Yesterday I ran the latest RadeonSI Gallium3D vs. Catalyst AMD Linux driver comparison, effectively another round of open-source vs. closed-source GPU driver testing. In yesterday's article it was found the RadeonSI performance is improving a lot but the AMD Catalyst Linux driver remains much faster. In this article are benchmarks of the older "R600" Radeon Gallium3D driver compared to the Catalyst driver with graphics cards from the Radeon HD 6000 series and older where the open-source R600g driver provides support and in a more mature state.

This testing is similar to yesterday's AMD Linux comparison but rather than testing the RadeonSI driver that is for the Radeon HD 7000 series and newer, the R600 Gallium3D driver was the subject of today's tests, which support from the original Radeon HD 2000 series through the Radeon HD 6000 series. The graphics cards that were used for testing included the Radeon HD 4870, Radeon HD 5830, Radeon HD 6870, and Radeon HD 6950. The comparison was mostly focused on the Radeon HD 5000/6000 series as that's the furthest the support extends with the current mainline Catalyst driver. The Radeon HD 4000 series hardware and older is only supported by the legacy Catalyst driver that is seldom maintained and doesn't work with modern Linux distributions.