On 6 November 2011 16:45, Grant <emailgr...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> Does anyone know if open-source video drivers like radeon use the >>> different GPU's in different cards differently? Maybe not and there >>> is just a flat identical acceleration for all of the radeon cards? >> >> The GPUs are different, so yes, the driver needs to handle them differently. > > So some perform better than others even with the open-source drivers?
For each card, there is only one open-source driver which will work with its GPU (r300, r600 etc.). Your only modern alternative is to use the official ATI drivers, but it's difficult to maintain a current perspective on how they compare. At least historically, fglrx has been better for 3D support, but radeon has been more inclusive, supporting many older cards. radeon has 3D support now, so that's a moot point. Feel free to try both and post the results of the phoronix test suite for benchmarking.