AMD has discontinued its proprietary AMDVLK Vulkan driver for Linux, shifting focus entirely to the open-source RADV driver. New benchmarks reveal how the latest RADV stacks up against the final AMDVLK release, particularly in ray-tracing performance. Tests were conducted on recent Radeon graphics cards to mark the end of AMDVLK development.
In a significant move for Linux graphics support, AMD halted development of its proprietary AMDVLK driver in May 2025, opting instead to concentrate resources on the Mesa-based RADV driver. This decision aligns with long-standing preferences among Linux enthusiasts and gamers, who have favored the open-source RadeonSI and RADV combination for its reliability and performance gains in recent years.
The shift comes after years of AMD maintaining both proprietary and open-source options in its Radeon Software for Linux packages. Previously, AMDVLK held an edge in certain areas, notably Vulkan ray-tracing, but RADV has closed that gap substantially throughout 2025. To provide a conclusive comparison, benchmarks were run using the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT graphics cards—the last models supported by AMDVLK.
The testing setup featured the final AMDVLK 2025.Q2.1 release pitted against RADV from Mesa 26.0-devel, dated December 20, 2025. These were executed on a system powered by the Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor, running Ubuntu 25.10 with the Linux 6.18 kernel. A range of Vulkan graphics and compute workloads was evaluated to assess performance differences across these high-end GPUs.
This end-of-year evaluation underscores RADV's maturation as AMD's primary Vulkan solution for Linux, potentially benefiting workstation and gaming applications moving forward. While specific benchmark results highlight RADV's improvements, the discontinuation of AMDVLK signals a full embrace of open-source development in AMD's Linux ecosystem.
