Amdgpu pro 16.30 available for steam os, debian and ubuntu

Yesterday AMD has made the new AMDGPU PRO 16.30 drivers available exclusively for Linux operating systems such as Debian and Ubuntu. The peculiarity of this controller is that it was developed in conjunction with Valve to be used in the new version of its Steam OS 2.80 system, which is still in a Beta state.

AMDGPU PRO 16.30 are exclusive drivers for Linux systems

With the arrival of AMDGPU PRO 16.30 drivers, AMD adds the support of two new technologies for Linux, VDPAU and Vulkan. VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) is the Windows equivalent of DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration), which is in charge of accelerating the reproduction of multimedia videos MP4, MKV, AVI, etc., granting great fluidity at the time of reproduction, in this case, under Linux.

I recommend reading all the information and requirements about Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

In the case of Vulkan, this is a multiplatform API used in video games similar to DirectX 12 and that works on operating systems, Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS. With this API greater performance is achieved in video games that are developed under this API.

AMDGPU PRO 16.30 adds Vulkan support to Steam OS

At the moment these AMDGPU PRO 16.30 drivers only work with those AMD graphics cards based on the Bonaire kernel, that is, HD7790, R7 260, R7 260x, R7 360 and all those graphics that support GCN 1.1 and GCN 1.2, always remembering that these drivers are in beta, so more red brand graphics cards may be added in the future.

Although this driver was officially released for those users who use Steam OS 2.80 Beta, the packages can be installed equally on other Linux operating systems, since Steam OS is based on Debian. They can access the driver packages from the following address.