Last week NVIDIA introduced the 169.04 Beta Linux driver for their GeForce and Quadro graphics cards. This X.Org driver contained a number of GeForce 8 fixes, initial support for the GeForce 8800GT graphics card, monitoring of PowerMizer state information, and other changes.

What we had not tested, however, at that time was a performance comparison of the new driver and the previous 100.14.23 driver. The undocumented fact we have found is that this 169.04 Beta driver does deliver performance improvements for the GeForce 8 series on Linux.

The PowerMizer area in the nvidia-settings panel shows whether adaptive clocking has been enabled, the GPU clock and memory clock frequencies, the power source, performance level, and performance mode. PowerMizer is oriented for mobile NVIDIA customers.

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