[SURVEY] Linux Gaming guide - AMD Drivers

Contrary to popular beliefs - i’m not terminator or even Wine-guru :robot: :sweat_smile:

So i need some help to determine best advises for Linux gaming guide in certain areas or hardware or drivers that i personally doesn’t have any experience at all.


AMD Drivers

AMD RADV open (part of Mesa project)

vulkan-radeon
lib32-vulkan-radeon

AMD AMDVLK open (maintained by AMD)

amdvlk
lib32-amdvlk

AMD AMDGPU PRO closed (maintained by AMD)

vulkan-amdgpu-pro
lib32-vulkan-amdgpu-pro

Please vote for your experience with those 3 AMD drivers and leave some comments on good / bad / ugly and things that everyone should know, and also mention which specific GPU(s) you’ve tried it on.

Best Performance
  • AMD RADV open (part of Mesa project)
  • AMD AMDVLK open (maintained by AMD)
  • AMD AMDGPU PRO closed (maintained by AMD)
0 voters
Best Games Compatibility
  • AMD RADV open (part of Mesa project)
  • AMD AMDVLK open (maintained by AMD)
  • AMD AMDGPU PRO closed (maintained by AMD)
0 voters
Best Stability
  • AMD RADV open (part of Mesa project)
  • AMD AMDVLK open (maintained by AMD)
  • AMD AMDGPU PRO closed (maintained by AMD)
0 voters

honka_animated-128px-48

well, my personal track record is way better with radv (vulkan-radeon).
I tend do try AMDVLK from time to time, but it always has worse performance on my end and some games don’t even run with AMDVLK.

That’s actually not really surprising. Valve, Mesa and other developers work on RADV and also take the good parts from AMDVLK, while AMDVLK, although open, is only worked on by AMD and doesn’t usually get the benefits developed by Valve, Mesa and others.

For AMDGPU-Pro - it’s closed, never tried it, never will try it. It is aimed for Ubuntu LTS/RHEL where the distribution packages don’t support driver updates but new stuff still has to work, no matter how.

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Which GPU(s) you have experienced it with?

Makes sense! :upside_down_face:

Starting with the FuryX, followed by the RX480, Vega64 and now a RX 6750XT. (and a Vega 8 APU in my Ryzen 3500U notebook)

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RADV has been the go-to choice for gaming without Raytracing.
If you wish to use Raytracing, most games will simply crash as soon as you turn RT on. However AMDGPU PRO is supposed to be best when it comes to Raytracing performance atm.

That being said, I would still go for RADV every single time.

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Very interesting, i wonder by Ray Tracing you mean some form of NoVidya RTX calls translations or some games are already made to work with AMD solution?

https://youtu.be/kANMoO-TvDs

Oh well…I guess all those official RT is evolved since i’we written my article :laughing:

Since RDNA2, AMD has Raytracing as well. It’s horrible in comparison to Nvidia’s Raytracing when it comes to performance, but it exists.

Also if you decide to use RT on AMD, I wouldn’t even bother with cards that aren’t flagship because performance is just :poop:

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Looks like that’s very dependent on game engine’s implementation, sometimes even Intel is winning in those tests :laughing:

Goes without saying :space_invader:

The thing is that those benchmarks were mainly done on Windows.
On Linux performance is worse :frowning:
Especially with Intel GPU’s. They still run very badly on Linux.

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Yeah and that AMDGPU Pro thing…Well, i think in some time it will be much better experience on Linux :upside_down_face:

We always lag behind a bit in penguin land when it comes to new hardware / driver tech. :penguin:

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I had only good experience with RADV. I did use AMDVLK, the free version, for a while, and it was fine, too, for the most part.

If I had any interest in proprietary drivers, I’d just use NoVidea. It’s better hardware, anyway, I just hate the fact the drivers are proprietary, and all the problems that come with that. I aslo hate giving my hard earned fiat currency to a company that treats Linux as second class OS. That’s why I use AMD and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, not because I particularly like AMD.

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While I don’t game on AMD hardware, I told many people to uninstall amdvlk because their games were not running, and suddenly things started working. So I voted Mesa for stablity and compatibility but I don’t know about performance. amdvlk is like cancer, it will take over any other driver even if you don’t have an AMD GPU.

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That’s interesting…I’ve read in archwiki that you can install all 3 simultaneously without any issues :sweat_smile:

there are three implementations, which could be installed simultaneously

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Vulkan#Switching_between_AMD_drivers

As of amdvlk 2021.Q3.4, a new switching logic was implemented which enforces AMDVLK as the default and mandates you either

Looks like that’s what you were referring to

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As someone who just bought a new AMD card, and as someone who never used AMD graphics on linux before (Thank God I finally got away from Nvidia)… RADV all the way. I actually couldn’t get any games to launch on AMDVLK which surprised me because I thought it would support this card better!

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honka_animated-128px-40

see about GPU & APU coming in Linux 6.3

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So far looks like RADV all the way, except when you need some of this Ray Tracing using AMDGPU PRO to work yet…

Still, more opinions / experiences = better!

honka_animated-128px-48

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Mesa stuff has worked wonderfully. I too got away from NVidia recently. Best thing to happen to me since I met my wife.

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Just don’t tell that to her… :rofl:

honka_animated-128px-50

Hah, didn’t mean it like that. Love both my wife and my AMD GPU. :rofl:

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