Linus Torvalds still uses an AMD RX 580 from 2017 — also ditches Apple Silicon for an Intel laptop

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Despite the rapid pace of GPU evolution and the hype around AI hardware, Linus Torvalds — the father of Linux — is still using a 2017-era AMD Radeon RX 580 as his main desktop GPU here in 2025. The Polaris-based graphics may be almost a decade old, but it’s aged remarkably well in Linux circles thanks to robust and mature open-source driver support. Torvalds' continued use of the RX 580, therefore, isn’t just boomer nostalgia. It's a statement of practicality, long-term support, and his disdain for unnecessary complexity.

Spotted by Phoronix, this revelation came during a bug report around AMD’s Display Stream Compression (DSC), which was causing black screen issues in Linux 6.17. Torvalds bisected the regression himself, eventually reverting a patch to maintain kernel progress. Ironically, DSC is what allows his Radeon RX 580 to comfortably drive his modern 5K ASUS ProArt monitor, a testament to how far open-source drivers have come.

“... same old boring Radeon RX 580,” Torvalds wrote in an email to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), reverting the patch for now so development can continue uninterrupted. That one line from the man himself speaks volumes about his preference for stability over novelty.

Sapphire Radeon RX 580 with the cooler removed — (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

While the RX 580 would struggle with modern gaming or AI workloads, it’s more than sufficient for compiling kernels, especially when paired with Torvalds’ AMD Ryzen Threadripper system. Torvalds switched from Intel to Threadripper several years ago to speed up Linux kernel builds, a move that has since proven wise. Even today’s newly released Threadripper 9970X and 9980X are among the fastest CPUs for open-source developers, but his build system hasn't changed much, underscoring how little raw performance matters once you’ve hit “good enough” for your personal workloads.

Moreover, while Linus' desktop remains AMD-powered, he’s also back on an Intel laptop for travel and testing. This is following a brief stint using an Apple M1 MacBook after the arrival of Apple Silicon, which he then replaced with Ampere's ARM chip. He didn't reveal the exact model, but he confirmed it uses Intel’s integrated “i915” graphics. That shift away from Apple is also unsurprising, as Torvalds has historically had little patience for platforms that lock down hardware or complicate kernel development.

Many will remember the now-iconic 2012 Q&A session, where Torvalds famously gave Nvidia a middle finger, calling it “the single worst company we’ve ever dealt with.” While Nvidia has since opened up a bit—publishing portions of its driver source and improving support for open kernels—it’s clear that Torvalds still favors fully open hardware. AMD’s consistent upstream contributions and open driver stack have kept the red team in his good graces for years, and Polaris continues to benefit from that support today.

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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

25 Comments Comment from the forums

ezst036

AMD RX 580 are still fully supported, only on the Linux side though.

So, why not keep using it if its capable for the job. Open source support lasting for such a long time is so wonderful as opposed to the planned obsolescence machine.
Reply
Bruce Benson

I'm updating my Proxmox+Ceph cluster with AMD b550 motherboards (ryzen 5 5600g CPUs). I'm moving from 10-12 year old hardware to 7 ish year old hardware because I want things that work. I do appreciate all those bleeding edge users who help to mature new hardware and software.
Reply
TerryLaze

Admin said:
His deliberate use of modest, open-friendly hardware subtly pushes back against AI hype and proprietary bloat.
So subtly that it's homeopathic.

ezst036 said:
Open source support lasting for such a long time is so wonderful as opposed to the planned obsolescence machine.
It depends very much on the details, if the "planned obsolescence" is needed to push things forward then it's much better than having open source being held back in the name of support.
Imagine if we were still on pong machines to keep support with older tech...
Reply
Dr3ams

I thought the RX 570 and 580 came out in 2018. Anyway, I still have a RX 570 8 GB I bought back in 2019. I used it for a few years until I upgraded to the RX 6700 XT 12 GB (my current GPU). The 570 is still a good GPU. I could play The Division 2 with it set on high without any issues.
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artk2219

Dr3ams said:
I thought the RX 570 and 580 came out in 2018. Anyway, I still have a RX 570 8 GB I bought back in 2019. I used it for a few years until I upgraded to the RX 6700 XT 12 GB (my current GPU). The 570 is still a good GPU. I could play The Division 2 with it set on high without any issues.
2017, I mean technically 2016, they're just the RX 470 and 480 with a new die revision so they can hit higher clocks. You can flash many RX 470's and 480's to RX 570's and 580's as its mainly a clock speed and slight power increase, and most of those could tolerate the increased clock and power settings.

Some OEMS actually didnt change a thing on power and clocks and just changed the name. So a Dell OEM RX 480 and RX 580 are exactly the same card, just with a different name. This was a thing because AMD never release a reference RX 580, they just told the other OEM's to have fun. So some RX 580's have exactly the same clocks as the RX 480 (1266 boost), and others shoot up to 1430 boost. We also have the RX 590, the RX 480's 12nm final form, up to 1580 boost clocks.

I think Polaris is AMD's best GPU architecture, it was never the fastest, but it was good enough, and it was there when the company desperately needed it. Its interesting to see it still around, and somewhat relevant for low end gaming, almost a decade after its release.

RX 480
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/184327/amd-rx480-8192-160603
Dell RX 580
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/194686/dell-rx580-8192-170301
Reply
bit_user

If you need a dGPU for plain old desktop graphics, like for a machine which lacks an iGPU, I think the humble RX 550 is possibly the GOAT. It's still fast enough at 3D to run Google Earth smoothly, supports new enough display standards to do 4k @ 60 Hz, and yet uses less power than newer cards like the RX 6400.

Unlike Nvidia, these Polaris cards work perfectly with the open source drivers. That means, you don't have to do anything extra, aside from installing the OS.

The best part is that we can expect at least another decade of software support, considering the open source driver for AMD cards even a decade older are still getting updates and bug fixes.

The main thing you won't get is hardware encoding or decoding for anything newer than H.265. For that stuff, either the Intel A380 or a mid-range RDNA2 card is the way to go.
Reply
Thunder64

artk2219 said:
2017, I mean technically 2016, they're just the RX 470 and 480 with a new die revision so they can hit higher clocks. You can flash many RX 470's and 480's to RX 570's and 580's as its mainly a clock speed and slight power increase, and most of those could tolerate the increased clock and power settings.

Some OEMS actually didnt change a thing on power and clocks and just changed the name. So a Dell OEM RX 480 and RX 580 are exactly the same card, just with a different name. This was a thing because AMD never release a reference RX 580, they just told the other OEM's to have fun. So some RX 580's have exactly the same clocks as the RX 480 (1266 boost), and others shoot up to 1430 boost. We also have the RX 590, the RX 480's 12nm final form, up to 1580 boost clocks.

I think Polaris is AMD's best GPU architecture, it was never the fastest, but it was good enough, and it was there when the company desperately needed it. Its interesting to see it still around, and somewhat relevant for low end gaming, almost a decade after its release.

RX 480
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/184327/amd-rx480-8192-160603
Dell RX 580
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/194686/dell-rx580-8192-170301

It's amazing how everyone seems to forget the 470/480 were a thing. I remember them being hard to get at the time as they were performant enough and offered a huge jump in efficiency going from 28nm to 14nm. I grabbed the 8GB one at MSRP ($239) a few weeks after launch. One of my favorite cards.
Reply
bit_user

Thunder64 said:
I remember them being hard to get at the time as they were performant enough and offered a huge jump in efficiency going from 28nm to 14nm.
The reason they got scarce was due to crypto (Ethereum) boom from that time (2017-2018).

I overpaid for my RX 550, and I didn't even buy at the peak of the market, but waited until prices lowered and inventories recovered a bit. IIRC, I paid like $120 (edit: no, actually just $90) for an allegedly $80 card. It was the 4 GB version, at least, and I did remember thinking it was an opportunity I should probably pounce on.
Reply
Alvar "Miles" Udell

Torvalds' continued use of the RX 580, therefore, isn’t just boomer nostalgia.

Is that supposed to be an insult to people who use things that're perfectly fine for their purpose instead of upgrading to the latest and greatest?
Reply
HardwiredWireless

ezst036 said:
AMD RX 580 are still fully supported, only on the Linux side though.

So, why not keep using it if its capable for the job. Open source support lasting for such a long time is so wonderful as opposed to the planned obsolescence machine.
Lol I guess if you're going to only going to do the things that Linux is capable of doing You really don't need much of a processor at all.
Reply

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