Windows 10 vs. Linux Radeon Software Performance, Including AMDGPU-PRO & RadeonSI

Overall, these results are very exciting for AMD Linux gamers! Even just one year ago it would be hard to imagine the open-source RadeonSI Gallium3D stack running nearly all Linux games out there, let alone with performance that nearly matches the proprietary driver. For years AMD talked about aiming for 80~90% of the "Catalyst" driver with the open-source code while the numbers from this summer continue to show that is achieved and in good cases is close to the same speed or in rare situations like Metro Last Light Redux can even be faster while delivering the same visual fidelity. (Related: In case you missed it, recent benchmarks showing the significant performance evolution of the open-source Radeon driver since early 2015. In just the past year and a half it's like a night and day difference.) Overall these AMDGPU-PRO vs. open-source numbers for the R9 Fury and RX 480 were very good and as well was very good seeing for comparable games/tests how close the AMDGPU-PRO numbers are to the Windows 10 Radeon Software Crimson Edition.

A driver milestone worth celebrating... In my 12+ years of running Phoronix and covering Linux graphics, the Radeon RX 400 Polaris experience by far is the best of any past AMD/ATI product launch for open-source Linux fans. There's still work to be done on the open-source Radeon driver code, but it's becoming a real option finally for Linux gamers.

Also great to see was the very close performance for Vulkan between AMDGPU-PRO and the Windows 10 Radeon Software numbers... A pity though AMD hasn't open-sourced their Radeon Vulkan driver yet, but at least there's the emerging RADV community driver. In the days ahead I'll publish some early numbers of that open-source Vulkan code. Unfortunately the open-source code is also only at OpenGL 4.3 compliance with RadeonSI, but it doesn't appear it will be much longer until finally having OpenGL 4.4~4.5. There are also other non-performance matters for AMD's fully open driver to resolve such as better OpenCL support, CrossFire support, any ported Radeon Software UI / control panel, and other missing features.

The only real letdown from these tests were showing how the performance on Linux can be much worse when the game is ported less than ideally, such as with Tomb Raider and GRID Autosport. With those games having been available on Linux for several months now and already seen updates from Feral, it's looking less and less likely the Linux performance of those ported games will ever be at parity to Windows.

If you found today's testing useful please consider subscribing to Phoronix Premium or making a PayPal tip so that this work can continue. If you are premium, be sure to see the extra numbers I provided today with some side-by-side Direct3D 11 vs. Vulkan vs. OpenGL tests on Windows and Linux.