AMD Radeon GPUs Run Great With Linux 3.11 Kernel, Mesa 9.3-devel

Overall, the Radeon HD 6770/6870/6950 graphics cards had the best performance and power efficiency showing on Linux 3.11 with DPM enabled for the range of AMD Radeon graphics cards that were tested going back to the HD 4000 (RV770) days. The Radeon HD 7000 graphics cards were omitted due to being on the less mature "RadeonSI" Gallium3D driver and having a very limited selection of Southern Islands GPUs for testing that were purchased due to AMD's lack of cooperation recently for Linux hardware testing.

As Linux 3.11 final approaches, a broader Radeon DPM comparison against other Intel and NVIDIA/Nouveau GPUs will commence, including a look at the performance relative to the binary graphics drivers. This testing is very time intensive (including having to purchase some of the graphics cards; thus also making the need for having multiple articles spanning multiple pages to cover all the Radeon DPM details and results) so please support this work by making a PayPal tip or subscribing to Phoronix Premium.