I’ve had the luck to snipe a 9070 XT at a sane price on launch day and I’ve been using it on Linux since it arrived yesterday so I wanted to share some words, mostly praise, about my experience.
I’m currently on CachyOS with linux-rc, mesa-git and linux-firmware-git and the experience has been amazing. The occasional driver bugs exist, especially when using raytracing, but overall it works really well.
I’ve ran a few benchmarks and in rasterizing I always get really close to the Windows performance, e.g. Cyberpunk 2077 Ultra (no RT) gets within 95% of Windows with similarly good frame times. Cyberpunk’s Raytracing can cause a crash and when it works is only about half of Windows performance with very fluctuating frame times, but other games like Control or GTA V Enhanced run very stable with max RT.
Another selling point of RDNA4 for me was the efficiency after I had returned my 7900XT card in part due to super high idle usage (80W+) on Linux. Here on launch day it’s using 40W with my setup which is far off the <10W that are possible according to Windows reviews but already a lot better than the previous generation.
(Update 4 days later: Getting as low as 4W driving two 1440p 144hz screens on latest drivers, even lower than Windows, nice stuff.)
In games the efficiency is incredible, the card basically runs any game released before 2021 at max settings in 1440p with a 144 FPS limit, only drawing 40-110W which I assume could be even further reduced if the base usage is optimized in the future.
Lastly, VR just worked out of the box which impressed me the most. I’ve tried Vertigo Remastered which runs through SteamVR+Proton and I’ve had zero issues, I put highest settings and played through a whole chapter with no stutters.
A huge thanks to the developers who worked towards making the launch experience as great as it is. I’ve been on Linux since 2017 and it feels less and less like being a second class citizen thanks to these efforts and especially Valve.
Thanks for your write-up!
About a month later, would you say the experience has gotten better? Did you encounter any issues?
I’m able to get a 9070 XT close to MSRP ($949 CAD + 12% tax), but I’ve seen conflicting reviews regarding current performance (or crashes) on Linux, so I’m not 100% sure this would be an ideal choice.
It’s gotten a lot more stable though some games still cause freezes while others don’t at all. I currently also have to run KDE with direct scanout disabled to get rid of some flicker and fullscreen related freezes, though I haven’t noticed a difference in how it feels compared to with it on.
One non Linux related issue I don’t see mentioned enough is that at least some cards suffer from pretty bad coil whine at normal fps values (~120 is the loudest on mine). I don’t hear it through my headphones but it’s something to be aware of if.
Performance has improved and it’s usually been around what I’d expect aside from ray-tracing, which is still a weak spot but close enough to be playable. ROCM (AMDs cuda equivalent) is working now and FSR4 recently got a breakthrough by vkd3d devs so it might be next.
I don’t regret my choice at all but I’m a tinkerer, if you want it to be 100% ready instead of 90% it’s probably better to wait a year.
That sounds encouraging, thanks!
I’m not concerned about coil while, since I’d also be playing with headphones on, but that’s noted.
I read about recent developments wrt FSR4, it sounds like that’s potentially close to functional indeed.
RT performance is a downside, however AFAIK that’s par for the course with AMD on Linux?
I’m somewhat torn between getting a 9070 XT now, or getting a cheaper, used GPU while the experience and/or drivers get ironed out. My only real worry is GPU prices going up as a result of US tariffs, so I’m leaning towards 9070 XT rather than the alternative .