Open-Source ATI R600/700 Mesa 3D Performance

When comparing the CPU usage between the different graphics cards when playing back a 1080p H.264 video file in MPlayer using GL2 with the Intel Core i3 processor, the HD 2600PRO did much worse than the rest. In fact, the CPU usage was more than double of what it was with the R500 graphics cards and some of the other R600/700 ASICs.

When switching over to X-Video, the Radeon HD 2600PRO continued to struggle greatly and this time around the CPU usage was three times higher (even greater in comparison to some of the other graphics cards). All the rest of the graphics cards had a CPU usage a few percent within each other.

There we have our first round of tests. Stay tuned for more Radeon R500/600/700 3D testing using the open-source driver stack found in H1'2010 Linux distributions and then our early look at Gallium3D and other areas.