Ubuntu 14.04 To Ubuntu 17.10 RadeonSI OpenGL Performance

As part of the multi-year comparisons for marking AMD's open-source strategy being 10 years old, here's a look back with fresh OpenGL Linux gaming benchmarks from Ubuntu 14.04 through Ubuntu 17.10 using a Radeon HD 7950 graphics card with the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver. There's also a similar comparison with a Radeon R9 Fury.

With a Radeon HD 7950 (GCN 1.0 / Southern Islands) graphics card I went back and re-tested every Ubuntu release from the current 17.10 Artful Aardvark through the Ubuntu 14.04.0 LTS release. Testing couldn't do back further than that as when attempting to boot Ubuntu 13.10 with this GPU/monitor, there were mode-setting errors to thwart testing older than that. On each Ubuntu release, the open-source Radeon DRM + RadeonSI driver stack was tested. A similar comparison with looking at the AMD fglrx performance on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS compared to AMDGPU-PRO and RadeonSI on Ubuntu 16.04 is currently being done with a few graphics cards.

With Ubuntu 16.04 through Ubuntu 17.10 are also results for a Radeon R9 Fury. Testing prior to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS wasn't possible with the R9 Fury for having working out-of-the-box 3D graphics.

Each Ubuntu release was using its out-of-the-box software stack for testing. All of the hardware remained the same during the benchmarking process. All of these OpenGL tests were driven via the Phoronix Test Suite.