I recently upgraded to a 9070 XT after having a smooth experience on Linux with my previous 7800 XT. Despite my excitement, I’m running into some trouble—my non-Steam games like FFXIV and various Hoyo gacha titles are struggling to perform well, mainly due to the custom launchers and Wine prefixes they use. I’ve heard the RDNA 4 drivers are supposed to be in the kernel now, but could this still be impacting the performance of my GPU? It’s really the main thing holding me back from fully switching to Linux for gaming!
4 Answers
You definitely need the right combination of kernel and Mesa versions for things to run smoothly. Make sure you’re on at least kernel 6.14 and Mesa 25 or higher, and don’t forget about the firmware—the latest firmware might not be included in the default repositories of some distros yet. Upgrading those can potentially solve your issues.
Yeah, it pretty much comes down to using new hardware on a potentially incompatible system. The RDNA 4 drivers are in the kernel, but it can take time for all components to work seamlessly. Make sure that you have the latest kernel and Mesa installed. And, you might want a more flexible distro if you’re using something immutable like Bazzite; it can make updating tricky.
It sounds like you might need to check your drivers and software versions closely. The RDNA 4 support is indeed there, but if you’re not getting good performance, it could be a settings issue. You should define exactly what you mean by ‘chugging’—like, how many FPS are you getting? Also, double-check if you’re using the latest kernel and Mesa versions because that can make a huge difference. You can use tools like nvtop or amdgpu_top to see if the GPU is actually being utilized properly.
You’re probably dealing with issues from using bleeding edge hardware on Linux. New drivers sometimes take a while to catch up. I saw Wendell from Level1Techs get his setup working with a similar card—maybe check out his videos. Don’t forget that not all distros roll out the latest updates at the same pace; some may need a little extra patience while they catch up with new hardware.
