hi how can i find how many fps my video card currently is when running a 3d game? (or just in general its potential) i am using debian with kernel 2.6.7 and kde 3.3. basically i just want to see if it is worth upgrading to an ati proprietry driver (i have 256 mb 9800 radeon) thanks!

To determine your FPS, you could just open a terminal session, then enter "glxgears" (without the quotes) at the command line. Maximize the window with the spinning gears, wait about 30 seconds, then close it. The glxgears program will measure your FPS every 5 seconds, and therefore you'll see 5 or 6 FPS scores in the terminal session. Ignore the first one or two, because they were snapped when the window was not in full screen mode (which results in artificially high FPS scores)

I'm not a gamer so I have no idea whether or not any of the games have an option to see what the FPS is during the game, but I think glxgears will probably give you what you're looking for. -- J.W.

Anandtech wrote a program to do 3D benchmarking in Linux. The measurements are close to accurate as it can get but there is no 3D benchmark program in Linux to compare Anandtech's program.

Only use glxgears to test if your 3D installation works. glxgears is usesless to benchmark 3D video cards. If you type "glxinfo | grep -i mesa" and it gives an output, then you are using the software render.

I suggest nVidia cards with 128 MB in Linux because the memory speed is a lot faster than 256 MB version and it is easier to install. ATI drivers are unstable in Linux and sometimes in Windows because of poor programming for the drivers.