Linux 4.12 + Mesa 17.2-dev Yields Noticeable Advantages For Radeon Gamers On Ubuntu 17.04

BioShock Infinite is 15% faster in moving to Mesa 17.2-dev via the Padoka PPA though this game doesn't benefit from a newer kernel.

Civilization VI had regressed when moving to Mesa 17.2-dev, but it was recovered and wound up better on Linux 4.11+. There were some AMDGPU memory related changes in Linux 4.11 that seem to cause some problems with newer Mesa builds on pre-4.11 kernels. The Civilization VI AMDGPU+RadeonSI performance though could still be a lot better.

CS:GO also regressed on Mesa 17.2-dev when using the 4.10 kernel, but with 4.11 and later is running faster. With the fully-updated stack, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was 12% faster than Ubuntu 17.04 out-of-the-box.

Similar story with Dota 2 on OpenGL where the kernel and Mesa updates allow a boost of 20%.

With Dota 2 Vulkan, the performance boost is much more dramatic. We've previously reported on RADV being faster with Linux 4.11 and for Linux 4.12 there are even more RADV Vulkan boosts, likely due to AMDGPU video memory optimizations.