AMDGPU 5.5.1 + Mesa 23.2 possible?

[crlmahlberg]

Hello fellow Radeon enthusiasts, do you know of a way to change the Mesa version that comes with AMD's AMDGPU driver, or if that is even possible? I have a Radeon RX 7900 XTX card that I use as an eGPU for a Dell XPS 13 laptop running Ubuntu 23.04 with kernel version 6.3. I originally only had the graphics drivers from Oibaf's PPA installed, which gave me Mesa 23.2.0-devel from Git. However, performance was somewhat slow and unstable with my setup, for reasons I ignore. Therefore I installed AMD's AMDGPU packages through amdgpu-install, version 5.5.1, and the difference is breathtaking. Smooth playing of very recent games with "Ultra" graphics settings. I notice, though, that the OpenGL core profile version string in glxinfo is Mesa 23.1.0-devel, not Mesa 23.2.0-devel (git-a6a687b 2023-06-14 jammy-oibaf-ppa). So far nothing astounding, since the AMDGPU installer installs its own libraries. My question is this: do you know of a way to use AMD's official AMDGPU driver and Oibaf's latest Git version of Mesa hand in hand, or rather to have AMDGPU use Oibaf's Mesa version, by removing some packages and installing others, changing configuration files, etc.? Thank you for your advice.

[crlmahlberg]

A little update: I think I see a little bit more clearly now. Oibaf's PPA really seems to have no bearing on the OpenGL core profile version as reported by glxinfo, as far as I can tell. The Mesa version remains the same. However, it does make a difference when it comes to Vulkan. glxinfo is mostly about OpenGL, if I understand correctly. vulkaninfo, before installing the Oibaf PPA, printed out the driverInfo of my eGPU which was Mesa 23.0.4-0ubuntu1~23.04.1. Now, after installing the PPA, that line says Mesa 23.3~git2307240600.06db9b~oibaf~l (git-06db9bd 2023-07-24 lunar-oibaf-ppa). So, AMDGPU 5.X.X and Mesa 23.X from Git are possible, but when using Vulkan, not when using OpenGL it would seem. Do not hesitate to correct my ignorance on many of these things!