Fresh RadeonSI Mesa Git Gaming Benchmarks On 7 Linux Desktops

When posting last week our Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu Radeon benchmarks and Windows vs. Linux NVIDIA Pascal benchmarks and then the Windows vs. Linux relative performance analysis, as usual, it didn't take long for some to argue that the Linux gaming performance is actually faster but "Unity 7 is slower" and the similar FUD that is usually waged whenever looking at cross-platform performance.

We have done cross-desktop Linux gaming benchmarks previously to show that generally there isn't as big of a difference these days as the desktop/compositor in use as some would like to argue, but given the recent Windows vs. Linux results and the never-ending advancements to the open-source Linux graphics stack, here are some fresh numbers to share today.

Using Linux 4.10 and Mesa 17.1-dev via the Padoka PPA I had tested various Linux desktop choices available via the Ubuntu 16.10 repository. Tests included Unity 7.5, GNOME Shell 3.20, KDE Plasma 5, Xfce, LXDE, MATE, and Openbox. An AMD Radeon R9 Fury graphics card was used for this round of testing and no other changes were made to the system except changing the used desktop environment and then running our fully-automated and reproducible benchmarks using the Phoronix Test Suite.