AMD GPU-PRO Beta Driver for Linux released with Vulkan support for Dota 2

Well I have a HD7970 in my tower at home, so hopefully they will support that card in the future (I mostly use my laptop (Nvidia) right now).

Well I have a HD7970 in my tower at home, so hopefully they will support that card in the future (I mostly use my laptop (Nvidia) right now).

I think it's likely such an old card will need to use the open source driver.

Well I have a HD7970 in my tower at home, so hopefully they will support that card in the future (I mostly use my laptop (Nvidia) right now).

This new closed driver needs the open amdgpu on the kernel side. For GCN 1.0, there is only experimental support not enabled by default in amdgpu. Even GCN 1.1 support is still experimental, while it's in a much better condition. So yes, there will be support eventually, at least it seems so. But you will have to wait for it patiently.


Last edited by tuxintuxedo on 22 May 2016 at 10:32 am UTC

Well I have a HD7970 in my tower at home, so hopefully they will support that card in the future (I mostly use my laptop (Nvidia) right now).

I think it's likely such an old card will need to use the open source driver.

It's GCN 1.0 so it's not yet supported, but should eventually be. The OSS amdgpu support for 1.0 was merged only a few days ago, anyway. Besides the driver is still in beta and they only provide packages for a single Ubuntu release. All that should get fixed in time for the official release. Hopefully sooner than later

Yeah will be good to see it in a stable state with wider support, exciting for AMD users.

Source code not provided, of course (and shame on AMD for that).

AMDGPU-PRO is closed source and will be. Don't understand what you meant by this.


Last edited by tuxintuxedo on 22 May 2016 at 4:55 pm UTC

The supported cards are in fact TESTED, AMD have a wording problem there.

The driver has been tested on 390 cards and 7700 HD cards already, so it works on MANY others. AMD just can't be fcked testing them.

Am not sure whats more annoying , Lack of 290(cgn 1.1) support or the lack of the standard .sh LINUX installer

*Loving* the speed increases with AMDGPU-Pro over fglrx (now that I've got it working properly. Games like Shadow of Mordor went from an unplayable average of ~20FPS at 1440 (medium detail) to a pleasant ~40FPS on my R9 285. Very happy with how things have worked out. I knew AMD was working on this which is why I went for a cheaper 285 over a 290, but it feels like it's taken forever to get here.

Well technically it's still Beta. I hate that when you go to Drivers+Support on the AMD website, it lists "Latest AMD Radeon Drivers" and there's no GNU/Linux option. You have to click "Other" - and even then the new Beta drivers aren't listed. I had to find them via a web search. Makes sense that they would be ashamed to add fglrx as a prominent download option (which haven't received an update all year), but these new AMDGPU-Pro drivers rock. AMD, you don't need to hide the GNU/Linux downloads behind "Other" now. Be proud of the new drivers! lol.

Still no Crossfire support though, and some games showed no performance increase at all, such as Dying Light which still runs at a horrible ~20FPS or less at 1440... my GTX660M on my old laptop gets better... but we're getting there! Been playing Shadow of Mordor all weekend (which I bought ages ago) because I can only just now run it properly. :)

Also, what pete910 says. The installer absolutely sucks. Better to just use gdebi *.deb, and then you don't need to worry about it installing unpackaged files such as the uninstall script, putting unnecessary stuff under /var/opt, adding a useless /etc/apt/sources.d/amdgpu.list file (which messes with apt-get/aptitude because it's pointing to an untrusted source), etc. I can't understand why they put it together that way.


Last edited by boltronics on 23 May 2016 at 8:12 am UTC

Very nice. I have the feeling my PC won't do it until christmas, starting to have issues (it's 5 years old). I hope they will provide this driver for more cards in future, but my guess is they'll just let the old drivers time out and implement the PRO for new cards.

Though, there actually are cards already supported which fit my budget, that's nice already. I'll have to check on benchmarks on the driver first.

Because of the gpl complient kernel module - what's actually the architecture of the new AMD-Driver? I couldn't find any reference to this...


Last edited by STiAT on 23 May 2016 at 7:06 am UTC

Am not sure whats more annoying , Lack of 290(cgn 1.1) support or the lack of the standard .sh LINUX installer

That's a non-issue. Very likely distros will handle this for us (the installer part) ;-). Depending on the distribution part in the license, hope AMD made a good one there.


Last edited by STiAT on 23 May 2016 at 7:08 am UTC

The worst part about the AMDGPU-Pro drivers by far is that it still relies on proprietary microcode. Most Nvidia cards have free software microcode (up until the last couple of generations at least). So when I go to run GNU Guix or Trisquel on whatever, the machine has so many problems that I sometimes can't even get picture on the screen - I have to fall back to Intel integrated graphics (which I normally disable due to my CPU overclock). But if I boot up my GTX660M laptop, these distros work 100%.

We're told the firmware is proprietary because of the DRM stuff that's basically only used on Windows, so I don't see why AMD can't just strip that stuff out of it and release the remaining non-DRM-related functionality as free software. Then it could be included in Linux Libre and all the 100% free distros, and it would be the fastest 100% free driver available as well.

Even if some actually used functionality had to be disabled, it would still be a better situation than we have now, and it would probably (depending on missing functionality) still be possible to recommend AMD cards for the best free software-compatible experience.

It's quite frustrating. I kinda feel like, if I can't have working free software distro-supported graphics on AMD, why not just buy Nvidia?


Last edited by boltronics on 23 May 2016 at 8:10 am UTC

It's quite frustrating. I kinda feel like, if I can't have working free software distro-supported graphics on AMD, why not just buy Nvidia?

Don't you think this statement sounds ridiculous knowing how Nvidia "supports" free and open drivers? Also, microcode stuff seems to be a trend lately, even with Intel.
I don't say this is good, but AMD is not the only one out there doing things this way. Even so, they made the largest turn in the last few years compared to others and who knows what they still have in plans.


Last edited by tuxintuxedo on 23 May 2016 at 8:33 am UTC

The worst part about the AMDGPU-Pro drivers by far is that it still relies on proprietary microcode. Most Nvidia cards have free software microcode (up until the last couple of generations at least).

All modern graphics cards require binary closed firmware.

It's quite frustrating. I kinda feel like, if I can't have working free software distro-supported graphics on AMD, why not just buy Nvidia?

Don't you think this statement sounds ridiculous knowing how Nvidia "supports" free and open drivers?

Yes I do, which is why I said it's so frustrating!

The worst part about the AMDGPU-Pro drivers by far is that it still relies on proprietary microcode. Most Nvidia cards have free software microcode (up until the last couple of generations at least).

All modern graphics cards require binary closed firmware.

Sad but true. At least you can get a relatively new Nvidia card easily enough. And Intel's firmware is built into the UEFI last I checked, so it doesn't need to be shipped with the kernel to work.

Looks like you can get an Nvidia GTX 750Ti 2Gb from MSY in Australia for AU$166, which IIRC doesn't require proprietary drivers.


Last edited by boltronics on 23 May 2016 at 8:56 am UTC

I'm happy to see amdgpu is prepared to ramble!

Is the nVidia driver already able to run Dota 2 Vulkan? Is a 560ti capable running Vulkan?

EDIT: Wait ... only GTX 6xx and newer as well as GCN 1.2? :/


Last edited by cRaZy-bisCuiT on 24 May 2016 at 9:46 am UTC

(was duplicate, forgot I made this one).


Last edited by TheRiddick on 24 May 2016 at 10:59 pm UTC

Has ANYONE managed to get Company of Heroes 2 working with this driver, I asked Feral and they said its not supported by this driver yet... I see someone got Shadow of Mordor working which I'm downloading now (41GB is a kick in the balls with my connection), if that works then I suppose CoH2 just has a problem....


Last edited by TheRiddick on 24 May 2016 at 10:58 pm UTC