Power Management: ATI Catalyst vs. Open-Source ATI Driver

The average battery power consumption using the xf86-video-ati driver while idling for five minutes was 18,580 Milliwatts. The lowest amount of power it had consumed during that time was 17,829 Milliwatts and the most it consumed was 19,059 Milliwatts.

Using the Catalyst 9.2 driver, the average power consumption while idling was 18,957 Milliwatts. Yes, this is actually slightly more power consumed when using AMD's performance-oriented proprietary driver. The Catalyst driver had consumed 377 Milliwatts more power than the open-source driver on the ThinkPad T60 with the Mobility Radeon X1400. Albeit 0.4 Watts is not much, but everything counts. This difference may be explained though by more parts of the graphics processor being utilized. The most the Catalyst driver consumed during this five-minute idle process was 21,234 Milliwatts, which is significantly more than the xf86-video-ati driver maxing out at 19 Watts. The lowest amount of power consumed was 18,389 Milliwatts, which is also more than the Radeon driver's lowest point.