News Linus Torvalds still uses an AMD RX 580 from 2017 — also ditches Apple Silicon for an Intel laptop

[mitch074]

My reference RX480 8 Gb recently saw some use as backup card after I sold my RX6600XT and waited for my RX9060XT to arrive.
It could still play Black Myth:Wukong and Expedition 33 in potato mode, which is nice for a 9 years old mid-range GPU. For BM:W, I had to run the shaders-based emulation 'hack' to allow shaders compilation, but it did work properly.
Try and do that on a GTX1060 6Gb and weep.

 

[HardwiredWireless]

Considering he isn't a game player as evidenced by the fact that his os isn't very game friendly, what does he need a GPU for? If your just typing code and doing a bit of testing and writing emails the integrated CPU renderer is more than enough. He could remove that old GPU and never miss it.

 

[bit_user]

Considering he isn't a game player

The Phoronix article (cited as the source) said he's not a gamer.

what does he need a GPU for?

Some of the machines he uses are workstations that don't have an iGPU and he uses a 5k display. For that, he relies on DSC, FWIW.

Did you know that neither Xeon W nor Threadripper have an iGPU? Linus is known to be using a Threadripper, as his primary x86 development machine. For ARM, he uses an Ampere Altra-based workstation, which also lacks an iGPU.

If your just typing code and doing a bit of testing and writing emails the integrated CPU renderer is more than enough.

He also mentioned using a laptop with an intel iGPU. So, it sounds like he agrees in the cases where that's an option.

 

[HardwiredWireless]

Let us not forget that Linux is capable of taking a Windows based gaming handheld and then without any hardware changes at all you get more frame rates and better battery life with that very same handheld just because you ditched Windows 11 Advertising Edition.

Lol that certainly is different from my experience with hand held consoles. Of course I've never even heard of an advertising edition of 11 let alone installed it anywhere. I always minimize mine personally.

The Phoronix article (cited as the source) said he's not a gamer.


Some of the machines he uses are workstations that don't have an iGPU and uses a 5k display. For that, he relies on DSC, FWIW.

Did you know that neither Xeon W nor Threadripper have an iGPU? Linus is known to be using a Threadripper, as his primary x86 development machine. For ARM, he uses an Ampere Altra-based workstation, which also lacks an iGPU.


He also mentioned using a laptop with an intel iGPU. So, it sounds like he agrees in the cases where that's an option.

Of course he agrees, it's common sense.

 

[mikeztm]

The Phoronix article (cited as the source) said he's not a gamer.


Some of the machines he uses are workstations that don't have an iGPU and he uses a 5k display. For that, he relies on DSC, FWIW.

Did you know that neither Xeon W nor Threadripper have an iGPU? Linus is known to be using a Threadripper, as his primary x86 development machine. For ARM, he uses an Ampere Altra-based workstation, which also lacks an iGPU.


He also mentioned using a laptop with an intel iGPU. So, it sounds like he agrees in the cases where that's an option.

But RX 580 is a Polaris10. It does not support DSC at all.

Is there any Linux kernel hacking that enabled this hidden feature or the report is wrong and Linus is using another GPU?

 

[bit_user]

But RX 580 is a Polaris10. It does not support DSC at all.

Is there any Linux kernel hacking that enabled this hidden feature or the report is wrong and Linus is using another GPU?

Here's what he said, which explicitly references the RX 580:

Re: [git pull] drm for 6.17-rc1 - Linus Torvalds

Here's the Phoronix article which claimed he's relying on DSC:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Radeon-RX-590-Torvalds
​

That part doesn't have a source or attribution, so it might be that Michael knows something or maybe he's just trying to connect the dots.

 

[mikeztm]

Here's what he said, which explicitly references the RX 580:

​

Re: [git pull] drm for 6.17-rc1 - Linus Torvalds

​

Here's the Phoronix article which claimed he's relying on DSC:

​

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Radeon-RX-590-Torvalds​

​

That part doesn't have a source or attribution, so it might be that Michael knows something or maybe he's just trying to connect the dots.

It’s very weird and what surprised me is no one even asked that question.

And DP1.4 can support 5k60hz without the use of DSC.

I guess it’s just a regression for a DSC related patch that breaks the DRM for a lot AMD GPUs and not actually intended for his card.