AMD RadeonSI Graphics Driver Still Troublesome On Linux

The very intensive Furmark benchmark is also at about 32% the speed of the AMD Catalyst binary driver when using the RadeonSI code on the HD 7850. AMD's Radeon HD 7950 was at 39% performance on the open-source driver in Furmark.

The GpuTest Triangle performance is quite devastating for the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver.

While the Radeon HD 7000 series has been out since the end of 2011, the open-source Linux driver support is still in a sad -- but improving -- state. Rather than extending the R600 Gallium3D driver that supports the HD 2000 through HD 6000 series hardware, the new "RadeonSI" Gallium3D driver had to be developed. Additionally, there are other invasive changes with the GCN architecture that's taken a while to bring up. Fortunately in recent months the progress on the RadeonSI code seems to be picking up.

Beyond the performance in the area of 30~70% (or more generally around 30~50%) the proprietary Catalyst driver, the Radeon HD 7000 series hardware still has some issues with dynamic power management and other bugs as outlined at the beginning of the article.

Stay tuned for more open-source / closed-source Linux graphics driver benchmarks in the coming days, including the latest on other GPUs with Linux 3.12 + Mesa 9.3-devel Git. If you appreciate this time consuming and extensive Linux hardware testing done single-handedly by your's truly (beyond the many other articles and news items on Phoronix), please subscribe to Phoronix Premium or consider a PayPal tip so that it may continue.