M395X Benchmarks - Bootcamp versus PC versus Mac in OpenGL

Hello all,

So I would like to post some interesting benchmarks that I found from gfxbench.com, which can be found on the following link: M395X Bootcamp edition versus standard PC/Mac drivers.

First of all... device driver information!

Bootcamp edition drivers
Crimson 16.11.5 (bootcamp edition by bootcampdrivers.com)
Device driver version: 16.21.19.164.257
OpenGL version: 4.4.13456

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Catalyst 15.301 (latest official Apple-AMD release at time of writing)
Device driver version: 15.301.2101.0
OpenGL version: 4.4.13417


The benchmarks!

Car Chase

Bootcamp edition drivers
Onscreen: 1176 Frames (19.9 Fps)
Offscreen: 7109 Frames (120.3 Fps)

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Onscreen: 1192 Frames (20.2 Fps)
Offscreen: 7422 Frames (125.6 Fps)

Comments
Very similar performance here, as is to be expected. Slightly better offscreen performance with the official drivers.


1440p Manhattan 3.1.1 Offscreen

Bootcamp edition drivers
Offscreen: 5862 Frames (94.6 Fps)

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Offscreen: 5344 Frames (86.2 Fps)

Comments
I was expecting the results to be close yet again but interestingly there is an almost 10% increase using the bootcamp edition drivers here.


Manhattan 3.1

Bootcamp edition drivers
Onscreen: 1557 Frames (25.1 Fps)
Offscreen: 8601 Frames (138.7 Fps)

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Onscreen: 1474 Frames (23.8 Fps)
Offscreen: 6708 Frames (108.2 Fps)

Comments
Very similar onscreen results, but offscreen sees a significant gain of 30 fps for the bootcamp edition drivers!


Manhattan

Bootcamp edition drivers
Onscreen: 2291 Frames (37.0 Fps)
Offscreen: 9460 Frames (152.6 Fps)

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Onscreen: 2085 Frames (33.6 Fps)
Offscreen: 7423 Frames (119.7 Fps)

OpenGL in macOS
Onscreen: 2010 Frames (32.4 Fps)
Offscreen: 9821 Frames (158.4 Fps)

Comments
Again we see comparable onscreen performance but over 30 fps better performance in offscreen benchmarks for the bootcamp edition drivers vs the official ones!
Compared to OpenGL on Mac, we see slightly higher onscreen performance and nearly identical offscreen performance.


T-Rex

Bootcamp edition drivers
Onscreen: 7347 Frames (131.2 Fps)
Offscreen: 28783 Frames (514.0 Fps)

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Onscreen: 7538 Frames (134.6 Fps)
Offscreen: 26255 Frames (468.8 Fps)

OpenGL in macOS
Oncreen: 3353 Frames (59.9 Fps)
Offscreen: 20497 Frames (366.0 Fps)

Comments
Again, onscreen performance is comparable and only a couple of fps to separate them, but yet again the offscreen performance is through the roof on the bootcamp edition drivers, this time around 45 fps higher, or a 9% boost vs the official ones!
Compared to OpenGL on Mac there is a HUGE boost in fps for both onscreen performance and offscreen performance, which can be partly attributed to older versions of OpenGL still being used on Mac which are less optimized.


Tessellation

Bootcamp edition drivers
Onscreen: 5574 Frames (185.8 Fps)
Offscreen: 33141 Frames (552.4 Fps)

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Onscreen: 5376 Frames (179.2 Fps)
Offscreen: 32261 Frames (537.7 Fps)

Comments
Slightly better onscreen performance this time around with the bootcamp edition drivers, with offscreen performance also superior but to a lesser degree of about 3% difference vs the official ones.


ALU 2

Bootcamp edition drivers
Onscreen: 3158 Frames (105.3 Fps)
Offscreen: 40934 Frames (682.2 Fps)

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Onscreen: 2911 Frames (97.1 Fps)
Offscreen: 36912 Frames (615.2 Fps)

OpenGL in macOS
Onscreen: 1798 Frames (60.0 Fps)
Offscreen: 30366 Frames (506.1 Fps)

Comments
Bigger gains to be had with onscreen performance here of roughly 8% for the bootcamp edition drivers vs the official ones. Offscreen performance sees significant gains of over 60 fps!!!
The Windows drivers wipe the floor with OpenGL running on the Mac with very significant fps gains to be had for both offscreen and onscreen performance.


Driver Overhead 2

Bootcamp edition drivers
Onscreen: 2559 Frames (85.3 Fps)
Offscreen: 5224 Frames (87.1 Fps)

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Onscreen: 2769 Frames (92.3 Fps)
Offscreen: 4596 Frames (76.6 Fps)

OpenGL in macOS
Onscreen1798 Frames (59.9 Fps)
Offscreen5292 Frames (88.2 Fps)

Comments
The only benchmark to demonstrate a slight drop in onscreen fps over official AMD drivers of around 8%, though offscreen performance bizzarely sees a similar percentage boost over the official drivers.
Offscreen performance is similar on the Mac side but with signficantly lower onscreen fps compared to the Windows drivers.


Texturing

Bootcamp edition drivers
Onscreen: 80860 MTexels/s
Offscreen: 75355 MTexels/s

Official AMD drivers in Windows
Onscreen: 80952 MTexels/s
Offscreen: 78771 MTexels/s

OpenGL in macOS
Onscreen: 67998 MTexels/s
Offscreen: 50147 MTexels/s

Comments
We would expect to see near identical results here which will be purely based on the specification of the graphics card.
The onscreen texturing rate is essentially the same as the official drivers, though the offscreen rate appears lower for the bootcamp edition drivers, despite the higher fps performance for offscreen tasks from the other benchmarks above - a very odd result indeed!
Compared to the results on the Mac however, it is still night and day with much lower performance to be had in OpenGL on macOS.


Concluding remarks
The results to me are obvious - the bootcamp edition drivers have demonstrably better performance in many of the benchmarks, particularly for offscreen performance. Onscreen performance is generally comparable to the official AMD driver, and both Windows drivers are way ahead of the Mac driver in terms of raw OpenGL performance. This is partly due to Apple not frequently updating OpenGL on the Mac side, so therefore it uses an older, less optimized version. With the release of the Metal API on Mac, this gives Apple an excuse to further neglect OpenGL updates, so over time this is likely to get worse rather than get better.