AMDGPU Driver Ready To Be The Default For Aging Kaveri / Kabini / Mullins APUs
([Radeon] 3 Hours Ago
GCN 1.1 APUs On AMDGPU)
- Reference: 0001624664
- News link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-GCN-1.1-APUs-Default
- Source link:
With Linux 6.19 [1]AMD GCN 1.1 and GCN 1.1 dGPUs now default to the AMDGPU driver rather than the legacy Radeon Linux driver. For these Southern Islands and Sea Islands graphics cards it means much better performance, RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box, and other improved functionality in using this modern AMDGPU kernel graphics driver on Linux. One of the exceptions has been the GCN 1.1 APUs like Kaveri still defaulting to the older Radeon driver but a patch has been volleyed to make that change.
Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics team has been the one near single-handedly leading the effort to transition AMD GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 GPUs over to using AMDGPU by default rather than Radeon, after it's been an experimental non-default option for years. Timur has been working through gaps in the display code and other bits to ensure AMDGPU support on these original Graphics Core Next generations is at parity to the old Radeon driver.
Sent out today was a patch to finally change the default from Radeon to AMDGPU for Sea Islands (CIK) APUs. This is for the more than decade old Kaveri, Kabini, and Mullins APUs. Should you still be running one of these old APUs, [2]this patch changes the default.
Timur explained on the patch series:
"The amdgpu driver has been working well on CIK APUs for years. Features which were previously missing have been added recently, specifically DC support for analog connectors and DP bridge encoders. Now amdgpu is at feature parity with the old radeon driver on CIK APUs.
Enabling the amdgpu driver by default for CIK APUs has the following benefits:
- More stable OpenGL support through RadeonSI
- Vulkan support through RADV
- Improved performance
- Better display features through DC
Users who want to keep using the old driver can do so using: amdgpu.cik_support=0 radeon.cik_support=1"
Given the timing with the Linux v7.1 merge window being just around the corner, we'll see if this patch gets picked up still for the next kernel cycle given we are effectively at the DRM-Next feature cut-off or if it will end up being held until v7.2.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-619-amdgpu-radeon
[2] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/amd-gfx/2026-April/142261.html
Timur Kristóf of Valve's Linux graphics team has been the one near single-handedly leading the effort to transition AMD GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 GPUs over to using AMDGPU by default rather than Radeon, after it's been an experimental non-default option for years. Timur has been working through gaps in the display code and other bits to ensure AMDGPU support on these original Graphics Core Next generations is at parity to the old Radeon driver.
Sent out today was a patch to finally change the default from Radeon to AMDGPU for Sea Islands (CIK) APUs. This is for the more than decade old Kaveri, Kabini, and Mullins APUs. Should you still be running one of these old APUs, [2]this patch changes the default.
Timur explained on the patch series:
"The amdgpu driver has been working well on CIK APUs for years. Features which were previously missing have been added recently, specifically DC support for analog connectors and DP bridge encoders. Now amdgpu is at feature parity with the old radeon driver on CIK APUs.
Enabling the amdgpu driver by default for CIK APUs has the following benefits:
- More stable OpenGL support through RadeonSI
- Vulkan support through RADV
- Improved performance
- Better display features through DC
Users who want to keep using the old driver can do so using: amdgpu.cik_support=0 radeon.cik_support=1"
Given the timing with the Linux v7.1 merge window being just around the corner, we'll see if this patch gets picked up still for the next kernel cycle given we are effectively at the DRM-Next feature cut-off or if it will end up being held until v7.2.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/linux-619-amdgpu-radeon
[2] https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/amd-gfx/2026-April/142261.html