AMD's Windows Catalyst Driver Remains Largely Faster Than Linux Drivers

When running Unigine Tropics at 1080p, the Catalyst Windows configuration remained faster than the Catalyst Linux setup for both the R9 270X and R9 290. The open-source driver configuration remained the slowest. The R9 270X with RadeonSI Gallium3D was running at 78% the speed of the Catalyst Linux driver or 72% the speed of the Catalyst Windows configuration. With Unigine Tropics, the Radeon R9 290 ran into re-clocking issues or other problems with the Hawaii open-source code still stabilizing: the performance resulted in a disappointing showing for Tropics.

With the R9 270X while running Tropics at 4K is the first test where the Catalyst Linux driver was faster than Catalyst for Windows. The Radeon R9 290 on the open-source driver remained borked for running Tropics on Linux 3.17 + Mesa 10.4-devel.