The newly arrived Radeon RX 9070 GRE and RX 9070 XT have been tested with the latest versions of Linux and Mesa. The results show that, despite updating the graphics stack, there are no notable performance improvements compared to a standard Ubuntu 26.04 configuration. The expectation of a speed boost fades away.
Flat performance despite updated drivers 📉
Benchmark tests pitted the new Mesa drivers and libraries against the base Ubuntu 26.04 configuration. In titles like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Cyberpunk 2077, average frame rates and frame times barely varied by 2%. Analysis of Vulkan and OpenGL traces confirms that command latency and cache usage remain stable. There is no real gain.
Waiting for the patch that moves a pixel 🐢
Developers promised that the new Mesa versions would be like pouring gasoline into an engine. But in the end, the RX 9070 behave like a driver accelerating in neutral: lots of noise, few revs. So much hype only for performance to remain the same as with the distribution's packages. It almost seems like a bad joke.