Radeon DRM GPU Driver Performance: Linux 3.4 To 3.8

The Reaction Quake 3 performance seems to be edging higher with the continued work on the open-source Radeon graphics driver.

The VDrift racing game is an incredible 48% faster with the Linux 3.8 kernel compared to the 3.4/3.6/3.7 releases for the Radeon hardware from the R700 generation. Again, the likely reason for the performance boost is due to the a-sync DMA support found for Radeon GPUs in this latest kernel.

The Xonotic first person shooter was also significantly faster with the Linux 3.8 kernel while rather unchanged between the 3.4, 3.6, and 3.7 releases.

There was an earlier Radeon performance preview on Linux 3.8 that also showed nice OpenGL performance gains, coming largely down to the Radeon a-sync DMA support.

Overall, the Linux 3.8 kernel is looking really good for AMD Radeon owners using the open-source graphics stack. Up next is the Radeon Gallium3D performance comparison. Benchmarks of multiple generations of AMD Radeon graphics hardware will come when the Linux 3.8 kernel has been christened along side Mesa 9.1.