Radeon HD (not RX) 7000 getting updates thanks to a Valve developer

AMD hasn’t updated its GCN-era drivers for a long time, but it doesn’t mean the architecture only belongs in a museum.

Some gamers already feel left behind when they see how the Radeon RX 7000 series lacks features found in the RX 9000 lineup, such as no RDNA4 support. Yet, in contrast, we are now witnessing updates for hardware far older, the Radeon HD 7000 series (yes HD nor RX), released back in early 2012. These GPUs are based on AMD’s first GCN architecture, and despite being more than a decade old, they are still receiving patches, thanks to one developer’s dedication.

Thirteen years after launch, a Linux graphics engineer working with Valve continues to refine support for these GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 cards. Normally, such hardware is stuck on the aging “Radeon” Linux kernel driver, while newer models rely on the more modern AMDGPU driver.

Source: Freeddesktop

Valve contractor Timur has been leading the effort to push GCN 1.0 and 1.1 GPUs closer to AMDGPU parity. His patches address display flickering at 4K 60Hz (good luck running GCN1.0 at 4K by the way), stability issues when enabling ASPM on newer platforms, and adjustments to display clock dividers for improved reliability. These udates are already being prepared for Linux 6.18, with more work now under review.

Source: AMD

It is rare to see this level of effort for such old hardware. Most users moved on long ago, and even AMD itself stopped providing major driver updates for GCN 1.0 years back. For anyone who still runs a Radeon HD 7000 card, or just follows Linux graphics development, it is both surprising and fun to see attention given to hardware that would otherwise be collecting dust.

Source: Phoronix