The Current RadeonSI Benefits Of Switching To Mesa 13.1-dev Git On Ubuntu 16.10

Written by Michael Larabel in Ubuntu on 12 November 2016 at 12:43 PM EST. 36 Comments
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For those wondering the current benefits of switching over to Mesa Git (13.1-devel) on Ubuntu 16.10 compared to the stock Mesa 12 drivers, here are some benchmark comparisons for RadeonSI Gallium3D using an R9 Fury. There are also tests when moving to Linux 4.9 from the Ubuntu 16.10 "Yakkety Yak" Linux 4,8 kernel.

As some fun weekend benchmarks, there are OpenGL performance benchmarks of Ubuntu 16.10 out-of-the-box with Linux 4.8 and Mesa 12.0 then compared to Linux 4.8 with Mesa 13.1-dev Git (as of this week, using the Padoka PPA with LLVM 4.0 SVN) and then Linux 4.9 + the same updated user-space stack. All tests were done on the same Radeon R9 Fury box.
Ubuntu 16.10 Radeon Update Comparison

Beyond any performance changes, simply moving to Mesa 13.0 or 13.1-dev Git will get you the RADV Radeon Vulkan driver. If using Git in the past week or so, there is also the OpenGL 4.5 support exposed over OpenGL 4.3.
Ubuntu 16.10 Radeon Update Comparison

Ubuntu 16.10 Radeon Update Comparison

Ubuntu 16.10 Radeon Update Comparison

Ubuntu 16.10 Radeon Update Comparison

Ubuntu 16.10 Radeon Update Comparison

A number of Linux OpenGL games are noticeably faster with Mesa Git in place of Mesa 12.0.
Ubuntu 16.10 Radeon Update Comparison

But with running the development code, as you show know, there is always the risk of regressions.
Ubuntu 16.10 Radeon Update Comparison

See more benchmark results via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file. If you don't know how easy it is running with the Padoka PPA to upgrade your user-space open-source graphics components on Ubuntu 16.04 or 16.10, see the instructions from this earlier article.
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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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