The ATI R500 On Linux: Then & Now

As is quite visible from the results, the performance overall for the past sixteen months has been stagnant. With the Radeon X1300PRO and X1800XL and our select benchmarks, there is no major performance improvement in the fglrx 8.40.4 driver over the original 8.24.4 version. In fact, in some of the benchmarks the 8.40.4 display driver was even slower than v8.24.4. While any performance improvements remain nonexistent, the past sixteen driver releases have added a number of new features and corrected a number of bugs. Fortunately, however, as we have been sharing for the past several months, later this year AMD will be introducing a new Linux display driver. On that day, we will be delivering benchmarks across all supported Radeon product families. Will there be a major shakeup in the performance landscape this fall? Tell us what you think in the forums.