AMD posts Linux kernel patches for Navi 14 GPUs, Navi 10 will see only OpenGL benchmarks on launch day

While RDNA-based Navi 10 GPUs such as the Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT are all set for an official launch on July 7, we do know that more Navi GPUs are in the offing suited for different price tiers. We've been hearing about Navi 12, Navi 14, and Navi 21 along with their Lite variants for quite some time and now, AMD seems to have posted Linux kernel driver patches for Navi 14 and Mesa updates for Navi 10. 

Phoronix reports that the Navi 14 patch has about 1,400 lines of code. The AMDGPU bits have been posted while the Mesa updates are still pending. Code for Navi 10 has also been posted and merged into the Mesa graphics library version 19.2, which should be part of upcoming distros such as Ubuntu 19.10 and Fedora 31. Navi 10 driver code will be a part of Linux kernel 5.3 and AMD is looking to incorporate Navi 14 support as well into this kernel. However, Vulkan support via RADV is yet to arrive for Navi as AMD apparently hasn't seeded Navi hardware to RADV devs. Therefore, we can expect to see OpenGL benchmarks on Linux for the Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT on launch day while compute and Vulkan results might take some time to be available.

From what we gather so far, Navi 14 is being targeted at the lower end of the GPU spectrum to compete with the likes of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 with Navi 12 expected to take on the GTX 1660. A proper RTX 2080/2080 Ti competitor can only be expected with Navi 21, which is likely to be at least a year away.