With the current RADV state, there won't be any issues for the RDNA 4 GPU users on Linux platforms except that it will lack some non-crucial features.
Lead RADV Developer Confirms Decent RADV Support for RX 9070 GPUs at Launch, Will be Enhanced Further After Official Launch
As we approach the launch of AMD's RDNA 4 GPU lineup, developers in Valve's Linux Graphics Driver team have optimized the RADV driver for the GPUs (via Phoronix). The RADV (Radeon Vulkan) is an open-source Vulkan driver for AMD GPUs, which is included in Mesa.
Before the RX 9070 launches in March, the Mesa 25.0 will be released, which will include optimal updates for the RADV driver for those GPUs. As far as the support for RDNA 4 is concerned, users on the Linux platform shouldn't be worried, as the lead RADV developer of the Valve Linux Graphics Driver team, Samuel Pitoiset, has confirmed that it is going to be "Good Enough" for the RDNA 4 GPUs aka Radeon RX 9070.
This initial support should be good enough but it's missing two features (cooperative matrix and video decode/encode) compared to GFX11 (RDNA3) because lack of time.
DCC is still under active development but it might be possible to finish it during the RC period.
- Mesa 25.0 patch notes
As indicated by Samuel, there is still some stuff that won't be included in the Mesa 25.0 release, which is around the end of February. This includes two features: Cooperative Matrix (VK_KHR_cooperative_matrix) and Video Decode/Encode (Vulkan Video). The former is crucial for specialized computation tasks in gaming and machine learning, while the latter focuses on efficient video processing within Vulkan API.
It should be noted that the missing Vulkan Video support doesn't mean that the VA-API (Video Acceleration API) for hardware-accelerated video decoding/encoding will be incomplete for RDNA 4. Rather, it's independent of the Vulkan Video support and will likely be handled by AMD engineers.
Nonetheless, what matters is adequate RADV support for RDNA 4 GPUs, which will remove any limitations users would face on Linux platforms using RX 9070 GPUs. However, the missing components are likely to be included after the GPU launch and will enhance the overall user experience.
News Sources: Phoronix, freedesktop
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