Thread

1. 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.

         1. 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?

            1. 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.

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