Benchmarking The Latest AMD Radeon & NVIDIA GeForce Graphics Cards On Ubuntu Linux

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at least is running fine on the latest AMD Catalyst and NVIDIA Linux proprietary drivers... However, it's not as demanding as some of the other AAA Linux games. On this Core i7 5960X Haswell-E system the results became CPU bound with the fastest NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 Maxwell series graphics cards. The AMD Catalyst Linux driver does appear to have much more optimization potential left with the Radeon R9 290 performing at 116 FPS while the GeForce GTX 760 was able to push 133 FPS.

The Metro Redux games are some of my favorite OpenGL Linux tests introduced last year. With Metro 2033 Redux, the Catalyst Linux driver continues forcing the Radeon results lower. The Radeon R9 290 was running Metro 2033 Redux at just 54 FPS -- the same level as the GeForce GTX 750 Ti, while the GeForce GTX 900 Maxwell GPUs were nearly twice as fast.

The AMD hardware on Ubuntu 15.04 performs better with Metro Last Light Redux than in Metro 2033 Redux, but the Linux gaming scene is still dominated by NVIDIA.