The Most Comprehensive AMD Radeon Linux Graphics Comparison

The first benchmark run was Unigine Heaven, which is the most demanding OpenGL Linux benchmark available. Unigine Heaven does not work on the Gallium3D drivers properly (technically it could, with modifications, but at very much a snails pace). Unigine Heaven takes heavy advantage of OpenGL 3/4, which is where the open-source Linux drivers are far behind. It's possible we may see OpenGL 3.0 supported next year, but it will be years before OpenGL / GLSL is caught up with the latest upstream Khronos specification. Additionally, Unigine Heaven will not work "out of the box" on Gallium3D drivers in the foreseeable future. The Unigine Engine is borked without S3 Texture Compression support. With S3TC not being enabled by default in nearly all Linux distributions as it would be in violation of the patent in the United States, the European Union, and other selection areas, there will be problems until the patent either expires in still a number of years, there's patent reform, or some sort of open-source covenant from S3 / HTC.

In terms of the performance when using the proprietary driver, the Radeon HD 4000 series has the highest frame-rate, but that is because that older hardware is not using the tessellation path used by the Radeon HD 5000/6000 series. Aside from that, the numbers are pretty much what you expect from Unigine's impressive but demanding tech demo.