Here's Why Radeon Graphics Are Faster On Linux 3.12

As part of 1310143-SO-LINUX312R98, other OpenArena and Xonotic runs were also carried out. However, embedded below is an overall look for all of the different Linux game benchmark test runs of the CPU frequency and usage at a macro level.

There's clearly a difference in the CPU governor between the Linux 3.11 and 3.12 kernels. With 3.11, the CPU was frequently jumping between its bottom and top frequency states while running the benchmarks. With 3.12, the CPU is now staying generally at its highest frequency state rather than ping ponging. It also seems to even go up into its Turbo frequency state quite a lot. The lack of ping ponging to the lowest power state seems to be what's delivering the performance gains on Linux 3.12. With 3.12 the CPU never once hit its 800MHz lowest state during testing, which is good for performance but will be interesting to see the power usage compared to prior kernels.

For these results, which are recovered every second, the tests finished quicker and the CPU usage was also lower when looked at as a percent. As already stated, many other benchmarks are now forthcoming from power usage to Nouveau driver testing.