RadeonSI Gallium3D Is Competing Remarkably Well For Valve's Dota 2 On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Mesa on 15 February 2016 at 12:00 PM EST. 22 Comments
MESA
When running Valve's Dota 2 game on Linux and using the Linux 4.5 kernel and Mesa 11.2, the performance of the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver with Radeon and AMDGPU DRM drivers is performing remarkably well compared to the proprietary AMD Linux graphics driver.

This weekend I posted some fresh Dota 2 benchmarks with the open-source AMD Linux graphics stack. For your viewing pleasure today are tests from the same system but switching over to Ubuntu 15.10's packaged Catalyst driver while re-tested my available Radeon graphics cards with the Dota 2 test profile.
Dota 2 RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Binary Driver Test

Let's get straight to these latest Dota 2 benchmark results.
Dota 2 RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Binary Driver Test

While obviously CPU bound at 1280 x 1024, it's interesting that in this situation, the open-source Radeon driver stack is noticeably faster than Catalyst. We haven't seen this happen many times in the past.
Dota 2 RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Binary Driver Test

At 1600 x 1200, the open driver was still in front except for the R7 370.
Dota 2 RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Binary Driver Test

Around 1080p the results are getting much closer between the drivers except for the higher-end R9 290 and R9 Fury.
Dota 2 RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Binary Driver Test

At 1440p is where the closed-source driver is winning for more of the tested cards.
Dota 2 RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Binary Driver Test

At 4K, Dota 2 is faster across the board with all of the tested AMD GCN GPUs on these Linux drivers.
Dota 2 RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Binary Driver Test

There wasn't much difference in the CPU usage between the two AMD Linux drivers at 4K.

Stay tuned for more tests shortly. You can dig through these Dota 2 Radeon Linux benchmark results more via 1602158-GA-BLOBBLOB170. If you want to see how the AMD numbers are comparing for Dota 2 to numerous NVIDIA Linux graphics results, try this OpenBenchmarking.org magic.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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