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 (edit: this value was observed on 6.13.6, on 6.14rc6 I’m actually getting as low as 25W) which is far off the <10W that are possible according to Windows reviews but already a lot better than the previous generation. 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 the info!
I also managed to get a 9070 XT for MSRP on launch day by standing in line at Microcenter, but I haven’t installed it yet because I stupidly picked the wrong one (Gigabyte Gaming OC – it’s nice that it has higher boost clocks/a 3rd power connector/longer warranty, but it’s too thick to fit in my case and I would’ve been happier with 3xDisplayPorts) and I’m, probably naively, hoping for an opportunity to exchange it for a PowerColor Reaper.
Which make/model card did you get, BTW? With no reference design, it’s possible that different cards might have different power draw etc. (even idle, let alone boost). For example, I saw this Youtube video talking about how the PowerColor Red Devil version has a dual bios selector switch that doesn’t seem to do anything and doesn’t overclock properly.
I got a Sapphire Pure, wasn’t quite MSRP but with 799€ including 19% VAT still better than I expected in the months leading up to the launch - and it’s just a beauty…
A friend is running a Red Devil on Linux and they have the same idle power draw so I assume it’s just some kinks in the initial drivers but it’s already looking pretty good in that regard, similar to my previous card (Vega 64). The video I saw, and yeah mine is behaving similarly, undervolting drastically increases clocks though stability testing on Linux is not fun so I haven’t looked how far I could push it yet, but really excited for the undervolting potential. I’ve seen it’s possible to get near stock performance with as low as 240W.
Idle power is determined by your display setup. Is your friend a comparable arrangement to yours? Do you run a couple high res high refresh rate displays?
I’m a little surprised you’re reaching the same idle draw as vega10 given its use of HBM2. Also worth noting that everything prior to RDNA 3 showed TGP instead of TBP. This was particularly annoying as it didn’t account for other board power losses (like VRM), and didn’t give monitoring software an accurate read :/
Shout-out to the “only upgrade the video card after seven years” gang (my old card is a Vega 56).