Linux 6.19's Significant ~30% Performance Boost For Old AMD Radeon GPUs

Phoronix Dec 22, 2025

For those still using old AMD GCN 1.0 "Southern Islands" or GCN 1.1 "Sea Islands" graphics cards, the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel is a wonderful holiday gift. With Linux 6.19, the GCN 1.0/1.1 GPUs are now defaulting to the modern AMDGPU kernel driver in place of the legacy "Radeon" DRM driver that has been the default for GCN 1.1/1.0 and other ATI/AMD graphics processors of the past 2+ decades. In this article is a look at the performance benefit of now AMDGPU being the default as well as now enabling RADV Vulkan support out-of-the-box.

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