NVIDIA GeForce vs. AMD Radeon Linux Gaming Performance At The Start Of 2018

Here is a fresh look at the NVIDIA GeForce and AMD Radeon Linux graphics card performance as we start 2018. Testing was done using the latest Linux 4.15 Git kernel -- including the KPTI page table isolation support -- as well as using the newest Mesa 17.4-dev driver code for RadeonSI/RADV and on the NVIDIA side is their brand new 390.12 beta driver.

Given all the kernel churn recently as well as the introduction of the new NVIDIA 390 driver series and its changes plus the RadeonSI/RADV drivers continuing to evolve on a daily basis ahead of the Mesa 18.0 branching, it's an interesting time for some fresh AMD vs. NVIDIA graphics card benchmarks on Ubuntu Linux. Tests were done on the Core i7 8700K test system running Ubuntu 17.10 with X.Org while using Linux 4.15 Git from 8 January, Mesa 17.4-dev built against LLVM 6.0 SVN from 8 January and NVIDIA 390.12.

The NVIDIA cards tested included the GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1070 Ti, GTX 1080, and GTX 1080 Ti.

The AMD Radeon cards tested included the Radeon R9 285, R9 290, RX 580, R9 Fury, RX Vega 56, and RX Vega 64 based upon the available recent cards for testing. All cards were tested using the AMDGPU DRM driver, also allowing for RADV support everywhere.

These OpenGL and Vulkan Linux gaming benchmarks were carried out in a fully-automated and reproducible manner using the Phoronix Test Suite.