Legacy AMD GPUs receive 30% performance boost in Linux with new drivers — latest kernel update finally drops obsolete Radeon graphics driver after more than two decades

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Linux 6.19 breathes new life into AMD AMD GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 graphics cards.

AMD Radeon HD 7970
(Image credit: Getty Images)

The latest Linux 6.1.9 kernel has delivered a massive performance boost — not for the best graphics cards, but for AMD’s long-forgotten Southern Islands and Sea Islands GPUs, launched over 13 years ago. According to Phoronix, these vintage cards powered by AMD’s GCN (Graphics Core Next) 1.0 and GCN 1.1 architectures now enjoy up to 30% higher performance.

It’s easy to forget about GCN 1.0 and 1.1—while not ancient, they feel like relics from another era of PC gaming. GCN 1.0 powered the Radeon HD 7000 series, while GCN 1.1 appeared in the mostly OEM Radeon HD 8000 series, save for a handful of exceptions. For many, these cards defined a generation of unforgettable gaming moments.

Thanks to the AMDGPU driver’s native support for the Mesa RADV Vulkan driver, GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 graphics cards now deliver significantly higher performance. While this upgrade won’t magically enable these GPUs to play the latest AAA games, the long-overdue transition to a modern driver brings substantial improvements and features for legacy hardware.

Linux has long been a haven for aging hardware — especially AMD graphics cards. While some improvements may take years to arrive, the open-source community remains dedicated to breathing new life into even the oldest hardware. In fact, driver upgrades are still rolling out for AMD graphics cards released more than two decades ago.

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Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician

Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • CelicaGT
    Interesting. I have a Dell AIO with an HD 7K GPU in in that was recently sunsetted by the Win10 EoL. I've been meaning to throw Ubuntu at it as it ran fine in a live environment from USB. Ironically the GPU never ran under 10...I had to disable it and use the integrated Intel lump.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    The performance improvements were available before, but now they are by default as you now get audio over HDMI and hardware video compression/décompression.
    More interesting is that AMDGPU enables Vulkan support - including RT emulation on shaders.
    Think about it : a 13 years old RadeonHD 7950 running Indiana Jones...
    Reply
  • DS426
    Very fine red wine. ;)
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The article said:
    Linux has long been a haven for aging hardware — especially AMD graphics cards. While some improvements may take years to arrive, the open-source community remains dedicated to breathing new life into even the oldest hardware.
    As far as I understand, this was mainly about deprecating the legacy driver they had been using. That's why they wanted to transition them onto the newer one.

    mitch074 said:
    The performance improvements were available before, but now they are by default as you now get audio over HDMI and hardware video compression/décompression.
    These were the reasons why they didn't previously default to the new driver.

    mitch074 said:
    More interesting is that AMDGPU enables Vulkan support - including RT emulation on shaders.
    That is pretty neat! Almost makes me feel like a tool for buying a card with hardware RT support. Almost.
    Reply
  • Shiznizzle
    I wonder if its worth digging out the 6850?

    Geez i dont even have a mobo for that and would need to get a used one.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Shiznizzle said:
    I wonder if its worth digging out the 6850?
    Heh, I have a HD 6850. I bought it based on price and reviews, but I think it's the last card I bought that featured a female character on the box art. It was a Sapphire brand, purchased in 2012.
    https://www.newegg.com/sapphire-tech-100315l-radeon-hd-6850-1gb-graphics-card-with-fan/p/N82E16814102908
    It was my first 1 TFLOPS+ card. I thought it was amusing and somewhat incongruous how such a high-performance computing device was marketed!

    It has actually held up better than my HD 7870, which was XFX brand and seemed to have imbalanced fans. That thing made noise like a law mower, when you ran stuff like Furmark on it.

    Shiznizzle said:
    Geez i dont even have a mobo for that and would need to get a used one.
    It's just a PCIe 2.0 card. Should work in any board with a x16 slot, I think? They never made an AGP version of the HD 6850, AFAIK.

    Note that its outputs all seem limited to roughly 1440p.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    The Radeon driver isn't deprecated - it's still the only driver available for Terascale and older GPUs. AMDGPU allows for features that are not supported at all on those older cards, but are on GCN.
    Your HD6xxx card can't make use of AMDGPU : it's Terascale3 based. While there is investigations about porting it to AMDGPU, it is a considerable amount of work because the features required to efficiently make use of the driver's structure are either broken (requiring workarounds) or missing (requiring emulation).
    RT on GCN1 cards : I actually managed to run the Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (in potato mode) on a RadeonHD 7770 1 Gb. With RT enabled. It was a pixel soup (internal resolution was 320x180) and a slideshow, but it actually rendered. On a top range GCN1 card with 3 or 4 Gb of VRAM, it might have been somewhat playable in 400x300...
    Reply
  • bit_user
    mitch074 said:
    The Radeon driver isn't deprecated - it's still the only driver available for Terascale and older GPUs. AMDGPU allows for features that are not supported at all on those older cards, but are on GCN.
    Okay, perhaps I was off by one driver. I think it was a previous patch that enabled VGA out on some even older card that was done so they could advance it to a newer driver and deprecate the one it had been using.

    mitch074 said:
    Your HD6xxx card can't make use of AMDGPU : it's Terascale3 based.
    It's VLIW5. I'm not sure which Terrascale that makes it, but the HD 69xx cards were VLIW4 and the last actual pre-GCN generation.

    mitch074 said:
    RT on GCN1 cards : I actually managed to run the Black Myth: Wukong benchmarking tool (in potato mode) on a RadeonHD 7770 1 Gb. With RT enabled. It was a pixel soup (internal resolution was 320x180) and a slideshow, but it actually rendered. On a top range GCN1 card with 3 or 4 Gb of VRAM, it might have been somewhat playable in 400x300...
    Again, cool that you could at least do it. It's enough for someone who just wants to kick the tires of the API, at least.

    Since I didn't need a RT card any sooner, I waited until AMD had a few generations of RT-enabled hardware under their belt, before I pulled the trigger on one. Got a RX 9070. Still haven't built the system that will use it, but sometime early next year (I do have all the components, thankfully).
    Reply