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How to switch from the Radeon driver to the AMDGPU driver on Arch Linux.

NOTE: This guide is for Southern Islands and Sea Islands cards

Please see the following ArchWiki articles for more information.

TL;DR

sudo pacman -S mesa vulkan-radeon
SI_CHECKER='GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=".*\(radeon.si_support=0.*amdgpu.si_support=1\)\|\(amdgpu.si_support=1.*radeon.si_support=0\)'
sed "/^$SI_CHECKER/! s|^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\\(.*\\)\"|GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\1 radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1\"|" /etc/default/grub | sudo tee /etc/default/grub
CIK_CHECKER='GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=".*\(radeon.cik_support=0.*amdgpu.cik_support=1\)\|\(amdgpu.cik_support=1.*radeon.cik_support=0\)'
sed "/^$CIK_CHECKER/! s|^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\\(.*\\)\"|GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\1 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1\"|" /etc/default/grub | sudo tee /etc/default/grub
BLACKLIST_CHECKER='GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=".*modprobe.blacklist=radeon'
sed "/^$BLACKLIST_CHECKER/! s|^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\\(.*\\)\"|GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\1 modprobe.blacklist=radeon\"|" /etc/default/grub | sudo tee /etc/default/grub
sed '/^MODULES=(amdgpu/! s|^MODULES=(|MODULES=(amdgpu radeon |' /etc/mkinitcpio.conf | sudo tee /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
sudo mkinitcpio -P

After the script has run, reboot your system and verify the installation with the following one-liner:

sudo lspci -v | grep 'driver in use: amdgpu' > /dev/null && echo 'Success!' || echo 'Failure!'

Full explanation

Installing the driver

You can also install vulkan-radeon for Vulkan support

sudo pacman -S mesa

Loading the driver at boot

Set module parameters in kernel command line

You can change sudo tee /etc/default/grub to vimdiff /dev/stdin /etc/default/grub to preview the changes

The following script is for GRUB only

# Add the parameters to the `GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT` variable in `/etc/default/grub` if they are not there yet.

# SI parameters
SI_CHECKER='GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=".*\(radeon.si_support=0.*amdgpu.si_support=1\)\|\(amdgpu.si_support=1.*radeon.si_support=0\)'
sed "/^$SI_CHECKER/! s|^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\\(.*\\)\"|GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\1 radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1\"|" /etc/default/grub | sudo tee /etc/default/grub

# CIK parameters
CIK_CHECKER='GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=".*\(radeon.cik_support=0.*amdgpu.cik_support=1\)\|\(amdgpu.cik_support=1.*radeon.cik_support=0\)'
sed "/^$CIK_CHECKER/! s|^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\\(.*\\)\"|GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\1 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1\"|" /etc/default/grub | sudo tee /etc/default/grub

# `radeon` blacklist parameter
BLACKLIST_CHECKER='GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=".*modprobe.blacklist=radeon'
sed "/^$BLACKLIST_CHECKER/! s|^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\\(.*\\)\"|GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\"\1 modprobe.blacklist=radeon\"|" /etc/default/grub | sudo tee /etc/default/grub

Specify the correct module order

# Make sure the `amdgpu` module has been set first in the Mkinitcpio MODULES array and then regenerate the initramfs.
sed '/^MODULES=(amdgpu/! s|^MODULES=(|MODULES=(amdgpu radeon |' /etc/mkinitcpio.conf | sudo tee /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
sudo mkinitcpio -P

Reboot your system and verify the installation

sudo lspci -v | grep 'driver in use: amdgpu' > /dev/null && echo 'Success!' || echo 'Failure!'