Speed: Windows vs Linux

SDL Development
1

I have been been exploring the NeHe OpenGL tutorials, and I have made
what I’m sure is not an original discovery, but one that puzzles me.
Lesson06 paints a bitmap on each face of a rotating cube. The speed
difference between Windows 2000 and Linux running this code (SDL version
for Linux) on my P4 with a recent nVidia card is amazing. Linux is
approximately 6 times as fast as W2000.

I am not at all concerned about this (rather the opposite) since Linux
is the target OS for my SDL/OpenGL program, but I am curious to know the
reason. Is it likely that I have a problem with the video card setup,
or is the Windows/OpenGL combination just very slow? I am tremendously
impressed by the simplicity of the SDL implementation, by the way, and
to get the enormous performance advantage as well is far more than I
could have hoped for, which is why I wonder if it can be real.

Gib--------------------------------------------
Gib Bogle @Gib_Bogle
1/44 Arthur St Tel: (64-9) 525-6878
Ellerslie, N.Z. Fax: (64-9) 525-6878

2

to get the enormous performance advantage as well is far more than I
could have hoped for, which is why I wonder if it can be real.

Is windows sync’ing to vertical retrace? The Linux drivers will not do
that by default.

–ryan.

3

Gib Bogle wrote:

I am curious to know the
reason. Is it likely that I have a problem with the video card setup,
or is the Windows/OpenGL combination just very slow?

Perhaps there’s a difference in your antialiasing settings, or similar.