AMD RDNA 4 GPUs to buck trend by getting near-perfect launch-day Linux support

Support for bleeding edge hardware has historically been very spotty on Linux, but — perhaps due to the peculiar launch — that doesn't seem to be the case for the upcoming AMD Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT GPUs. 

According to Phoronix, AMD's RADV open-source Vulkan driver for Linux has already been updated with support for the latest unreleased AMD RDNA 4 GPUs. The confirmation came from Valve's Linux graphic driver team lead, Samuel Ptoiset, who says that support for RDNA 4 at launch will be “good enough.”

"This initial support should be good enough but it's missing two features (cooperative matrix and video decode/encode) compared to GFX11 (RDNA3) because lack of time."

The confirmation comes with a caveat that Delta Colour Compression and Vulkan Video support are still missing, but actively being worked on, and Pitoiset noted that the final touches may be ready before the March RDNA 4 launch. 

"DCC is still under active development, but it might be possible to finish it during the RC period."

Even if those last two puzzle pieces aren't in place by the time the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT launch, the GPUs will likely be usable, which is more than can be said for bleeding-edge hardware most of the time. Post-launch development will likely centre around improving support and performance for more specific features, and ironing out any bugs that may have popped up. 

The new RADV open-source driver will ship as part of the Mesa 25.0 update, which is expected to land towards the end of February, just in time for the launch of the Radeon 9070 series cards. These updates will likely require quite a recent kernel version, with Phoronix expecting a minimum requirement being Linux 6.13 or 6.14.