Catalyst 14.4 Has Advantages Over Linux 3.15 + Mesa 10.3 Git
Well, that's where things stand today with regard to the latest open-source driver code versus Catalyst 14.4 on Linux. Sadly there's the regression that affected the GCN hardware that limited this comparison, but as always, we'll be back with new tests soon enough. Many of these OpenGL tests of the Radeon HD 5000/6000 series hardware showed Catalyst still being measurably faster than R600 Gallium3D on Mesa 10.3-devel with the Linux 3.15 kernel DRM, but fortunately there are performance improvements on the horizon. For those interested in some non-default performance tweaks plus some patches that will be merged soon (Linux 3.16) for enhancing the performance, see some of these recent non-stock tests albeit for RadeonSI hardware. Outside of performance is still matters of OpenCL/compute, advanced AA options, an extensive GUI settings panel, and other features missing or not fully implemented within the open-source Radeon Linux driver.
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