AMD Polaris & Vega GPUs Still Thriving on Vulkan with RADV Optimizations Despite AMDVLK's Discontinued Support

As AMD's official Vulkan driver AMDVLK for Linux phases out support for Polaris and Vega GPUs, the Linux gaming community can breathe easy thanks to third-party developers maintaining the open-source RADV Vulkan driver, which continues to roll out optimizations for these chips.

Per Phoronix reports, with the release of the AMDVLK 2023.Q4.1 driver, the exclusion of Polaris/Vega GPUs from its support list has sparked concerns among users, notably because the Radeon RX 500 series remains popular among Linux enthusiasts.

However, the community-driven RADV Vulkan driver provides a silver lining, staying committed to enhancing performance for AMD's older GPU series, with recent optimizations for Vega/GFX9 GPUs involving tweaked binning settings expected to boost performance, though the specific gains remain undisclosed.

While AMD appears to be shifting focus from legacy support on Linux, the company's outlook seems positive with ongoing efforts to introduce patches for the next-generation RDNA 4 GPUs and integrate new features into the platform.