AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series

Hello,

I got my hands on AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT from Sapphire and I will begin with the actual installation probably in the next 24 hours. I read reviews from Phoronix as to what is actually needed to have in order to enjoy my gaming experience with this new GPU from AMD.

  • Linux 5.9+
  • Mesa 20.2+
  • LLVM 11.0+

All these three requirements are easily available either via Kernel GUI in Manjaro KDE, or via pamac just a click or two away. However things seem to get tricky when trying to fulfill the last of requirement, and that is Sienna Cichlid linux-firmware update. I should say that I am mostly interested in amdgpu OpenSource driver as it seems to be the perfect blend of “easy to get going” and incredible performance.

When checking the available package “linux-firmware” via pamac, it seems to build from:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git

However, I am not sure that mere reinstalling of this package would give me these “Sienna Cichlid” updates that are necessary for decent support of my new GPU. In fact I am pretty sure mere reinstall won’t cut it.

The question is: What do I need to do at the moment on my trusty Manjaro KDE to make sure that I can fully enjoy my experience with Radeon RX 6800 XT? Like I said, most of the SW requirements seem to be easily done via pamac or Kernel utility straight from GUI. I am only seriously confused about this linux-firmware part which makes little sense to me as I never ever had to deal with it before and thus I do not know how to manage it properly. Can you please help me in this case?

Is Manjaro dev team going to focus on supporting the latest Radeon RX 6800 Series straight out-of-box? I understand that due to current (un)availability of these GPUs this may be of little to low priority to you, so I honestly ask you for kind assistance with setting up the necessary packages manually in the meantime before things start to work “automagically” as always with Manjaro :slight_smile: I hope you understand.

Sources for this post:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Sienna-Cichlid-Linux-Firmware
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/11/amd-radeon-rx-6800-and-the-rx-6800-xt-are-out-today

Thank you very much for your help in this case!

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/commit/?id=54c797a694d3830ef93f349ec25e1d96d4b88102

This commit from 9 hours ago has it.

While it wouldnt be in repo packages, or at least ot Stable branch at the moment, you can use linux-firmware-git from AUR to get it right away.

On how to use the AUR see the wiki introduction:
https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=Arch_User_Repository

1 Like

Impressive. Thank you for providing the solution in such short timeframe, I will test it right away tomorrow and eventually share the great success that awaits me :slight_smile: Jokes aside, I have little experience with setting up Radeon Vega 3 in my Manjaro laptop and it has truly been a breeze to work with, so the positive precedent is there.

And this comes from someone who only ever had Nvidia in his machines. However RDNA2 truly caught my eye and I decided it is time to learn (and experience) something new. I really hope this RX 6800 will deliver on Linux as it would make a lot of Linux enthusiasts more than happy.

So, did you get it to work in Manjaro? Does it work well? :slight_smile:

Hey deemon, no I was not successful. However I think that if I tried again with latest Kernel 5.10 + mesa-git it might have just worked, or that’s what I managed to find on Arch forum.

Anyway, I received offer for swapping this 6800 XT with RTX 3080, which I agreed on and it is done. So now I own RTX 3080, I installed latest proprietary driver as usual (I’ve been having nVidia all my life) and I am gaming already, everything works as usual.

I will try again to switch to AMD with introduction of RDNA3 GPUs, hopefully by then the Linux drivers will mature to the point that it is very seamless switching to another vendor of GPU. Right now I wasted way too much time trying to get it working & I’d much prefer to invest my time in other ways.

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