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?
    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...

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