How To Make Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Run Much Faster On AMD Catalyst For Linux

As was pointed out in our forums, renaming the csgo_linux binary to hl2_linux will significantly increase the AMD Catalyst driver performance on Linux. AMD evidently checks for the hl2_linux binary name for Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, and other Valve games and uses that for applying some Source Engine optimizations/workarounds, but doesn't check for csgo_linux. Again, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been out on Linux for nearly one year...

Users just need to rename the csgo_linux binary to hl2_linux within ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Counter-Strike Global Offensive plus modify the csgo.sh script in that same directly to use hl2_linux. This is just causing the Catalyst Linux driver to apply the Half-Life 2 profile when running the game, until some Catalyst post-15.7 driver release finally adds a profile for CS:GO.

With Catalyst 15.7, the latest public AMD binary Linux driver, I ran some of my own tests for reference. In this weekend article I tested the Radeon HD 7950, Radeon R9 285, Radeon R9 290, and Radeon R7 370 on Ubuntu Linux with this latest binary driver. Tested was the game in its "stock" configuration and then running CS:GO as hl2_linux. All benchmarks were handled in a fully-automated and reproducible manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.