AMD Catalyst Linux OpenGL Driver Now Faster Than Catalyst Windows Driver In Some Tests

As usual, first up is our most basic OpenGL game test.... The long-running OpenArena open-source game.

The Catalyst 14.12 Linux driver was running faster than Windows 7 with Catalyst 14.12 for all six AMD Radeon GPUs that were benchmarked. Of course, the open-source driver remained slower, but as explained in the earlier Phoronix articles, the open-source driver of Linux 3.18 + Mesa 10.5 did a lot to get closer to the Catalyst driver in 2014.

With the more demanding Xonotic game, the Catalyst 14.12 Linux results were ahead of the Windows 7 number with the same Omega driver revision.

Even with ultimate image quality settings for Xonotic, the Catalyst Linux configuration remained faster mostly faster (just the HD 6450/6870 were slightly faster on Windows) than Windows 7.