Open-Source AMD/NVIDIA GPU Tests On Linux 4.1 + Mesa 10.7-dev

As part of the other Linux graphics tests running this week, here are the results of eight different graphics cards -- from both NVIDIA and AMD -- being tested on the latest open-source Linux graphics drivers under a variety of OpenGL Linux games. The software stack making up this round of testing was the Linux 4.1.1 kernel and Mesa 10.7-devel atop Ubuntu 15.04.

Open vs. closed-source numbers for these graphics cards will come in the next few days along with a larger closed-source driver comparison as part of the MSI Radeon R7 370 Linux review. For this Friday article are just the results from eight different graphics cards tested on the open-source code:

- Radeon HD 6870
- Radeon HD 6950
- Radeon HD 7950
- Radeon R9 290
- Radeon R7 370
- GeForce GTX 650
- GeForce GTX 680
- GeForce GTX 750 Ti

The NVIDIA card selection was limited due to the open-source Nouveau driver still lacking sufficient re-clocking support. For this comparison, the GTX 650 was able to be successfully re-clocked to its highest performance state (0f) while the GTX 680 only made it part-way up (0a performance level), and the GTX 750 Ti couldn't be re-clocked at all so it was bound to its boot frequencies. On the AMD side, all of these cards re-clocked albeit the R9 285 Tonga wasn't tested since the AMDGPU kernel driver didn't land until Linux 4.2.

All of these OpenGL Linux benchmarks were carried out in a fully-automated and reproducible manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite.