13-Way AMD GPU Open-Source Linux Driver Comparison On The Source Engine

Now to look at the two Source games when running at 2560 x 1600...

If you're hoping to run Counter-Strike: Source at 2560 x 1600, a Radeon HD 4870 and higher can deliver above a 60 FPS average.

For running 2560 x 1600 with our Team Fortress 2 test profile, the HD 5830 or HD 6870/6950 was needed for delivering fluid above-60 FPS averages.

I hope that that glimpse into the open-source Radeon Gallium3D performance was useful if you want to avoid the Catalyst driver on your Linux box. Also take note of all the caveats mentioned on the first two pages of this article about Linux graphics driver issues in general. Stay tuned for the upcoming tests of other Intel/NVIDIA graphics hardware and drivers on Linux. As soon as the RadeonSI support matures, I will be more benchmarks of the Radeon HD 7000 and R9 200 series from the open-source Linux GPU driver.

Thanks to the power of the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org, you can easily see how your own Linux system compares to these Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Source test results by having them installed via Steam and then simply run phoronix-test-suite benchmark 1311123-SO-OPENSOURC48 to conduct a fully-automated side-by-side performance comparison.

Again, as commented in more detail earlier in this article, if you find this Linux hardware testing useful please subscribe to Phoronix Premium (with recent improvements!) or make a PayPal tip or disable AdBlock to support this costly and very time-consuming effort without the support of AMD. You can also follow Phoronix on Facebook and Twitter (also @MichaelLarabel for Linux testing news and feedback).