15-Way Open vs. Closed Source NVIDIA/AMD Linux GPU Comparison

Starting with Nexuiz, thanks to the open-source Radeon driver being able to successfully re-clock the graphics cards, the open-source Radeon driver was more competitive with the closed-source Catalyst driver when compared in relative terms to the NVIDIA results. NVIDIA's binary driver with the select high-end GPUs easily beat the tested AMD Radeon hardware with the Linux drivers while the Nouveau performance outright struggled.

The AMD Catalyst driver appears to be hitting a bottleneck or some other issue with the Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6950 on the closed-source driver getting beaten out by older NVIDIA hardware like the GeForce 9800GT on its respective closed-source driver. When it comes to open-source driver performance, overall, the Radeon GPUs are still performing the best.