May 2011: Gallium3D vs. Classic Mesa vs. Catalyst

While not many desktop gamers run their games at low resolutions like 1024 x 768, but the open-source drivers are only capable of producing playable frame-rates for the Nexuiz game at these lower resolutions. Even at 1024 x 768, the Radeon HD 2900XT was below 30 FPS with both the classic Mesa and Gallium3D drivers. The Radeon HD 4670 and Radeon HD 5770 were both at nearly 50 FPS when using the R600g driver compared to about 30 FPS with R600c. The Catalyst driver though was many times faster. For the R500-based Radeon X1800XL, the R300g driver is also faster with Nexuiz than R300c, as expected.

At 1920 x 1080, the Nexuiz game would not be considered playable at this point for the Radeon HD 4670 or HD 5770 graphics cards on Gallium3D. The Gallium3D driver performance for the R600/700/Evergreen class hardware though was still well ahead of the classic Mesa driver. The Catalyst driver continued speeding ahead.