525 notebook.

We are preparing to release Phoronix Test Suite 1.6 "Tydal" later this month, which is our largest and most significant update to date. Phoronix Test Suite 1.6 has quite a few changes internally as well as a number of new features and added tests. While there are over 200 changes making up this release codenamed Tydal, in this article we are sharing some of the most significant work in this forthcoming release.