Mesa contains the user-space drivers including, for your hardware, radeonsi (which does OpenGL) and radv (which does Vulkan). These provide the application interfaces; they talk to one of the driver modules in the kernel – for your hardware, that's amdgpu. There is no version 17.2 of Linux and won't be for many years yet. Do you mean 4.17.2? Answer from __soddit on reddit.com
🌐
Reddit
reddit.com › r/linuxquestions › whats the difference between mesa, radeon si, and amdgpu opensource drivers?
r/linuxquestions on Reddit: Whats the difference between Mesa, Radeon SI, and AMDGPU opensource drivers?
June 18, 2018 -

What's up Linux community? I was wondering what the difference is between the 3 major opensource drivers I have read about since moving over to Linux. I'm relatively new to Linux, but I understand quite a bit about it and am not afraid to use the console. I've successfully updated my Kernel, downloaded Mesa 18.1.1, and so on, but I was wondering if I need the other two drivers as well as Mesa? I'm running an RX 580, i7-4790, 8gbs (2x4), Ubuntu 18.04, Kernel 17.2, and as I mentioned before Mesa 18.1.1 opensource drivers. I would love to find out more about how Linux works, starting with its drivers. I hope you guys can help explain it :-)

🌐
Phoronix
phoronix.com › review › linux-619-amdgpu-radeon
Linux 6.19's Significant ~30% Performance Boost For Old AMD Radeon GPUs - Phoronix
December 22, 2025 - AMDGPU has better performance than the classic Radeon driver, RADV Vulkan driver support is only implemented for the AMDGPU kernel driver (thus now working Vulkan out-of-the-box for these old AMD GPUs), and just all-around a better move now that these old AMD graphics processors have feature parity.
Discussions

Switching from radeon to amdgpu
I am getting less than 1fps in games with this and wanted to switch it but I have no idea how. It appears that I have the amdgpu installed I just require some pointers to get it to use amdgpu please. I have tried appending radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1 to the kargs bu... More on discussion.fedoraproject.org
🌐 discussion.fedoraproject.org
15
0
September 27, 2023
Using amdgpu instead of radeon kernel driver
Further details about my issue ... PRO [Radeon R5 M230 / R7 M260DX / Radeon 520 Mobile] (rev c3) ... Kernel driver in use: radeon Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu One suggestion I receive...... More on discussion.fedoraproject.org
🌐 discussion.fedoraproject.org
0
1
December 31, 2020
What is the Difference Between AMDGPU and radeonsi?
radeonsi provides OpenGL for AMDGPU. Radeonsi is part of Mesa. AMDGPU is a video driver. [EDIT] Shamelessly stolen from https://forum.manjaro.org/t/what-is-radeonsi/24303/6 It's a mess for sure: https://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/2 FGLRX aka Catalyst: AMD's proprietary driver for older cards not supported by AMDGPU (Pro) radeon: Open source driver for all AMD cards older than the Radeon HD 7000 radeonhd: Open source driver for X1300 cards up to the HD5000 series (is this still used/developed?) amdgpu: Open source driver for newer AMD cards It gets messier; Those above are the 2D drivers, the 3D drivers are named, in chronological order: radeon, r200, r300g, r600g aaaaand (drumfill) radeonsi! So my next guess is, that a new AMD gfxcard would use the AMDGPU as 2D drivers and RadeonSI for 3D if the user opts for using open source drivers. Whereas the proprietary drivers would also be AMDGPU for 2D, but AMDGPU-Pro for 3D. More on reddit.com
🌐 r/linuxquestions
3
3
July 2, 2017
Should i install the AMDGPU-Pro or open source driver? or should i stay on the video-linux driver?
I’ve installed Manjaro on my new system, I have an AMD Radeon RX 6750XT. I used the boot option with proprietary drivers option. But open source video-linux drivers were installed. This is isn’t a problem, but I would like to know which drivers offer better performance. More on forum.manjaro.org
🌐 forum.manjaro.org
1
0
February 10, 2023
Top answer
1 of 3
12

The new way of doing this does not involve blacklisting any modules. You only have to send two parameters to the kernel:

For Caribbean Islands GPUs

radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1

For Sea Islands GPUs

radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1

I personally like to add it as default, so I edit /etc/default/grub, and then I add the kernel parameters to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, like this:

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1 radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

Remember to run update-grub and reboot the system so the changes take effect.

I can confirm this works for a 390x running Ubuntu since 17.10. Also tried 18.04, 18.10, 19.04, 19.10, 20.04 since I keep using it as they get released. (I believe you can also do the same on 17.04)

Alternatively, if you want to enable the new Dynamic Power Management and Display Code experimental support, you need to also add the following lines

amdgpu.dc=1
amdgpu.dpm=1

For more information regarding DC code check this link: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMDGPU#AMD_DC

From my personal experience with a 390x card, DC code was unstable and I had to disable it to get an stable kernel. I haven't retried to enable it in the last couple of months so I don't know if this bug in DC was fixed.

2 of 3
1

Blacklisting it did the trick. I'm now running AMDGPU, at least until pro becomes available. I'll list the steps as the answer in case anyone else comes looking for answers.

Blacklisting built in kernel modules is done at startup, so grub does the work. Edit

/ect/default/grub

with the editor of your choice and add

modprobe.blacklist=radeon

in to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT right next to anything that might already be there, such as quiet splash. Then, save the changes and update grub.

sudo update-grub2

Reboot and you should be using AMDGPU instead of radeon. I should stress making sure your card is compatible, else blacklisting your gfx module is likely to cause problems.

🌐
YouTube
youtube.com › linuxmint guy
AMDgpu vs. Radeon drivers, logical fix for Vulkan drivers! READ IMPORTANT section below! - YouTube
IMPORTANT: Before trying this fix, it would be recommended to have on hand a Linux Mint USB drive in case this tanks your system. If your system does not hav...
Published   June 6, 2024
Views   557
Mesa contains the user-space drivers including, for your hardware, radeonsi (which does OpenGL) and radv (which does Vulkan). These provide the application interfaces; they talk to one of the driver modules in the kernel – for your hardware, that's amdgpu. There is no version 17.2 of Linux and won't be for many years yet. Do you mean 4.17.2? Answer from __soddit on reddit.com
🌐
Gentoo Wiki
wiki.gentoo.org › wiki › AMDGPU
AMDGPU - Gentoo wiki
AMDGPU with Display Core was first implemented for VEGA10 (GCN5.0) and RAVEN (with DCN 1.0) GPUs/APUs. Kernels before version 4.17 have (experimental) DC support for older cards (GCN1.1 and newer) via command line option amdgpu.dc=1, which may work better than the older radeon kernel module.
🌐
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › AMDgpu_(Linux_kernel_module)
AMDgpu (Linux kernel module) - Wikipedia
March 28, 2026 - It was announced in 2014 as the successor to the previous radeon device driver as part of AMD's new "unified" driver strategy, and was released on April 20, 2015. It takes the form of an in-tree kernel module. As of 2022, AMD Kernel Fusion Driver (KFD) is now integrated in this one kernel module. AMD KFD development at AMD is part of ROCm, under the ROCk project. AMDgpu ...
Find elsewhere
🌐
Fedora Discussion
discussion.fedoraproject.org › ask fedora
Switching from radeon to amdgpu - Fedora Discussion
September 27, 2023 - Hi there, I am new to linux and Fedora Kinoite. I have installed an old r9 290 that seems to be covered by the default amd drivers that come with this spin but it seems to be using the radeon driver instead of amdgpu. I am getting less than 1fps in games with this and wanted to switch it but I have…
🌐
Fedora Discussion
discussion.fedoraproject.org › ask fedora
Using amdgpu instead of radeon kernel driver - Fedora Discussion
December 31, 2020 - Further details about my issue ... PRO [Radeon R5 M230 / R7 M260DX / Radeon 520 Mobile] (rev c3) ... Kernel driver in use: radeon Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu One suggestion I receive......
🌐
Gentoo Wiki
wiki.gentoo.org › wiki › AMDGPU-PRO
AMDGPU-PRO - Gentoo wiki
July 18, 2024 - AMDGPU-PRO is the next generation closed source graphics component that operates on top of the open source AMDGPU drivers for newer AMD/ATI Radeon graphics cards.
🌐
Linux Mint Forums
forums.linuxmint.com › board index › main edition support › hardware support › graphics cards & monitors
Radeon driver vs Amdgpu driver - Linux Mint Forums
Booting in recovery mode adds the nomodeset kernel parameter which prevents the graphics driver from loading. Hopefully you can get into the system to remove the parameters. The information you posted shows that GPU is GCN-2 and those are normally the parameters used to switch from radeon to amdgpu.
🌐
Manjaro Linux
forum.manjaro.org › support › graphics & display
Should i install the AMDGPU-Pro or open source driver? or should i stay on the video-linux driver? - Graphics & Display - Manjaro Linux Forum
February 10, 2023 - I’ve installed Manjaro on my new system, I have an AMD Radeon RX 6750XT. I used the boot option with proprietary drivers option. But open source video-linux drivers were installed. This is isn’t a problem, but I would li…
🌐
ArchWiki
wiki.archlinux.org › title › AMDGPU
AMDGPU - ArchWiki
1 month ago - Officially supported kernels enable AMDGPU support for cards of the Southern Islands (GCN 1, released in 2012) and Sea Islands (GCN 2, released in 2013). The amdgpu kernel driver needs to be loaded before the radeon one. You can check which kernel driver is loaded by running lspci -k.
🌐
Fedora Discussion
discussion.fedoraproject.org › ask fedora
On old AMD GPU support. Radeon vs AMDgpu - Fedora Discussion
March 21, 2026 - I made this page with the sole intent to clarify names and their definitions. It’s hard to learn things when there isn’t even a monolithic, short summary of what one has to learn.[1] I also made this page to better understand and deal with the problems of a PC of mine with GCN 3 graphics (which I often can’t work on for personal health reasons).[2] So, MESA drivers and AMD GPUs support: Long AMD GPUs’ family story short: There was Terascale architectures up to 2012 circa, then 2012-2019 ...
🌐
Casey Primozic
cprimozic.net › notes › posts › amdgpu_top-a-modern-radeontop-alternative
`amdgpu_top`: A Modern `radeontop` Alternative :: Casey Primozic's Notes
August 23, 2023 - I think that radeontop is slightly more granular with the performance counters, but I honestly have no idea what half of those counters even track so having a bit of a coarser view is actually beneficial to me. Another big upgrade that amdgpu_top provides is a fully-fledged GUI application ...