Radeon RX 6800 XT Seeing Some Slight Gains With Linux 5.11

While the Linux 5.11 merge window is only half-way through with prominent pull requests like the DRM / graphics driver updates already have been merged some of the testing has already begun at Phoronix of this new kernel. With the Radeon RX 6800 XT "RDNA 2" graphics continuing to mature, we are seeing slight uplift in some benchmarks when moving from Linux 5.10 stable to Linux 5.11 Git.

When running some quick Linux 5.10 vs. 5.11 Git tests with the RX 5700 XT and RX 6800 XT while running the same Mesa 21.0-devel build, in a few areas the Linux 5.11 performance is providing some measurable speed-ups.

Overall though the RX 6800 XT performance was largely flat with the exception of some workloads seeing some uplift. At least no performance regressions have been spotted yet. Prior generations of AMD Radeon graphics appear to be flat with the Linux 5.11 testing I have conducted so far.

The minimum frame-rate for some games have improved.


HITMAN 2 running with Steam Play + DXVK was providing some of the largest gains on Linux 5.11 for the Radeon RX 6800 XT.




The minimum frame-rate tended to be higher on Linux 5.11 for the RX 6800 XT over Linux 5.10 stable but not too much sway out of the average FPS.

While the performance isn't too different, at least there is new GPU hardware support and features coming with Linux 5.11 as well and no signs of any regressions yet.