15-Way Open-Source Intel/AMD/NVIDIA GPU Comparison

Written by Michael Larabel in Graphics Cards on 1 July 2013 at 12:15 PM EDT. Page 1 of 4. 33 Comments.

When running Fedora 19 with its updated open-source Linux graphics drivers, 15 different Intel, AMD Radeon, and NVIDIA GeForce GPUs were compared when looking at the open-source Linux OpenGL performance. The tested graphics processors span from the Intel HD Graphics 4600 "Haswell" integrated graphics to the AMD Radeon HD 7950 "Southern Islands" graphics card to the vintage Radeon X1800XL.

With the stock Fedora 19 KDE RC2 installation, which provides the Linux 3.9 kernel, Mesa 9.2-devel, and the latest X.Org DDX drivers, the 15 different graphics configurations were benchmarked in their stock configurations and settings. All OpenGL benchmarking was handled via the Phoronix Test Suite.

Testing was done from the Core i7 4770K Haswell system so that the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4600 could be benchmarked. The tested AMD hardware included the Radeon X1800XL, HD 4670, HD 4870, HD 5830, HD 6450, HD 6770, HD 6870, HD 6950, HD 7850, and HD 7950. The tested NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards were the GeForce 9500GT, GTX 460, GTX 550 Ti, and GTX 680. The selection of NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards was less diverse since the reverse-engineered Nouveau driver doesn't yet provide out-of-the-box re-clocking support to allow the NVIDIA GPUs to operate at their full-speeds.

Coming up in a later Phoronix article will be a closed vs. open-source driver comparison from this system having the proprietary NVIDIA and AMD Catalyst results shown side-by-side, for a clear look at the performance of the Linux desktop for OpenGL gaming.


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