Today, AMD are bringing out the big guns with the formal release of their next generation desktop GPUs with the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and the RX 6800 XT. Announced back in late October, these cards are AMD's first to come with hardware accelerated Ray Tracing support. Although for Linux, we're still waiting on The Khronos Group to formalise the cross-vendor Ray Tracing Vulkan extensions for that.
Here's a reminder of the specifications:
| RX 6900 XT | RX 6800 XT | RX 6800 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute Units | 80 | 72 | 60 |
| Process | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm | TSMC 7nm |
| Game clock (MHz) | 2,015 | 2,015 | 1,815 |
| Boost clock (MHz) | 2,250 | 2,250 | 2,105 |
| Infinity Cache (MB) | 128 | 128 | 128 |
| Memory | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 |
| TDP (Watt) | 300 | 300 | 250 |
| Price (USD) | $999 | $649 | $579 |
| Available | 08/12/2020 | 18/11/2020 | 18/11/2020 |
For running them on Linux, the driver situation isn't the best. AMD have put out the Radeon Software for Linux version 20.45, which adds support for the Radeon RX 6800 Series but that driver only officially supports Ubuntu 20.04, RHEL/CentOS 7.9 and RHEL/CentOS 8.2. For Mesa drivers, you're going to need Linux Kernel 5.9, Mesa 20.2 (or newer) and also LLVM 11.0 which means most normal distributions will be missing out unless you're prepared to do major manual upgrades. So, unless you really know what you're doing with everything, you will likely want to hold off.
If you do manage to find one because, as expected, most places are sold out and you get everything it needs setup - expect to see some incredible performance. We don't get sent any hardware from AMD, so we're going by what others have been cooking up. It seems Level1Linux on YouTube are very happy with it, and the Phoronix benchmarks show them doing well too. From a price point of view, the performance does seem pretty amazing considering how close it appears to be with the NVIDIA 3080 and if you prefer the open source side of things it doesn't get better than this.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: tuubiThese discussions tend to end up full of partisan hyperbole (often mostly based on hearsay), but in the end, both vendors are easy to live with these days for someone who just wants to play some games. No game requires the latest kernel or Wayland—so Nvidia's reluctance to play ball is almost irrelevant—but new kernels and Mesa packages are readily available on any mainstream distro for those who need them so us AMD/Mesa users are fine too.
That said, in my opinion and experience AMD currently has an edge on Linux even if you ignore the ethical and technical implications of Open Source vs proprietary. Personally I don't like to ignore these implications, so that's another reason I'm happier on AMD.
This sums up the discussion pretty nicely. And from my personal experience I agree with your opinion, I only experienced breakages on proprietary, and having acceleration in XWayland is a pretty strong argument for Intel AND AMD GPUs.
Quoting: slaapliedjeSo I really WANT to support AMD as I believe that the hardware should all have open source drivers. I just want it to be easier to do so without compromising convenience and stability by adding third party repos or compiling custom libraries.
Debian stable is great, I run it on some VServers, and they do amazing work for stability. But at a certain point, one has to admit that for supporting cutting edge hardware that just released yesterday on mainline packages, the model of releasing a new version in the year of the fox when the stars align in the ascendant of Virgo and three kings come to Bethlehem is maybe not the way to go. So On my gaming rig, I run Fedora 33 and it just works.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: slaapliedjeSo I really WANT to support AMD as I believe that the hardware should all have open source drivers. I just want it to be easier to do so without compromising convenience and stability by adding third party repos or compiling custom libraries.
But how is easier Nvidia? AMD is offering exactly the same options on release as Nvidia does right now (on you want to tell me that, for example, you can get Nvidia 455.45.01 on day one from an official repo on any distro?). If you want to get the latest driver, almost on every distro you will have to do some extra step.
Last edited by x_wing on 19 November 2020 at 1:06 pm UTC
0 Likes
i managed to get a 6800, wondering if i will eventually be able to get a custom xt later...
0 Likes
slaapliedje Nov 19, 2020
Quoting: x_wingI don't run the latest drivers, like ever. I grab what the distro gives me. https://packages.debian.org/sid/nvidia-driver Or I can even pull from experimental https://packages.debian.org/experimental/nvidia-driver which currently has 455.38. Tiny bit behind, but still supports the RTX 3xxx cards. So yeah, much easier than AMD.Quoting: slaapliedjeSo I really WANT to support AMD as I believe that the hardware should all have open source drivers. I just want it to be easier to do so without compromising convenience and stability by adding third party repos or compiling custom libraries.
But how is easier Nvidia? AMD is offering exactly the same options on release as Nvidia does right now (on you want to tell me that, for example, you can get Nvidia 455.45.01 on day one from an official repo on any distro?). If you want to get the latest driver, almost on every distro you will have to do some extra step.
Also did discovery that nvidia now has an official means of installing for RHEL/Cent and Fedora, so you don't even need rpmfusion anymore (well unless you want 32bit support, doesn't seem like they care about that, as they're more focused on the drivers being used for server side stuff, as you know that's how they make their Linux money.)
0 Likes
Quoting: slaapliedjeI don't run the latest drivers, like ever. I grab what the distro gives me. https://packages.debian.org/sid/nvidia-driver Or I can even pull from experimental https://packages.debian.org/experimental/nvidia-driver which currently has 455.38. Tiny bit behind, but still supports the RTX 3xxx cards. So yeah, much easier than AMD.
But if Your distro has the most recent proprietary packages of NVidia in their repo, but not the same for AMD, how does that mean the vendors are behaving differently?
Last edited by minfaer on 19 November 2020 at 4:27 pm UTC
0 Likes
Firmware for RDNA 2 cards was added to the repo: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/log/amdgpu
0 Likes
slaapliedje Nov 19, 2020
Quoting: minfaerI can only hazard a guess that the AMDGPU pro drivers are harder to package, or under a non debian friendly license.Quoting: slaapliedjeI don't run the latest drivers, like ever. I grab what the distro gives me. https://packages.debian.org/sid/nvidia-driver Or I can even pull from experimental https://packages.debian.org/experimental/nvidia-driver which currently has 455.38. Tiny bit behind, but still supports the RTX 3xxx cards. So yeah, much easier than AMD.
But if Your distro has the most recent proprietary packages of NVidia in their repo, but not the same for AMD, how does that mean the vendors are behaving differently?
0 Likes
Quoting: slaapliedjeI don't run the latest drivers, like ever. I grab what the distro gives me. https://packages.debian.org/sid/nvidia-driver Or I can even pull from experimental https://packages.debian.org/experimental/nvidia-driver which currently has 455.38. Tiny bit behind, but still supports the RTX 3xxx cards. So yeah, much easier than AMD.
It's not about running the latest driver now. This discussion is about having the drivers "easily available" on release date of the hardware. So, maybe you should check if 455.23.04 were available on September. Either way, someone already told you that for your distro you can already download the required kernel, mesa version and firmware and run a RX 6800 (if you can get one).
Quoting: slaapliedjeAlso did discovery that nvidia now has an official means of installing for RHEL/Cent and Fedora, so you don't even need rpmfusion anymore (well unless you want 32bit support, doesn't seem like they care about that, as they're more focused on the drivers being used for server side stuff, as you know that's how they make their Linux money.)
Just like AMD with their releases...
Quoting: slaapliedjeI can only hazard a guess that the AMDGPU pro drivers are harder to package, or under a non debian friendly license.
Well, AMD package release are deb and rpm files (with some deb package that may work out of the box in Debian). And repackaging is quite simple: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=amdgpu-pro-installer
I don't know, I really fail to see where you find a difficulty with AMD drivers :/
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: slaapliedjeAlso did discovery that nvidia now has an official means of installing for RHEL/Cent and Fedora, so you don't even need rpmfusion anymore (well unless you want 32bit support, doesn't seem like they care about that, as they're more focused on the drivers being used for server side stuff, as you know that's how they make their Linux money.)This is not true, Fedora allows adding Nvidia drivers on default installations using a separate repository which is actually managed by RPMfusion, which is not related to Nvidia, and that you need to enable manually.
As much as I understand that you had to mess with Mesa quite a bit in the past, here it seems AMD just did the best they can to add their new GPU to the open source stack as early as possible.
Yes, Debian stable is not a bleeding edge distro so you will either need to wait for a new release or to use testing, but that is something that you expect from a more "conservative" distro, and an issue not limited to GPUs.
Last edited by omer666 on 20 November 2020 at 5:59 am UTC
0 Likes
Quoting: iskaputtgood availability [...] 500 EurosNot going to happen if the lowest model comes at USD 580.-. Usually that directly translates to €580.-, so I doubt you'll see anything below 600 Euros, and much less five hundred, anytime soon. Add to that the bot resellers, and you're in for a long wait.
0 Likes
Quoting: ValckQuoting: iskaputtgood availability [...] 500 EurosNot going to happen if the lowest model comes at USD 580.-. Usually that directly translates to €580.-, so I doubt you'll see anything below 600 Euros, and much less five hundred, anytime soon. Add to that the bot resellers, and you're in for a long wait.
You are very likely right, sadly.
Will continue to use my Vega 56 which I bought for 400 and is serving me well. An upgrade would be nice for 4K, but no way in hell am I going to pay 50% more for my next card.
0 Likes
I've been using AMD video cards for a while now, and it doesn't seem like too much hassle to me. I am running an Ubuntu variation, and I use a Liquorix kernel repository and an up-to-date Mesa repository, and that works. If I had an RX6000 series card already, the firmware would make that more of a hassle, but I don't expect that to be the case much longer.
If you want to run Debian, I suggest that you don't run a video card newer than the version of Debian you wish to run. If you stick to that rule, AMD on Debian is pretty easy. You don't really have to do anything except enable non-free repositories and install the linux-firmware package, which you're probably going to have to do in any case. There are ways to run newer cards on Debian, but it is always a hassle to run anything newer than what came with Debian plus whatever happens to be in backports.
Just to be clear, I run Debian in a lot of places, just not on my main desktop to game. I use it on all my servers both at work and at home, and I use it for older or underpowered machines.
If you want to run Debian, I suggest that you don't run a video card newer than the version of Debian you wish to run. If you stick to that rule, AMD on Debian is pretty easy. You don't really have to do anything except enable non-free repositories and install the linux-firmware package, which you're probably going to have to do in any case. There are ways to run newer cards on Debian, but it is always a hassle to run anything newer than what came with Debian plus whatever happens to be in backports.
Just to be clear, I run Debian in a lot of places, just not on my main desktop to game. I use it on all my servers both at work and at home, and I use it for older or underpowered machines.
0 Likes
Updating amdgpu firmware from upstream on Debian is not hard. Seriously.
Here is an example how you can do it:
Last edited by Shmerl on 20 November 2020 at 8:36 pm UTC
Here is an example how you can do it:
#!/bin/bash
base_dir="$HOME/archive/debian"
firmware_dir="linux-firmware"
mkdir -p "$base_dir"
cd "$base_dir"
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git $firmware_dir
cd $firmware_dir
git pull --rebase --prune
sudo cp -v amdgpu/*.bin /usr/lib/firmware/amdgpu/
sudo chown root:root /usr/lib/firmware/amdgpu/*.bin
sudo update-initramfs -uLast edited by Shmerl on 20 November 2020 at 8:36 pm UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Avehicle7887 Nov 20, 2020
Quoting: ShmerlUpdating firmware from upstream is not hard. Seriously.
My Debian 9 dinosauric OS is ready
Kernel 5.9.9
Mesa 20.2.2
Firmware added
Bonus: Also have Mesa 20.3 configuration ready, rc2 working fine but I'll wait for the official release.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Avehicle7887My Debian 9 dinosauric OS is ready
Yeah, I'm now waiting for Sapphire Pulse RX 6800 XT to come out and actually be in stock. It might take some weeks or even months though.
0 Likes
They didn't announce lower end cards yet. But I'd guess next year.
Last edited by Shmerl on 20 November 2020 at 9:04 pm UTC
Last edited by Shmerl on 20 November 2020 at 9:04 pm UTC
0 Likes
Fedora's linux-firmware package with support for RX 6800 series is now stable.
0 Likes
Quoting: slaapliedjeYou almost need to be running a rolling release like Arch to be able to just pop the card in and have it go.Sounds like a plan to me. Rolling release is where it's at when you're a PC gamer. Or, you can wait, I guess, and watch not only Windows gamers enjoy their AMD cards sooner but also other Linux gamers. You don't have to go hardcore and compile every package like Gentoo or run the Arch installation gauntlet; you can get rolling right away with Manjaro or EndeavorOS boot-able, graphical installers.
My struggle is PS5 versus 6800/XT. My choice right now is the PS5 but, man PC games are crisper and faster than consoles when you don't have to fiddle around with troubleshooting and hope compatibility layers don't break.
0 Likes
Quoting: TobyGornowI would have loved to buy one Rx 6800 xt, money is ready, spammed all day long on my mobile at work, but in my country they were nowhere to be found. Only two resellers managed to put the cards online with no stock to be seen but with a huge premium, even on Amazon the products are a no show.While I wouldn't do what my friend did, he actually bought Intel instead because he didn't want to wait more than two weeks to get his hands on a new AMD CPU last year. Too bad.
So, I'm happy the support is better than usual but what's the damn point if you can't buy the f**king thing... So pissed off right now, they ruined the party for me.
It should be illegal to promote and advertise product that are not fully available. Looking at the Ps 5, Xbox series X, rtx 3xxx and now Rx 6xxx...
Edit : how could I forgot the ryzen 59xx series... MIA too.
0 Likes
Quoting: 14You're saying this like it's somehow a huge struggle, or a show of weakness maybe. :DQuoting: slaapliedjeYou almost need to be running a rolling release like Arch to be able to just pop the card in and have it go.Sounds like a plan to me. Rolling release is where it's at when you're a PC gamer. Or, you can wait, I guess, and watch not only Windows gamers enjoy their AMD cards sooner but also other Linux gamers.
I pretty much never buy hardware before it's been on the market for a few months, or games on day one. For GPUs, good reasons to wait are lower prices, more third party models with perhaps better cooling options, more mature drivers etc. And games, well I'm not really into multiplayer, and it really doesn't matter to me if a single player game is brand new. I guess I'm patient. Not that it matters: A game that's a year old (or ten) is just as good as it was at launch. Or most likely better, with whatever patches, new content etc. that have been released since. And obviously it's cheaper as well.
1 Likes, Who?
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me