Thread

The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux

472 points · 97 comments · speckx

LaurensBER · 1791067317 · focus · HN ↗
I just bought a used Ayaneo 2 handheld, it has an old(er) mobile RDNA 2 GPU and I was blown away by how well this thing performed under Linux. Almost everything (that's not a recent AAA game) runs beautiful and a lot faster/smoother than it does under Windows. The experience has been so good that I'm considering switching my main pc (with a 9070XT) to Linux as well.
No doubt Timur contributed heavily to this given Valves Steamdeck (which uses a very similar but slower GPU).
Given the current hardware prices it's pretty awesome to see someone squeezing maximum performance out of old hardware!
1. Gigachad · 1791070984 · focus · HN ↗
  My experience has been that for Linux you are always better buying older mid tier hardware because all of the issues and optimisations have already been worked out and those changes have flowed through to your distro so you aren’t waiting on kernel updates.
  1. drbscl · 1791102864 · focus · HN ↗
    This used to be the case, but new AMD cards were fine about 2 weeks after they released, provided you’re not on an old kernel of course.
    I can attest to this myself, my 9070 was a bit rough on launch but worked perfectly soon after.
    ThatMedicIsASpy · 1791107851 · focus · HN ↗
    Fine is not good enough. New amd cards need a year. Is raytracing fully working (min 90% of the win11 performance) these days?
    simoncion · 1791112102 · focus · HN ↗
    > New amd cards need a year.
    Not in my experience. The 16GB 9070 non-XT seems to have been released in March 2025. I purchased one in November 2025 [0]. I observed -and continue to observe- no significant difference in graphics performance between Linux and Windows. I've also not noticed any significant difference in performance with regards to raytracing, but that might be because I have the non-XT variant, and/or it might be because I run Gentoo Linux, which probably has much newer versions of both Mesa and the kernel than most Linux distributions. I CBA to test either of these theories.
    [0] Mad props to Gamers Nexus for publishing the video where they speculated that the time around Thanksgiving was going to be the "low" point for graphics card prices... so if you were thinking of buying an upgrade that was THE time to do so. They were totally correct.
    happymellon · 1791116621 · focus · HN ↗
    So I can't comment on the raytraced experience because I don't bother with the raytracing, however I found AND worked out of the box on day one multiple times now. However RT benchmarks from January show it neck and neck.
    <a href="https://www.techspot.com/news/110999-new-benchmarks-show-linux-gaming-nearly-matching-windows.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.techspot.com/news/110999-new-benchmarks-show-lin...
    With significant improvements still incoming.
    <a href="https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/01/even-more-amd-ray-tracing-performance-improvements-heading-to-mesa-on-linux/" rel="nofollow">https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/01/even-more-amd-ray-trac...
    javier2 · 1791120947 · focus · HN ↗
    i have used linux for 20 years now. I'm actually so happy we get good working drivers mere weeks after new hardware launch.
    nickserv · 1791138300 · focus · HN ↗
    Ubuntu LTS distros can need some time, yeah. A few months is not unheard of.
    AMD typically starts adding basic kernel support before the hardware comes out, but full feature support is usually shipped shortly after hardware release. I suppose it's to avoid leaking specs before release?
    But anyway if you want good support for new hardware, much better to run some sort of rolling release, like most Arch based distros.
    Personally I run an Ubuntu LTS but with the latest mesa drivers via ppa, and am always at least a generation behind on the card. Much cheaper that way. Or at least it used to be...
    mey · 1791142704 · focus · HN ↗
    Does Ubuntu LTS really make sense as a non-workstation distro? Especially if you are using PPAs to enable functionality.
    Grombobulous · 1791142051 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, raytracing works and it’s performant. I don’t know about 90% of Windows 11 performance but I am too busy enjoying games to care about benchmarks.
    Just to put things into perspective, the 9070XT is the third or fourth fastest gaming graphics card money can buy depending on the game.
    The 5070Ti is $300 more than the 9070XT with similar performance, the 5080 could give you a good boost but costs even more, then you’ve got the 5090 which is a completely insane and unrealistically expensive purchase.
    The 5070ti used to be more closely priced against the 9070XT but the RAM crisis is driving Nvidia card costs up faster than AMD due to the difference in RAM type.
    When you think about it in that context I have to ask if it even matters that the raytracing on this card in Linux is competitive when the Nvidia side gives you a lower tier card for the same dollar anyway.
    Nvidia typically has more of a performance penalty in Linux than AMD as well, so that narrows the gap further.
    This idea that it must have wonderfully perfect raytracing performance has to be put in this perspective. The reality is that even if raytracing is half as fast in Linux as it is in Windows you’re still raytracing much faster than the median gamer on the market. A game that runs poorly on a 9070XT doesn’t exist.
    There are also still in 2026 very few games that extensively leverage raytracing and path tracing since the PlayStation and Xbox game consoles are limited in that regard. It makes very little sense for most game developers to make their games only come out looking nice with path tracing cranked up.
    javier2 · 1791120843 · focus · HN ↗
    I bought a 9070 xt shortly after launch and it was already fine, but I am on arch so had easy access to latest kernel.
    Grombobulous · 1791141435 · focus · HN ↗
    I would say my 9070XT works better in Linux than it does in Windows.
    I actually switched off Windows in a last-ditch attempt to get Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to stop crashing. To my surprise, it worked.
    Never going back to Windows.
    LaurensBER · 1791151749 · focus · HN ↗
    I can't launch Doom 2016, Brothers or Darksiders 2 on Windows. The screen blanks, if I unplug the HDMI cable and plug it in again I do sometimes get a signal. Ofcourse it works flawless under Linux.
    Who would've thought that in 2026 gaming under Linux is actually the better option. Pretty awesome to see it work so well!
    Grombobulous · 1791152152 · focus · HN ↗
    My sentiments exactly, and now with the popularity of the steam deck and other Linux handhelds, every sort of new utility related to gaming seems to have first-class Linux support.
    About the only issue you could possibly have is anti-cheat and even that has a fair amount of Linux support.

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