Ubuntu 12.10: Open-Source Radeon vs. AMD Catalyst Performance

To no surprise at all, the AMD Catalyst binary driver continues to run much faster than the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver.

Aside from better performance, the Catalyst driver also supports OpenGL 4.x while the open-source driver is still handicap to OpenGL 3.0 and it will likely be at least another year before the Gallium3D driver potentially supports OpenGL 4.0.

The open-source Radeon driver also continues to be handicap by the lack of proper power management for Radeon graphics cards.