We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Games On AMD FOSS Drivers 2

By - | Views: 33,431
Hey people, got a really nice graph to show off today. On a follow up from my last article, loads more work has been done to Mesa and the Radeon driver, and the speed improvement from 10.0.3 to 10.2 is phenomenal.

Before we begin here are the benchmark conditions:

What the benchmark can't help you with:

  • Showing a great detail on how each card has improved.
  • Comparing between FGLRX (proprietary) and Radeon (FOSS).
  • Performance in extremely high intensive tasks beyond gaming.

What this benchmark can help you with:

  • Showing in good detail how performance has been increased in mesa as a whole.
  • What driver you should choose on your next update.
  • The general trend in progress, and how the acceleration of development has increased.


So with that out of the way, lets examine the results.
image

These results are taken from the same demo files and settings with only the kernel version and mesa version being changed. You can also see the addition of Unigine Valley which did not actually run on the 10.0 drivers which is a big step up in itself. The other games ran from 46% increases all the way to 462% which I am pretty sure must be a bug in Portal or something because I did not believe my eyes even after running repeated tests :) .

The majority of the source games ran with 2xAA so there is an increase to be seen there when it used to limit the games quite a bit but now it seems its no longer an issue as although not benchmarked here, I can comfortably run each game at a minimum of 40fps now. From these results, its no wonder that AMD wants to drop its catalyst driver for FOSS principles when you see results like this that catalyst just isn't getting on it's own.

As with all Linux projects, 10.3 is already in full swing and will be benchmarked as soon as the arch repository's update with it. For those of you that want the action now need to make sure your kernel is as up to date as your distro can be while still being stable and some distributions have third party providers to newer mesa versions. Arch and its derivatives can download the latest mesa from its repositories along with the latest 3.15 kernel.

In my own opinion we are accelerating at such a speed with these drivers, especially with the news that valve are now supporting its development.

If you would like to see the results, demo files for your own benchmarks, or the system specifications then visit this Google Docs page. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
0 Likes
The comments on this article are closed.
38 comments
Page: 1/4»
  Go to:

Liam Dawe Jun 10, 2014
Article updated for half-shot with an image of the chart.
Purple Library Guy Jun 10, 2014
Pretty deuced awesome.
NothingMuchHereToSay Jun 10, 2014
Awesome.
FutureSuture Jun 10, 2014
Look at that bar chart, hot damn. Things are looking up for AMD's open source driver.
kalin Jun 10, 2014
My next video will be amd :)
FutureSuture Jun 10, 2014
Quoting: kalinMy next video will be amd
So will mine when I purchase a new GPU in about 1 month.
Fira Jun 10, 2014
Quoting: FutureSuturekalinMy next video will be amd So will mine when I purchase a new GPU in about 1 month.

Be careful, still...
Pankake Jun 10, 2014
Let's hope Steam Machines use those drivers.
Kyle Jun 10, 2014
This is probably a really basic question, but is Mesa the graphics driver that ships with Ubuntu & Linux Mint? Or is it completely different? I usually use the Catalyst from AMD, but have never really experimented with open source drivers. Thanks!
Half-Shot Jun 10, 2014
Quoting: KyleThis is probably a really basic question, but is Mesa the graphics driver that ships with Ubuntu & Linux Mint? Or is it completely different? I usually use the Catalyst from AMD, but have never really experimented with open source drivers. Thanks!

Mesa is the software that processes actual graphics for your hardware under OpenGL. For simplicitys sake, Catalyst and Mesa are essentially the same thing just that Mesa is opensource.

Catalyst is the all in one driver.
Mesa + Radeon-Kernel-Stuff = one driver
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.