How to perform a detailed and quick 3D performance test

Ubuntu since 11.04 comes with benchmarks glmark2 and glmark2-es2 which are quite good to perform simple benchmark (with shader) and are very light for download.

glmark2 is actively developed by Linaro group. With each new release, new and more demanding benchmarks are coming. https://launchpad.net/glmark2

Benchmark also runs well on devices (ARM, OpenGL-ES2 based), so it's good (hardware) cross platform comparison. glmark2-es2 running on OMAP4/powervr Pandaboard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5jg9D1lH5Y

Unigine has a Linux version of their benchmarks with different shader levels support, could be worth checking out:

http://unigine.com/download/

This is also included in the Phoronix test suite, which has lots of other automated graphics (and other) testing options as well.

http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/

In short, use the software centre to install php5-cli as a dependency for Phoronix, then download the Phoronix tarball and extract it. Detailed usage manuals can be found on the Phoronix site.

The chromium-bsu and gltron games in Ubuntu have a much smaller installation footprint than nexuiz and both feature a FPS counter. If I wanted to quickly test, I'd go this way.