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Is modern Radeon support on Linux still great? I've heard that NV Geforce on Linux was kinda bad since ever, but it has massively improved over the past 3-4 years. Is Radeon still the way to go for Linux?
EDIT: My usecase is a Linux gaming PC. I was fortunate enough to score an RX 6800 during the pandemic, but moved from Windows 10 to Linux a month ago. Everything seems solid, but I'm looking to upgrade the whole PC soon-ish. (Still running a Ryzen 1800X, but Ryzen 9000 looks tempting.)
I have both a modern Radeon and Nvidia card in my PC.
Radeon overall offers a smoother desktop experience, and works fine with gaming, including proton-enabled games on Steam. OpenCL via rocm works decent, with some occasional crashes, in Darktable. Support for AI-frameworks like jax is however very lacking, and I spent many days struggling to get it to work well, before giving up and buying a nvidia card. geohot's rants on X are indicative of my experience.
The nvidia card works great for AI-acceleration. However, there is micro-stuttering when using the desktop (gnome shell in my case) which I find extremely annoying. It's a long-known issue related to the power manager.
In the end, I use the nvidia card as a dedicated AI-accelerator and the Radeon for everything else. I think this is the optimal setup for Linux today.
Buy AMD or Intel. Not Nvidia.
Rationale:
Both AMD and Intel provide well maintained open-source drivers for many years[1]. Nvidia doesn't. You need to use closed-source drivers with Nvidia in practice, which causes issues with kernel upgrades, various issues (for which you don't get help, because the kernel is now marked as tainted) and problems with Wayland. The later are caused by the fact, that Nvidia refused[2][3] to support Wayland for a long time. Blaming that implicit sync was a disadvantage for Nvidia is not appropriate. They could've participated a long time ago and either adapt to implicit sync or help adding explicit sync years ago.
Furthermore:
* AMD gave us Vulkan as standard, which builds upon AMD's Mantle.
* AMD gave us FreeSync i.e. VRR, which is usable by others.
* AMD gave us FSR, which is usable by others.
* High prices.
* Proprietary and expensive GSYNC.
* Refused to publish documentation and open-source drivers for many years.
* Own video-decoding libraries.
[1] Well. Decades?
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20101112213158/http://www.nvnews...
[3] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/11/nvidia-have-no-plans-to-...
I helped a friend install Linux last year; they had an NVIDIA card, aaaand they had problems. Both in X and Wayland. I'm was on a 6000 series at the time and it worked great, as you know. I am on a 7000 series now, and it's as smooth as ice. AMD is the way to go for Linux.
There's that new NVIDIA driver cooking, but I'm not sure what the status is on it.
BTW, even Ryzen 3 is a substantial upgrade over 1. Any X3D processor (I think 5 is when they first appeared) is even more so. Ryzen 5 is also less sensitive to RAM timings. I applaud you for avoiding latest-and-greatest syndrome, but even upgrading to an older CPU generation would be a significant boost.
I had a laptop with a mobile GeForce RTX 4060 - it was a pain to run Linux on, mainly because of Nvidia.
I got rid of it and built myself a PC (not just because of Nvidia, gaming laptops are just a disappointing experience). And went all in with Team Red - Ryzen and Radeon. It's a joy to run Linux on, I work on it and have played several games - 0 problems.
Nvidia may be the leader in performance, but if it means you're stuck with Windows - I'd say it's not worth it.
I built my current home PC the day 4090 was release, and set up Fedora on it. It was usable at first, with some hiccups in certain updates, where I needed to stay with an older kernel for some time.
Wayland on Nvidia was a mess, though.
But as time goes by, things get better and better.
Older AMD cards have excellent Linux support across the board.
Brand new AMD cards have great support -- in mainline Linux and MESA. But if you're using a kernel and MESA from a distro, you're gonna have a hard time for the first ~8 months. You'll either have to run a rolling release distro or make your own kernel, linux-firmware and MESA packages. I had to do this when I got a 7900XT card a few months after launch while running Ubuntu.
This is the Linux driver model working as intended, and it sucks.
I suspect you may also encounter issues with Flatpaks, since from my understanding, these use the MESA userspace from a runtime so they wont work until the Flatpak runtime they use updates their MESA. I don't think it helps to have a working MESA on the host system. I'm not 100% certain about this though, would love some feedback from people with a better understanding of these things.
I use a 6800XT with Debian 12. As long as you have the `non-free-firmware` repo enabled in Debian 12 (it is by default), AMD cards should just work.
I've played quite a few games on Linux. Performance is still better on Windows though.
Like another poster, I tried to help a friend move to Linux recently and he had an nvidia card, and it was nothing but problems. He eventually went back to windows and I don't blame him.
But instead of random anecdotes, here's valves word on it: https://www.pcguide.com/news/nvidia-drivers-are-holding-back...
I use Radeon 7900GRE for gaming on linux mint without any problems, even tried some demoscene entries through steam (they didn't work with plain wine). Managed to run LM-Studio and deepseek-llama-70B, but installing ROCm support was a little more involved than "just download this and run", had to do several steps and install some missing packages, took me half hour.
I resorted to scripts from smxi.org for installing the Nvidia drivers on Debian and my GTX 770, but AMD RX 7800 XT is just fine with some firmware enabled.
Ubuntu seems to be even better. I turned my system into a Frankendebian for a day to try out ROCm, the AMD install scripts work out of the box on newer Ubuntus.
As always, wait year or two so drivers catch up.
Claims about the Nvidia drivers on Linux being bad are largely a myth. Nvidia has long been the gold standard on Linux (for decades). The main reason for complaints is that Nvidia was slow to support xwayland acceleration (mostly due to Linux mainline making it harder for them - see dmabuf being GPL symbol exported), but that has since been fixed.
No ROCm at launch? After they delayed it for months? What a joke. That's like not having CUDA available at launch.
This card is marketed to consumers, not AI developers. Most people who will buy these cards don't even know what ROCm is.
Edit: it just doesn't matter for launch day. It'll likely be supported eventually.
The ROCm libraries were built for RDNA 4 starting in ROCm 6.3 (the current ROCm release). I'm not sure whether that means it will be considered officially supported in ROCm 6.3 or if it's just experimental in that release.
Im running ROCm ok on my 9070XT. You can build it from source today if you have a card.
rocminfo:
**** Agent 2 **** Name: gfx1201 Uuid: GPU-cea119534ea1127a Marketing Name: AMD Radeon Graphics Vendor Name: AMD Feature: KERNEL_DISPATCH Profile: BASE_PROFILE Float Round Mode: NEAR Max Queue Number: 128(0x80) Queue Min Size: 64(0x40) Queue Max Size: 131072(0x20000)
[32.624s](rocm-venv) a@Shark:~/github/TheRock$ ./build/dist/rocm/bin/rocm-smi
======================================== ROCm System Management Interface ======================================== ================================================== Concise Info ================================================== Device Node IDs Temp Power Partitions SCLK MCLK Fan Perf PwrCap VRAM% GPU% (DID, GUID) (Edge) (Avg) (Mem, Compute, ID) ================================================================================================================== 0 2 0x73a5, 59113 N/A N/A N/A, N/A, 0 N/A N/A 0% unknown N/A 0% 0% 1 1 0x7550, 24524 36.0°C 2.0W N/A, N/A, 0 0Mhz 96Mhz 0% auto 245.0W 4% 0% ================================================================================================================== ============================================== End of ROCm SMI Log ===============================================
Can't Vulkan backends do the job? Not to defend AMD, but so long that perf/dollar stays above NVIDIA just any how, isn't that more than bare minimum effort for them?
I am not surprised, ROCm focuses on CDNA. Was RDNA in ROCm ever officially supported?
The hardware itself seems like it will be welcome in the market. But I find AMD GPU launches so frustrating, the branding is all over the place and it feels like there is never any consistent generational series. Instead you get these seemingly random individual product launches that slot somewhere in the market, but you never know what comes next.
In comparison nVidia has had pretty consistent naming since 200 series, with every generation feeling at least somewhat complete. Only major exception was (mostly) skippin 800 series. Not saying they are perfect by any means in this regard, but AMD just feels like a complete mess.
Checking wikipedia, Radeon has recently gone through (in order):
* HD 7000 series
* HD 8000 series
* 200 series
* 300 series
* 400/500 series
* RX Vega
* RX 5000 series
* RX 6000 series
* RX 7000 series
* RX 9000 series
Like what happened to 8000 series? And also isn't it confusing to partially change the naming scheme? Any guesses what the next generation will be called?
AMD seriously needs to fire its marketing team. Think how you would do it if you could introduce a naming schema and think of how to name technical features - it would be very easy to improve on what AMD is doing.
They've got a pretty amazing apu that just came out and competes with the M series macbooks based on early benchmarks. The name of this APU: AMD Ryzen AI MAX 300 "Strix Halo"
> Like what happened to 8000 series? And also isn't it confusing to partially change the naming scheme? Any guesses what the next generation will be called?
I read somewhere that Radeon jumped to 9000-something for this generation to align with current Ryzen 9000 series CPUs (Ryzen 8000 wasn't a thing either, last I checked). Lets see if next gen Radeons match next gen Ryzens.
EDIT: confirmed, found slides from CES posted in articles like these:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2568373/amds-radeon-rx-9070-...
https://www.techspot.com/news/106208-amd-reveals-rdna4-archi...
https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-previews-RDNA-4-with-new-R...
Marketing department at AMD missed the targets. But honestly, I don’t care about that.
Price is very competitive, and as long as benchmarks and QC are on point. Then this is a massive win for AMD.
NVDA as a “market leader” dropped the ball with the 50 series. So many issues that have turned me away from their products.
The 8000 series are iGPUs, part of the AMD Strix Halo APUs (e.g. AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395). [1]
I do agreed it's confusing though, when they were already using a three digit naming convention for iGPUs (like the Radeon 880M - the M made it clear it was a mobile chip).
[1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-8040S-Benchmarks...
https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-8040S-Benchmarks...
In this release, AMD has aligned with nVidia naming. It feels like an acknowledgement they've screwed this up and are giving up. So it feels like a genuine improvement. Hopefully they maintain this alignment, but I'm sure they won't.
You forgot a couple too, eg.
The Radeon VII which is really just a RX Vega variant made on TSMC rather than Samsung nodes but has entirely new branding for that model that doesn't mention Vega in the name.
The Radeon R9 Fury, Fury X, R9 Nano and Radeon Pro Duo which are really just 300 series but all of those have entirely new branding just for those models that don't mention the 300 series convention in their names. You also can't tell at a glance which are better.
It is a fucking mess. They cannot for the life of them stick to a convention.
0xA070
So about 20% better value than Nvidia comparing MSRPs. Not terrible but that’s what they offered last generation and got 10% market share as a result. If the market price of Nvidia cards remains 20-50% above MSRP while AMD can hit their prices, then maybe we have a ballgame.
MSRP doesn't mean anything right now, it's just a made up number at this point. Let's see the real sticker prices once the cards hit the scalpers cough-cough I mean shelves.
5070xt will likely be at $800-850 with my local/import tax while 5070ti is now at $1200-1300.
I'm pretty torn to self-host AI 70 B models on Ryzen AI Max with 128gb of ram. The market seems to be evolving fast. Outside of Apple, this is the first product to really compete in this category Self-host AI. So... I think a second generation will be significantly better than what's currently on offer today. Rationale below...
For a max spec processor with ram at $2,000, this seems like a decent deal given today's market. However, this might age very fast for three reasons.
Reason 1: LPDDR6 may debut in the next year or two this could bring massive improvements to memory bandwidth and capacity for soldered on memory.
LPDDR6 vs LPDDR5 - Data bus width - 24 bits, 16 bits Burst length - 24 bits, 15 bits Memory bandwidth - Up to 38.4 GB/s, Up to 6.7 GB/s
- Camm ram may or may not be maintain signal integrity as memory bandwidth increases. Until I see it implemented for a AI use-case in a cost-effective manner, I am skeptical.
Reason 2: - It's a laptop chip with limited PCI lanes and reduced power envelope. Theoretically, a desktop chip could have better performance, more lanes, socketable (Although, I don't think I've seen a socketed CPU with soldered RAM)
Reason 3: In addition, what does hardware look like being repurposed in the future compared to alternatives?
- Unlike desktop or server counterparts which can have a higher cpu core count, PCEe/IO Expansion, this processor with its motherboard is limited on re-purposing later down the line as a server to self-host other software besides AI. I suppose could be turned into a overkill, NAS with ZFS and HBA Single Controller Card in new case.
- Buying into the framework desktop is pretty limited based on the form factor. Next generation might be able to include a 16x slot fully populated, a 10G nic. That seems about it if they're going to maintain the backward compatibility philosophy given the case form factor.
Rx 9070 seems perfect for compact builds on a power budget but I can't see a single two-slot, two-fan card from partners so far. They all look like massive, three slot cards.
So Framework launches with Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with Radeon 8060S Graphics which has RDNA 3.5.
RDNA 4 has a 2x performance gain over 3.5 (4x with Sparsity) at FP16.
It just makes it all harder (the picking and choosing). Let's see what Project DIGITS brings once it launches.
One has 16 GB VRAM and one has 96 GB. It's not really comparable.
It seems very silly to me to change the naming scheme just for the 9000 series when they're going to have to change it again for the next series. Well I suppose they could pull an Intel and go with RX 10070 XT next time. I guess we can be thankful that they didn't call it the AMD Radeon AI Max+ RX 9070 XT.
RX 2025 7+
> AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT 64 16GB 2.4 Up to 3.0 256-bit 64 MB 304W $599
> AMD Radeon RX 9070 56 16GB 2.1 Up to 2.5 256-bit 64 MB 220W $549
Ignoring the awful naming scheme that marketing cooked up.
I really do love the price point here. Very competitive with the joke offerings by NVDA —- 5070 and 5080. Look forward to the benchmarks.
Been itching to upgrade my gaming PC for quite awhile now. But the issues with NVDA (12VHPWR cable issues, non-competitive pricing, paper release, missing CUs, QC issues, …) have encouraged me to put it off until later.
Hopefully, finally on par with nvidia with hardware BVH for raytracing and not those horrible GLSL shaders (or at least published and provided optimized GPU machine code or similar).
RDNA 4 card announcement without mentioning about ROCm support ?
When will these guys learn/catchup....
Their reveal video[0] from an hour ago.
My hot take is that the 9070 XT at $600 will do OK as long as they can ship at MSRP and nvidia can't, but would have been more impressive at $500 or even $550.
The 9070 non-XT seems DOA at $550.
The most I've ever spent on a GPU is about $300 and I don't really see that changing any time soon. (And that was for a 70-class card, so...)
Totally, the non-XT is the medium soda.
I'm really intrigued to get one, but where is the 32GB version for all the LLM goodness?
16GB? In 2025 that seems very small for anything other than gaming.
The problem is that AMD is nowhere close to DLSS performance/quality, AMD cards are good for rasterization but it's not enough. The other thing is that most game don't implement FSR because 90%+ cards are nvidia.