RX 480 on its way, how should I prep for this?

[BrandonB]

Running 16.04.2 with kernel 4.8. Would prefer to keep it this way, but am willing to upgrade if absolutely necessary.

Just want to make sure I understand my options; if there's something I hadn't considered please let me know.

AMDGPU-Pro: can't use this because I've upgraded to kernel 4.8, correct?
AMDGPU: default/most-stable option, but also outdated/slow on 16.04.2?
AMDGPU via Padoka PPA: as modern as I can get without upgrading Ubuntu? This is the option I'm leaning towards, but that's assuming it's compatible with 4.8. Kernel version doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[mitch074]

I have a RX480 with Ubuntu 16.04. Actually, kernel 4.8 as provided by the repositories for 16.10 doesn't seem to work - personally I'm currently using the Ubuntu mainline kernel 4.9 (I'll try 4.10 soon, but it seems there's a performance regression with it), either Padoka stable, Padoka git or Oibaf (any one of those three will do the trick) but the most important part is the firmware! For that, the easiest way is to download the AMDGPU-PRO driver, unpack it, and manually install the firmware .deb package in it.

With that, everything works fine.

[BrandonB]

Thank you! Hopefully 4.8 as part of the HWE is just different enough to work for me. Current plan, then, is to 1) disable proprietary Nvidia driver and reboot, 2) shut down, install card, 3) download AMDGPU-PRO for firmware, and 4) install Padoka stable. Wish me luck, it's supposed to be delivered sometime today!

[BrandonB]

Running flawlessly, even without the manual firmware install. Performance I'm seeing should easily take me to the next LTS without having to worry about upgrading for a few more FPS. Thanks much!