Radeon Software 18.50 vs. Linux 4.20 + Mesa 19 Benchmarks On The AMD RX 590

Written by Michael Larabel in Display Drivers on 18 December 2018 at 03:27 PM EST. Page 1 of 5. 11 Comments.

While Windows users last week were greeted by the Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 driver on the Linux side was the Radeon Software for Linux 18.50 release. The only listed public change for this 18.50 Linux hybrid driver build was RHEL 7.6 support, but I've since been able to test and confirm that the Radeon RX 590 is working with this new Linux driver package. As a result, here is a look at the Radeon RX 590 performance from this "AMDGPU-PRO" driver build compared to the latest open-source driver stack in the form of Linux 4.20 with Mesa 19.0-devel.

This article is offering an initial look at how the Radeon RX 590 graphics card performs between these two different AMD Linux graphics driver options. Radeon Software for Linux 18.50 is the first release with this RX 590 support due to the few AMDGPU kernel patches needed for getting this newest Polaris variant working out on Linux. Those RX 590 AMDGPU patches are in the process of landing for the Linux 4.20 mainline kernel.

When benchmarking the "PRO" 18.50 OpenGL/Vulkan driver components to the fully open-source alternative, Mesa 19.0-devel was used by the Padoka PPA from this Xubuntu 18.04 test box. No hardware changes were made between the different test driver configurations.

Radeon Software 18.50 vs. Mesa 19.0

Using the Phoronix Test Suite, a variety of OpenGL and Vulkan Linux gaming benchmarks were carried out with the Sapphire Radeon RX 590 on both of the drivers.


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