Re:My first impressions on ROCm and Strix Halo
by SwellJoe on Sunday April 19, 2026 @01:28PM
(#47825955)
It can be tricky to get/keep ROCm working, but around 7.2 it became reliable and as fast as or faster than ROCm 6.4.
And, I think the first response time of ROCm is pretty consistently faster than Vulkan, even if Vulkan has a slightly higher token rate. Though I don't see that big of a different on token rates, either. Honestly, though, I haven't done enough real testing to know for sure. The benchmarks Donato Capitella posts (https://kyuz0.github.io/amd-strix-halo-toolboxes/) have been my guide on what to run in what way, and the performance of most things that can run on the Strix Halo are Fast Enough(tm) such that I don't agonize about performance. When Vulkan was all that worked with llama.cpp, that's what I used. Now that ROCm is reliable, I'm using ROCm. ROCm feels faster, maybe just because it processes prompts faster and starts typing the answer fast (at a rate faster than I can read it, so when it starts answering is the more important metric even if faster token rate would lead to it finishing faster).
In short: If ever I'm doing something that will take many hours to complete, and I need to optimize it, I'll do some tests first to be sure I'm using the optimal path. Otherwise, as long as ROCm is working, I'll probably just keep using it.
And, I think the first response time of ROCm is pretty consistently faster than Vulkan, even if Vulkan has a slightly higher token rate. Though I don't see that big of a different on token rates, either. Honestly, though, I haven't done enough real testing to know for sure. The benchmarks Donato Capitella posts (https://kyuz0.github.io/amd-strix-halo-toolboxes/) have been my guide on what to run in what way, and the performance of most things that can run on the Strix Halo are Fast Enough(tm) such that I don't agonize about performance. When Vulkan was all that worked with llama.cpp, that's what I used. Now that ROCm is reliable, I'm using ROCm. ROCm feels faster, maybe just because it processes prompts faster and starts typing the answer fast (at a rate faster than I can read it, so when it starts answering is the more important metric even if faster token rate would lead to it finishing faster).
In short: If ever I'm doing something that will take many hours to complete, and I need to optimize it, I'll do some tests first to be sure I'm using the optimal path. Otherwise, as long as ROCm is working, I'll probably just keep using it.