AMDVLK vs. Mesa RADV Radeon Vulkan Driver Performance On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 2 June 2023 at 12:00 PM EDT. Page 2 of 5. 21 Comments.
GravityMark benchmark with settings of Resolution: 1920 x 1080, Renderer: Vulkan. RX 7900 XTX: Mesa RADV was the fastest.
GravityMark benchmark with settings of Resolution: 2560 x 1440, Renderer: Vulkan. RX 7900 XTX: Mesa RADV was the fastest.
GravityMark benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Renderer: Vulkan. RX 7900 XTX: Mesa RADV was the fastest.

With the demanding GravityMark benchmark, both the Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX were performing measurably faster on the Mesa RADV driver than AMD's own official AMDVLK driver. GravityMark was a clear-cut win for RADV.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Renderer: Vulkan. RX 7900 XTX: AMDVLK was the fastest.

Running Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with the Vulkan rendering option yielded similar performance between RADV and AMDVLK.

Cyberpunk 2077

Wioth Cyberpunk 2077 the results were a bit odd for the RX 7900 XT but nevertheless a clear win for RADV. What was odd was the AMDVLK vs. RADV difference with the RX 7900 XT... AMDVLK with the RX 7900 XT was much slower than with RADV and in comparison to the RX 7900 XTX results. It's like the AMDVLK driver on the RX 7900 XT had a missing optimization or incorrect handling in this case.

Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 1920 x 1080, Graphics Setting: Medium. RX 7900 XTX: Mesa RADV was the fastest.
Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 1920 x 1080, Graphics Setting: Ultra. RX 7900 XT: Mesa RADV was the fastest.
Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 2560 x 1440, Graphics Setting: Ultra. RX 7900 XTX: Mesa RADV was the fastest.
Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark with settings of Resolution: 3840 x 2160, Graphics Setting: Ultra. RX 7900 XTX: Mesa RADV was the fastest.

In any event, RADV continued leading the driver race for Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux thanks to Valve's Steam Play.


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