Radeon's Open-Source Linux GPU Driver Has Nearly Caught Up With Windows' Driver

With GRID Autosport at low image quality settings, Linux 4.12 + Mesa 17.2-dev is faster now on Linux compared to Windows 10! The peak frame-rates were also much better on Linux.

Unfortunately, RadeonSI wasn't doing as well when running at ultra image quality settings... With this more demanding scenario, the RX 580 and R9 Fury on the newest open-source Linux driver code was much slower than Windows 10 with Radeon Software.

The demanding Shadow of Mordor game was in a similar boat with the RadeonSI performance still coming up noticeably short of Windows, but at least much better than we've seen in past comparisons when making use of the open-source Radeon Linux driver stack.

The AMDGPU/RadeonSI/RADV advancements this year have been nothing short of impressive and certainly long-awaited for any long-time Radeon Linux gamers. With the RadeonSI performance on newer AMD GPU cards we're starting to see about the same performance as on Windows 10 with Radeon Software, but in the more demanding games is where the Windows driver still maintains a lead. Of course though if you've been using NVIDIA on Linux, there's been roughly the same performance between the competing operating systems for years except in common situations where the Linux game ports are noticeably slower than their Windows/DirectX versions.

If you enjoy these comparisons, consider taking advantage of our Phoronix support birthday special that is ending today as we mark 13 years of Phoronix and the same amount of time in covering the ATI/AMD Linux graphics scene.