The Most Comprehensive AMD Radeon Linux Graphics Comparison

Next up is looking at the CPU utilization, thermal sensors, and power consumption under a few different workloads. With the first workload, we are using the battery-power-usage test profile to automatically monitor the various metrics while idling at the Ubuntu desktop and then briefly playing back a short video using the X-Video extension in MPlayer. Of course, it is all automated.

Interestingly, the CPU usage tended to be lower when using the open-source driver over Catalyst. It was a very small difference (circa 1%) for the Sandy Bridge CPU, but only with the Radeon HD 5750 and Radeon HD 4770 was the open-source CPU usage higher.