AMDVLK 2023.Q4.1: Polaris & Vega Support Dropped, Counter-Strike 2 Tuning

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMDVLK 2023.Q4.1: Polaris & Vega Support Dropped, Counter-Strike 2 Tuning

AMDVLK 2023.Q4.1 was published today as AMD's first Radeon Vulkan open-source driver update since last month. There comes some new features and improvements with this version but they have also decided to drop Polaris (GFX8) and Vega (GFX9) graphics support...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDVLK-2023.Q4.1-Released

[geerge]

Shows how old I'm getting, to me Vega is still pretty new.

Oh no wait it still is pretty new. Retailers are still selling new desktop parts with vega iGPU's originally released in 2021.

https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/cpu-amd-desktop/2932/3380

[skeevy420]

RX 580 is what's in my drawer in case shit happens to my 6700 XT. We're talking 7 year old products at best, RX 400, and GPUs that were being recommended, the RX 580 and 590, all the way into 2022 because of their price to performance ratio with 1080p gaming and supply chain issues with newer GPUs so it's not like AMD should quit supporting them anytime soon.

Perhaps in 2-3 years, but now is too soon. Give broke gamers more time to get a 6600 XT or 7600 XT.

Granted, every single time since 2019 when I've tested my currently played game between AMDVLK and RADV, RADV has won. That's especially been true since ACO. IMHO, people playing games with "older" GPUs aren't really losing much. It's the sentiment that matters here.

Does anyone have a use-case or game where AMDVLK is the superior choice? For me it used to be Hitman 2 back in 2018 or 2019.

[drake23]

Is this driver actually relevant? I'm safe with my vega when I just use the mesa stack, right?

[mbriar]

They are quick to drop older GPU generations, but implementing VK_EXT_graphics_pipeline_library is taking them years.

[dragon321]

Is this driver actually relevant? I'm safe with my vega when I just use the mesa stack, right?

If you are using Mesa Vulkan drivers then you are safe, RADV (Mesa Vulkan driver for Radeon) still supports these cards and probably it's not going to get rid of them soon.

I can understand Polaris but it's probably too soon for Vega. They were selling CPUs with integrated Vega GPUs not very long time ago.

[X_m7]

It's not just those desktop APUs that still have Vega iGPUs, the mobile 7000 series chips also include rebranded 5000 series ones (specifically the 7x30 series, like the Ryzen 7 7730U, which is a rebranded 5825U, which is a slightly better 5800U) so they are absolutely still selling brand new Vega powered stuff.

[pieman]

before the fear mongering, remember, this is just for official amd drivers. not the normal open source, that everyone actually uses drivers. this will probably suck for windows users, but windows isn't linux. even stuff like the old hd 6000 terascale stuff still works on linux and somewhat gets support still from the open source community. unlike windows were its as dead as a rock.

[user1]

Granted, every single time since 2019 when I've tested my currently played game between AMDVLK and RADV, RADV has won. That's especially been true since ACO. IMHO, people playing games with "older" GPUs aren't really losing much. It's the sentiment that matters here.

Does anyone have a use-case or game where AMDVLK is the superior choice? For me it used to be Hitman 2 back in 2018 or 2019.

This was my experience as well. I remember before ACO existed, AMDVLK used to have some advantage in certain games, but later, after radv/ACO has matured, it simply obliterates AMDVLK in performance. I would say only the proprietary version of AMDVLK (from the AMDGPU-pro package) in some cases might still have some advantage in Windows Vulkan games (becauses it's essentially identical to the Windows Vulkan driver which uses AMD's proprietary compiler that is more performant than LLVM, which AMDVLK-open uses), but I don't know to what extent it's true these days.

On another note, it seems AMD has split its Windows driver package to 2 separate branches: The main one for RDNA 1.0 and newer and the second one for Polaris and Vega. It seems to me Polaris and Vega support is about to be dropped on Windows as well because the Polaris and Vega branch is stuck on 23.9.2, while the main branch has received a few updates since then.

[kiffmet]

AMD dropping official GCN4 and 5 support is a bummer, considering that devices using Vega iGPUs are still being sold. Anyhow, RADV is a full substitute for AMDVLK, so it's acceptable nevertheless.