Trying The Padoka PPA For The Latest RadeonSI Experience On Ubuntu 16.04

For those currently running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and thinking about trying out the Padoka PPA for easily deploying the latest Mesa code on your desktop rather than using Xenial's stock Mesa 11.2, here are some fresh reference benchmarks.

In a few days is the main tests I'm working on of looking at the Linux 4.6 vs. DRM-Next-4.7 for Radeon/AMDGPU. But in the process of doing a clean system install and then wanting to be on Mesa Git for when doing those DRM tests, I decided to do a quick Mesa 11.2 vs. 11.3-devel comparison along the way for one of the test graphics cards: the AMD Radeon R9 290.

If using the Padoka PPA to switch over to Mesa Git on Ubuntu 16.04, you'll also get the newer LLVM SVN snapshot as well. Compared to Ubuntu 16.04 having OpenGL 4.1 with Mesa 11.2, this latest configuration will bring you to OpenGL 4.2 but not yet OpenGL 4.3. And those are the system details used for today's comparison. The Padoka PPA packages were as of earlier today (12 May).


For many of the common Linux OpenGL benchmarks, there isn't much change in performance.


DiRT Showdown and BioShock Infinite both notably regressed during this testing. However, as this was just a quick Mesa comparison for a one-page article, I wasn't closely looking at the screen during the testing process to know if that can be attributed to a rendering difference. I'm sure fellow RadeonSI users will quickly jump in on the forums.

Some tests look like they are edging slightly higher. You can dig through more data via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file. Of course, more Mesa 11.3 tests on various drivers will come when its release approaches next month.