AMD has finally rolled out a new AMDVLK Vulkan driver for its Radeon GPU which includes several ray tracing optimizations and more.
AMD Finally Publishes Long-Awaited Q3 Update For Its Own Radeon Vulkan Drivers, MESA Vulkan Drivers Still at a Much Better Spot
AMD's approach with their AMDVLK drivers on Linux had put several consumers into doubt since Team Red has slowed down the pace of updates and new patches. The company has finally released its Q3 scheduled driver now that we are almost at the end. However, the new update has brought in "piled up" optimizations and bug fixes.
AMD has uploaded the AMDVLK 2023.Q3.2 version, which features several decisive changes for the platform. The new driver update brings "quadbuffer stereo", which enhances multitasking performance, which is vital, especially for developers on Linux. Moreover, AMD has brought in many changes, such as ray-tracing for Quake 2 and several other optimizations. You can view the changelog below (via Phoronix):
[New features and improvement]
- Update Khronos Vulkan Headers to 1.3.261
- Support Quadbuffer Stereo
- Performance tuning for Quake2 RTX RT
- Reduce RS64 vs F32 mode overhead
- Add a setting to allow changing PWS mode
- Reduce amdvlk binary size
- Optimize the clear to single shaders
- Support dynamic sample buffer info for Extended_dynamic_state3 extension[Issues fixed]
- Driver still reports HDR formats even when HDR mode is disabled
- CTS failure in dEQP-VK.pipeline.monolithic.executable_properties.graphics.vertex_stage*
- vkCreateRenderPass2 Crash
- Debug markers missing in RGD
While the changes are appreciable, it is essential to note that open-source MESA Vulkan drivers for AMD GPUs are in a much better state. The developers brought in support for complete ray tracing months ago, although the merge request is still pending. The open-source drivers witnessed a 3x increase in titles like Hitman 3. This disparity has made Linux users shift away from AMD's official drivers, which isn't surprising given that AMD has neglected this part.
Amounting most user share, AMD needs to step up its game, especially when updating its software utilities on the platform. While Team Red has begun decisive steps such as Zen5 and next-gen RDNA 4 enablement, it needs to work on improving an individual user's experience, which is only possible by focusing on existing elements. You can download the driver from GitHub here.
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