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⇱ DragonFlyBSD Now Allows Optional AMD GCN 1.1 Support In AMDGPU Driver - Phoronix


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DragonFlyBSD Now Allows Optional AMD GCN 1.1 Support In AMDGPU Driver

Written by Michael Larabel in BSD on 20 January 2026 at 06:02 AM EST. 7 Comments
DragonFlyBSD's AMDGPU kernel graphics driver continues to be a port of the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver. Their latest porting effort for AMD graphics on DragonFlyBSD is now enabling optional support for the GCN 1.1 "Sea Islands (CIK) graphics processors on this modern alternative to the prior Radeon kernel driver.

Just as how until recently when GCN 1.0 and 1.1 now default to AMDGPU in Linux 6.19, DragonFlyBSD is in a similar situation although they are just enabling the GCN 1.1 optional support in AMDGPU for the first time. DragonFlyBSD's AMDGPU driver though remains far behind the current upstream kernel state in still relying on Linux 4.20.17 kernel sources.

👁 Radeon R9 290 Hawaii


By default GCN 1.1 GPUs like Hawaii, Kabini, Kaveri, Bonaire, and others aren't using AMDGPU but require setting the drm.amdgpu.cik_support=1 option in DragonFly's /boot/loader.conf file. More details for those interested via this DragonFlyBSD commit.

Hopefully eventually DragonFlyBSD is able to catch-up closer to the latest upstream Linux AMDGPU driver state where it could then consider enabling GCN 1.1 (and GCN 1.0) support by default on this modern AMDGPU driver.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.