A developer who left AMD to work at Valve has managed to make the RADV graphics driver process twice as many pixels on Linux. Games run smoother, at no extra cost to the user. It's a reality check in a market where free software demonstrates its power when there's talent and access to the source code.
The patch that doubled pixel speed 🚀
The improvement focuses on shader management and reducing bottlenecks in the graphics pipeline. The engineer rewrote key parts of the RADV backend, optimizing cache usage and parallel instruction execution. The result is a 100% increase in pixel-per-second performance in demanding titles, without touching the hardware or asking anyone for permission.
A patch and two coffees, on the house ☕
While big companies sell you a new graphics card with 15% more FPS and the promise that the old one is no longer worth it, here a guy with a text editor gives you double the performance for free. It's like your car doubling its power just because a mechanic read the manual. But don't get used to it: this is an anomaly, not the business model that pays for executives' yachts.