NEW: With the addition of Mint 19 these rules still apply. Mint does not control the drivers AMD does. Cards not supported will never get drivers, no matter how many Mint editions come out.
EDIT: The first thing you need to do is know what card you have. This is most needed in the desktop arena. The card list below does not show HDXXXX series card. A quick trip to wikipedia will show your video cards GCN archetecture. If your card is listed as GCN 1st gen, your card is considered NOT on the list below. If it is 2nd gen or greater, it is consider ON the list.
For APU/mobile:
- The first constantly repeated issue is for mobile GPUs as well as APUs (AMD processor with builtin graphics chip). If you have these video devices on Mint 18.x, You will only have the option of the open source driver in the driver manager. Do not try any other driver, they will not work.
- For Mint 17.3, we have a different story. These devices have a second option of the FGLRX drivers in the driver manager. Do not try any other driver other than these 2, it will not work. As well as only recommended until 17.3 EOL.
- For desktops we get better options, but AMD made great confusion as there is only a select numbers of cards supported by their new drivers.
- The list of cards for the new drivers:
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Radeon RX 5xx graphics Radeon™ RX 480 Graphics Radeon™ RX 470 Graphics Radeon™ RX 460 Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury X Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 Nano Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 390X Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 390 Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 380X Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 380 Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 M395X Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 M385 Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 M380 Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 M270X Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 360 Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 290X Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 290 Graphics AMD Radeon™ R9 285 Graphics AMD Radeon™ R7 260X Graphics AMD Radeon™ R7 260 Graphics
For those whose card IS on the list :
- For Mint 17, you can use open source or FGLRX from the driver manager.
- For Mint 18 you can use open source by default. For the AMDGPU-PRO driver you MUST upgrade to kernel 4.8 FIRST (and REBOOT), before you install the driver (and REBOOT).
- The kernel requirements are that of the driver. When using AMD supplied drivers you may/will be required to update the kernel in the future. AMD actually puts this on their website, and folks still miss it for some reason.
- In the future the list may become inaccurate. AMD may chose to drop older cards in the future. And obvious they will add newer cards as they come out with them.
Tutorial for AMDGPU-PRO driver issues: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=242474 No clue how many more months this will be valid.