AMD's New Catalyst Linux Driver Isn't Too Good

Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 22 November 2012 at 09:55 AM EST. Page 4 of 4. 51 Comments.
AMD Catalyst Ubuntu Linux Performance - fglrx 9.1.11
AMD Catalyst Ubuntu Linux Performance - fglrx 9.1.11

The Unigine Sanctuary and Tropics technology demos were also plagued by the invalid memory reference problems with the new driver.

AMD Catalyst Ubuntu Linux Performance - fglrx 9.1.11

Xonotic with low quality settings didn't really see any performance changes out of the driver upgrade.

AMD Catalyst Ubuntu Linux Performance - fglrx 9.1.11
AMD Catalyst Ubuntu Linux Performance - fglrx 9.1.11

When moving to Xonotic with higher image quality settings, the Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 6570 graphics cards ran at the same speed as compared to the earlier driver release. However, the AMD Radeon HD 7950 performance on the new AMD Catalyst Linux Beta had regressed noticeably.

While the Source Engine Linux performance may be improved by this new Catalyst Linux beta, OpenGL performance regressions for other games/workloads seems to be common. For the Unigine Engine tests and Prey, the new driver failed outright in the tested configurations. It looks like AMD's new Catalyst Linux beta needs a lot more time to bake.

If you enjoyed this article consider joining Phoronix Premium to view this site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits. PayPal or Stripe tips are also graciously accepted. Thanks for your support.


Related Articles
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.