Tbh, I haven't used Catalyst in a while. I get very acceptable fps (always more than my 60 fps monitor can show, what more could I need) in all my linux games through radeonsi, I don't see the need to use Catalyst.
I'm quite sure that this will be the case for most AMD GP-GPU using gamers.
Thing is, a lot of people use older distros, not bleeding edge, and they often get either not so good fps on radeonsi, or - something I've come across quite often - no gameplay whatsoever on steam games, because the old version of radeonsi and the old kernel they're on, doesn't have certain features that the steam client has to detect in order to play games.
This is even the fact on OpenSuSE 13.2 I believe. However, AMD GPU owners can easily run Tumbleweed, and that is absolutely trouble-free. I actually find it better than 13.2. Nvidia owners can't really use Tumbleweed if they want to game, because they have to use the nvidia binaries, and they'll have to debug and compile every week or so in order to have a working system.
Nvidia owners should really stick to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, the old LTS version, the only linux distro Valve supports, and use whatever proprietary drivers are available there.
Be careful with info from phoronix. Michael Larabel is not the most stable person on earth, and he thoroughly hates AMD and leaves no stone unthrown in the direction of AMD. Phoronix used to be a pretty decent linux news site until 2012 or so, but then it kinda got unsorted in many ways lolz...
For those that are interested in seeing the reality of gaming hardware, and seeing that it isn't like YouTube marketing suggests, I'd recommend taking a look at the Valve survey results.
You'll see that about 75% of all gamers are on Intel CPU's, and about 25% on AMD CPU's. However, take a look at the CPU speed charts. You'll see that the majority of the gamers is using a dual core processor, and that quad core adoption (yes, that's still a thing lolz) is pretty stagnant. You'll also see that a large part of AMD users are on CPU speeds of more than 3.7 GHz, which pretty much means that they are overclocking, and are using 4 or more core CPU's. On the Intel side however, the number of users with a clock speed of over 3.7 GHz is very very small (like 1 %), which means that the number of gamers that actually use the high end gaming hardware by Intel, is very very small. You'll also see that of the linux users, the number of high end AMD CPU users is actually proportionally higher, even though there are proportionally even more Intel CPU users there. Both on Windows and linux, the most popular graphics card used by gamers is the Intel HD4000 iGPU.
What does that mean?
It means that there is a lot of marketing targeted at a very very very small section of gamers that even use the hardware that is plugged the most on YouTube and other marketing channels.
It means that most gamers use PC hardware that is actually inferior in terms of gaming spec to hardware consoles like the XBone and the PS4.
It means that there are proportionally more enthusiasts that want to get the most out of their systems on AMD, and proportionally more enthusiasts on linux.
It means that a lot of discussions of how poor AMD's FX 6/8k series performance is for gaming, are completely wasted time and energy, because most gamers use Intel parts that are inferior to those AMD parts in terms of gaming performance and in terms of overall performance.
And there are a lot more conclusions one can draw from the Valve Survey results lolz...
In the end, the bottom line is that everyone can relax about gaming hardware, has time enough to weigh all options for the future, doesn't have to decide anything, can use the hardware they have to make the most out of learning how to work with linux, thus expanding their options for the future even further.
How many videos are paid for and made to promote high end i7 CPU's on high end Z and X mobos, showing off SLI setups and stuff like that? How much does this cost in total marketing budget? And then... how little gaming customers actually buy that stuff? The really brutal truth is, that those that buy all this "high end" stuff, are paying premium for all of that senseless marketing...