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AMD fans, today is your day to shine. AMD have released what they are calling " AMD Radeon™ Software AMD GPU-PRO Beta Driver, quite the mouthful.

It's compatible with these chips currently:
AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 380X Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 Fury Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 380 Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 Nano Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 285 Graphics
AMD Radeon R9 M395X Graphics

It only officially supports Ubuntu 14.04.4 (64-bit version). I imagine that will change soon with the release of Ubuntu 16.04.

It's a full driver which supports these APIs:
- ​OpenGL 4.5 and GLX 1.4
- OpenCL 1.2
- Vulkan 1.0
- VDPAU

Find their release notes and all the official info here. There are a bunch of issues and limitations you should read up on before trying it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: AMD, Vulkan
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31 comments
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Natedawg Mar 18, 2016
Nice, now it makes even more sense why Ubuntu dropped the old AMD driver a few days ago in 16.04 :) I can't wait to see if it makes much difference, especially once games like the Talos Principal are fully optimized for Vulkan.
drmoth Mar 18, 2016
Congrats AMD! i was worried they were going to be too late...this looks promising
Pecisk Mar 18, 2016
So they backported it for 14.04 and now work with kernel for inclusion in mainline. Nice.
sr_ls_boy Mar 18, 2016
These R9 cards aren't cheap. At newegg, they start at $175.
WorMzy Mar 18, 2016
This seems to have taken a bit longer than hoped, but is good news nonetheless!
SXX Mar 18, 2016
These R9 cards aren't cheap. At newegg, they start at $175.
Kernel module inside driver package have "CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=y" option set so it's should work on cheaper GCN 1.1 hardware. Bridgman told many times they supporting it from very beginning in their out-of-tree module. Of course it's may not work that well since it's beta.

There is also going to be SI (GCN 1.0) support eventually, but that might take a while.
Pecisk Mar 18, 2016
This seems to have taken a bit longer than hoped, but is good news nonetheless!

Longer? They were in a middle of move just few weeks ago, and in fact they still are - mainstream kernel still needs to be sorted out. It's awesome they got time to release OFT version for restless crowd to test.
SXX Mar 18, 2016
So they backported it for 14.04 and now work with kernel for inclusion in mainline. Nice.
Keep in mind they only backported it to 14.04.4 which mean 4.2 kernel. It's likely wont work with older kernels.
GustyGhost Mar 18, 2016
These R9 cards aren't cheap. At newegg, they start at $175.

There's no shame in going for used. I've seen GCN 1.2 cards on eBay for $125.
ChloeWolfieGirl Mar 18, 2016
TIL Mines an AMD Radeon R7 250 2GB Idk how drivers usually go but does anyone know if AMD will add Vulkan support to this card?
SXX Mar 19, 2016
Guess they were waiting for amdgpu to be in an official kernel release.
Not really. Hybrid driver going to use out-of-tree kernel module that built with DKMS for quite some time. Many parts of AMDGPU nowhere near to get accepted into upstream, e.g DAL.

TIL Mines an AMD Radeon R7 250 2GB Idk how drivers usually go but does anyone know if AMD will add Vulkan support to this card?
It's SI (GCN 1.0) card so it's currently unsupported within AMDGPU. Bridgman has said they looking for solution to support these GPUs in hybrid stack and said ask him week later, but keep in mind it's might take many months before that support appear.
amonobeax Mar 19, 2016
Which game are in the horizon in terms of Vulkan? Dota 2 what else? Ashes of Singularity probably?

ll and all, it's so exciting to be a linux gamer right now!


Last edited by amonobeax on 19 March 2016 at 3:34 am UTC
drmoth Mar 19, 2016
Which game are in the horizon in terms of Vulkan? Dota 2 what else? Ashes of Singularity probably?

ll and all, it's so exciting to be a linux gamer right now!

The Talos Principle of course will have Vulkan support.

Banished is supposedly releasing on Linux with Vulkan support:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/46o7g8/any_news_about_the_banished_linux_port_the_devlog/


Last edited by drmoth on 19 March 2016 at 3:44 am UTC
adolson Mar 19, 2016
The Talos Principle of course already has Vulkan support (opt into the beta branch)
FTFY
ElectricPrism Mar 19, 2016
These R9 cards aren't cheap. At newegg, they start at $175.

Wut? My video card bill this year was $800 for 2 rigs nvidia. That was the cost of gaming on linux with good performance.

I was expecting something between 400-600 ironically.

If AMD becomes the technically superior choice in hardware and driver I'll sell both nVidia cards and opt for maybe some 390s or Fury's


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 19 March 2016 at 4:23 am UTC
Liam Dawe Mar 19, 2016
Which game are in the horizon in terms of Vulkan? Dota 2 what else? Ashes of Singularity probably?

ll and all, it's so exciting to be a linux gamer right now!

The Talos Principle of course will have Vulkan support.

Banished is supposedly releasing on Linux with Vulkan support:
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/46o7g8/any_news_about_the_banished_linux_port_the_devlog/

Did you read your own link properly? Banished is not doing Vulkan, it was a troll. Shining Rock is one guy, and his name isn't Jeff.
Sbrega82 Mar 19, 2016
R9 290x here a top end card form the previous gen....... I hope a compatibility will come soon
Armand Raynal Mar 19, 2016
R9 290x here a top end card form the previous gen....... I hope a compatibility will come soon
Here too. Keeping a windows partition to play XCOM 2 in ultra.
SXX Mar 19, 2016
R9 290x here a top end card form the previous gen....... I hope a compatibility will come soon
It's already compatible with GCN 1.1 which R9 290X belong to. It's just no listed on website since they didn't yet did any conformance testing on older GPUs.
Sbrega82 Mar 19, 2016
R9 290x here a top end card form the previous gen....... I hope a compatibility will come soon
It's already compatible with GCN 1.1 which R9 290X belong to. It's just no listed on website since they didn't yet did any conformance testing on older GPUs.

Good, I hope they include officially soon maybe with an rpm packaging :P
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