Ubuntu 12.10: Open-Source Radeon vs. AMD Catalyst Performance

The lack of unified Video Decoding (UVD) support for hardware-accelerated video playback is another common complaint about the open-source graphics driver.

At least those using the open-source AMD Linux driver tend to experience better stability and less headaches than dealing with the Catalyst blob...

Unfortunately, the open-source Radeon driver will likely be much slower than the Catalyst driver for the foreseeable future.