this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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What does that have to do with AMD's driver support? AMD's Linux Vulkan driver (AMDVLK) was so late and bad that Red Hat and Valve had to make their own (RADV), which is the default in Fedora and SteamOS. AMD's first party drivers are still garbage.
FYI, you can run RADV in Windows using an experimental patch: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/29945
As I mentioned in my comment you replied to, I use Linux, and not Windows, so can't speak (today) towards AMD's Windows drivers.
For me, I let Linux worry about the drivers, so I don't have to.
Best decision I've ever made, PC build wise. So nice to get away from NVidia and not worry about graphics drivers.
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You're missing my point. AMD's official Linux drivers are ALSO garbage. Try it. Go install AMDVLK and check how well games work. You're almost certainly using RADV, which was not developed by AMD.
I'm using whichever one Proton/Steam uses. I'm assuming its AMDVLK because its the 'official' one. I think I remember RADV being switched away from in Proton a year or two ago, but don't hold me to that. I checked my enviromental variable "AMD_VULKAN_ICD" but didn't see it set to anything.
Whichever one I'm using, I get 120fps on my 3D games (playing No Man's Sky and/or Baldur's Gate 3 on the second monitor while typing) running them through Steam/Proton without a hiccup. Never a problem.
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The default driver used by Fedora is RADV. Steam/Proton does not choose your Vulkan driver. That's why your games run well - you aren't using the one made by AMD.
Alright. I remembered them switched around, but there was a migration a year or two ago from one to another, default wise.
Help me with >THIS< then?
This suggests that both (most/all??) are bundled, and you could even run one program in one driver and another program with the other driver.
This was mentioned in that post/thread as well ...
Its also mentioned that environmental variables can be set at runtime to switch on the fly (at program startup) which is used. I just don't know if Proton does any of that for you under the covers at startup or if you have to manually add the parameters to the properties for the Steam game to force it to use another one.
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I don't think AMDVLK is even installed by default with Fedora. It can definitely be installed, but there's not much reason to as it's a really bad Vulkan driver.
From that link I sent you it seems like it has to, because it's the low-level driver, and then RADV is a user space one that calls into it.
That's basically what I'm asking you about, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying it's an either or, but that other comment that I linked you states that they're both needed, one is system level, and the other is user space level.
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No, AMDVLK is also a user space driver. You're confusing it with AMDGPU, which is a kernel module.
Ah, ok. Thanks.