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.
    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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