The Most Comprehensive AMD Radeon Linux Graphics Comparison

Radeon HD 4550: Finally, we are onto the Radeon HD 4000 series. This was a pivotal point for AMD. With the launch of the RV770 hardware (the Radeon HD 4850/4870) that introduced this family, there was a fundamental shift in AMD's Linux support for Catalyst. With the RV770 launch there was same-day Catalyst Linux support (a first for the AMD Linux side!) and for every launch since that point there has been same-day or same-month support. At the San Francisco press event for the Radeon HD 4800 series, AMD representatives also spoke to me that some AIBs may even begin placing Tux on their graphics card's product packaging as a sign of Linux support and bundling the Linux driver on their install CD/DVDs. Unfortunately, not much of that happened. I talked about some of this in the June 2008 article about AMD making an evolutionary leap in Linux support .

In the three years since the Radeon HD 4000 series launch, I have only ever heard of Tux being showcased on one or two graphics card packages. I also have not seen the Catalyst Linux driver redistributed on any of AMD's AIB partners driver CD/DVDs. The only difference I have seen is that it has been more common for Linux drivers to be uploaded to AMD's private press FTP server before new hardware launches. However, there is still a lack of Linux coverage on new hardware launches (I didn't have launch-day access to any Radeon HD 6000 series hardware, only for FirePro hardware), which is an unfortunate change since the HD 4000/5000 series. It also is not much of a change at Phoronix where I am usually testing the Catalyst drivers months in advance anyways.

Anyhow, the Radeon HD 4550 is a RV710 operating at 600MHz with 512MB of 64-bit DDR3 memory running at 900MHz.

Radeon HD 4650: With the time around this "evolutionary leap in Linux support" AMD's add-in-board partners were more than happy to begin sending out graphics cards for Linux graphics benchmarks at Phoronix. As a result, there is a lot more Radeon HD 4000/5000/6000 series graphics cards to be tested in this article. One vendor in particular stands out and that is Sapphire Technology. The Radeon HD 4650 uses the RV730PRO GPU and is clocked at 650MHz core clock and 900MHz GDDR3 video memory.