Ubuntu 15.04 Offers Faster OpenGL For AMD Radeon GPUs On Open-Source

Intel Haswell Linux users are greeted by relatively modest performance changes with Ubuntu 15.04 while those using AMD Radeon graphics cards on the open-source R600 and RadeonSI Gallium3D drivers have much more to look forward to when upgrading to this week's release of Ubuntu 15.04. Here's some Ubuntu 14.10 vs. Ubuntu 15.04 OpenGL benchmarks for a range of AMD Radeon graphics cards.

Today's article is the open-source AMD equivalent to the Intel Ubuntu 14.10 vs. 15.04 benchmarks carried out earlier this week. The testing is looking exclusively at the open-source Radeon Linux driver and not Catalyst. Ubuntu 14.10 shipped with the Linux 3.16 kernel, Mesa 10.3.2, and X.Org Server 1.16. Ubuntu 15.04 is riding with the Linux 3.19 kernel, Mesa 10.5.2, and the X.Org Server 1.17.1 release. There's also upgraded LLVM (v3.6) with the compiled Radeon Mesa drivers under Ubuntu 15.04.

The graphics cards tested in this article were the Radeon HD 6450, HD 6570, HD 6870, HD 7850, and R9 270X as an interesting range of old and new AMD hardware. The OpenGL benchmarks used were a mix of real-world and synthetic tests that could be run in a fully-automated manner under the Phoronix Test Suite.