Radeon 680M (Rembrandt, 1002:1681) support and performance on FreeBSD 15.1

[GiorgiT]

Hi there.
I am considering installing FreeBSD 15.1-RELEASE directly on a system with:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX
GPU: AMD Radeon 680M (Rembrandt)
e5:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Rembrandt [Radeon 680M] [1002:1681] (rev c7)
PCI ID: 1002:1681

I am currently testing FreeBSD 15.1 in QEMU and XFCE works very well, but the VM is using llvmpipe, so this obviously does not tell me anything about native Radeon 680M performance.

From what I understand, FreeBSD 15.1 uses the drm-612-kmod stack derived from Linux 6.12 DRM, and the Radeon 680M should be handled by amdgpu.

Before installing FreeBSD on the real hardware, I would like to understand how mature Rembrandt support actually is on FreeBSD.
I like the philosophy of BSDs so I am seriously considering switching or at least dual booting. But I want to know how worse the performance is going to be compared to my fedora. Currently I am on Fedora kde 43 Kernel Version: 6.17.1 and performance is amazing, no less than Windows.

I am a huge performance enthusiast ....


Thanks.

 

[fahrenheit]

GiorgiT I've a Ryzen 7 8745H with a Radeon 780M (which is mostly the same as the 680M), it works fine. The performance is more or less on par with Linux for both OpenGL and Vulkan, assuming native freebsd software. 64bit Linux software using the compatibility layer has some minor overhead (single digit in most cases). The Wine 64bit overhead is also minor, the 32bit overhead was a bit higher but that was before wine 11.14 which enabled wow64 on FreeBSD (I haven't tested this yet).

The 680M specifically is supported out of the box on FreeBSD 15.0+ with drm-66-kmod.
FreeBSD 15.1 and drm-612-kmod (as of now you will have to compile this yourself from ports) will probably offer you some performance improvements.

 

[GiorgiT]

GiorgiT I've a Ryzen 7 8745H with a Radeon 780M (which is mostly the same as the 680M), it works fine. The performance is more or less on par with Linux for both OpenGL and Vulkan, assuming native freebsd software. 64bit Linux software using the compatibility layer has some minor overhead (single digit in most cases). The Wine 64bit overhead is also minor, the 32bit overhead was a bit higher but that was before wine 11.14 which enabled wow64 on FreeBSD (I haven't tested this yet).

The 680M specifically is supported out of the box on FreeBSD 15.0+ with drm-66-kmod.
FreeBSD 15.1 and drm-612-kmod (as of now you will have to compile this yourself from ports) will probably offer you some performance improvements.

Thanks for the details !

So what I’m mostly trying to find out is:

• Does FreeBSD handle 165 Hz reliably on Rembrandt?
• Is desktop compositing smooth at high refresh rates?
• Do window movement/resizing and scrolling stay fluid without excessive CPU usage?
• Are there any stutter/frame-pacing issues compared with Linux?
• Is hardware acceleration used properly for normal desktop rendering, not just OpenGL/Vulkan benchmarks?

What I mostly care about is the overall desktop experience. On Fedora, my Radeon 680M feels properly utilized: the desktop is very fluid at 1920×1080 165 Hz, windows move and resize smoothly, scrolling is smooth, and doing normal graphical things doesn’t noticeably spike CPU usage. The system "breathes" properly because the GPU seems to be doing the work it should.

 

[LibreQuest]

Thanks for the details !

So what I’m mostly trying to find out is:

• Does FreeBSD handle 165 Hz reliably on Rembrandt?
• Is desktop compositing smooth at high refresh rates?
• Do window movement/resizing and scrolling stay fluid without excessive CPU usage?
• Are there any stutter/frame-pacing issues compared with Linux?
• Is hardware acceleration used properly for normal desktop rendering, not just OpenGL/Vulkan benchmarks?

What I mostly care about is the overall desktop experience. On Fedora, my Radeon 680M feels properly utilized: the desktop is very fluid at 1920×1080 165 Hz, windows move and resize smoothly, scrolling is smooth, and doing normal graphical things doesn’t noticeably spike CPU usage. The system "breathes" properly because the GPU seems to be doing the work it should.

I ran an RX 5700 XT on 32" 165hz 1440p display for a while on freebsd 14. It was butter, meaning very smooth. But I am using a different setup now. My main system is a computer I built in a case with an RTX 3050 LP and a 1080p 144hz display and it's also butter.

I used to use Linux before 2023 and I can't honestly tell the difference in gaming between the two systems, just much better stability on FreeBSD.

Sorry need to edit again. I used Linux 2001-2023 and now freebsd since 2023.