Article Valve engineer who keeps decade-old Radeon GPUs alive on Linux, now pushes for AMDGPU to become the default driver

[AnitaPeterson]

Aside from cheering this guy for doing God's work for the open-source community - and maybe spearheading a welcome change in the distribution of software drivers - I must say "Damn, that's impressive hardware!"

I am not a fan of these older AMD GPU generations, but they did pack a lot of memory, despite being energy hogs.

"The engineer notes that a Hawaii card such as the R9 390X can still run Baldur’s Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077 with a reasonable experience for its age" O_O

https://videocardz.com/newz/valve-engineer-who-keeps-decade-old-radeon-gpus-alive-on-linux-now-pushes-for-amdgpu-to-become-the-default-driver

 

[Mopetar]

A 390X is basically on par with an RX 480 with the latter having fewer cores, but a higher clock. Both have the same 8 GB of memory which can still allow most games to run at low or minimum settings.

I tried out BG3 when it was in early release on a 480 and it was playable, albeit not the best experience, but still playable. Cyberpunk might not be able to hit 60 FPS even at lowest settings so I'm not sure how good the experience would be there.

For someone who doesn't game much it might be okay, but at a certain point the extra costs from the power draw compared to other cards means that someone gaming a few hours a day in a country where electricity is expensive would pay for a replacement card that offers better performance in only a few years worth of use.

Still credit where credit is due for keeping older hardware relevant considering how difficult it can be to get a GPU for a reasonable price in some places.