so my old GPU died a few days ago and I was thinking which brand of GPU to get next. AMD or Nvidia? I’ve heard Nvidia drivers are very annoying with Linux but I’ve never had an AMD GPU before. Which would be better? I’ll sometimee switch to Windows to play specific games as well.
AMD all the way. Few weeks ago I finally made a switch from Nvida for the first time. I have no problems in gaming. All games that I play run same as on windows.
a question i have: I use pop!_OS and I installed it using the Nvidia ISO, will there be a problem if I switch to an AMD GPU?
I don’t think there will be any issues. On that note, use open source AMD drivers. You dont need proprietary one from their site.
No. That ISO just installs the drivers by default. You can just uninstall them. Or leave them. They won’t break anything, although they will slow down your updates because they are huge.
I’ve decided to buy AMD but which one do I buy? I found a few used RX 6600 and RX 5700. Some of them have XT after them, and I don’t know what that means.
Just chipping in to say I have a 3060 and I’m scared of every update breaking my drivers again - just don’t get a Nvidia, don’t do it to yourself
I have a 3080 ti and haven’t had any issues yet, worst that happens is I would just load the previous driver from the cache in recovery mode. That said, I want to get back to amd, I just don’t have the money for it
Definitely AMD. The drivers are actually open source, much better with less bugs and there are no problems known to me. I currently have had a GTX 1070 for the last 5 years, until I’ve enough money for an AMD card. My setups, especially Wayland based, are riddled with bugs not present on my (Intel based) laptop - which means the only explanation is the NVidia card. The (admittedly: testing on Arch) drivers have broken two times in a year, not making the system unusable but definitely preventing gaming.
On top of that, the 4090 may be 25% better than the 7900 XTX - but it’s also 50+% more expensive than the 7900 XTX, which is a pattern which can be seen for every generation and version of GPUs by Nvidia/AMD. Nvidia’s equivalents to AMD’s cards are generally 25-50% more expensive, with worse performance but better Raytracing and of course DLSS support - oh wait, DLSS 1 and 2 are only for RTX 20 and up, while DLSS 4 is only for 40 Series GPUs. Which means no matter how good it looks, FSR will be the only alternative for almost all players, even those using NVidia cards like me.Something different: Intel’s Arc GPUs would maybe be worth a shot. According to a PC World article, the A770 beats the 3060 even in it’s own habitat - Raytracing. It’s cheap and gets better with every driver update. It also seems like the Arc GPUs are compatible with Linux fine, though I’d suggest you look up the compatibility with the games you want to play.
I have a 1070 Ti, but I’m on Ubuntu and I haven’t had any issues at all for ~5 years. IMO the issue then is Arch, and how the drivers are handled. I also have only updated the driver once (450-server to 525-server), when Satisfactory switched to unreal engine 5.
I would still recommend AMD though, and I also plan on switching when I have the money for it.
I have a 1060 on Arch and had no problems whatsoever. It will get ugly once the 1060 is no longer supported by the mainline driver, though.
AMD, easily. Its literally plug and play. You can even pick some second hand options for cheap that are still solid for gaming such as the vega 56/64 and the RX 5700XT (which is I use). Intel isn’t bad so long as you’re not playing the newest stuff, my Arc a750 is solid in games like Fallout 4 and Elden Ring. Starfield is complete mess on it. Another thing with Intel is you’ll need a distro with a 6+ kernel to get the most out of it.
well…
AMD is better on Linux most of the time. Running a AMD card day one is not hassle free.
That being said if you pick a up to date distro all 7000 and 6000 series should work fine now. They are already in the kernel and mesa for a while. You may want to update you kernel and mesa sometimes to get better performance and stability.
But in my experience nvidia is fine on Linux. (I only used older cards gtx 970 and a rtx 2060) especially when you have just one monitor or all monitors on the same refresh rate. It’s not on par with windows but will work with the Nvidia drivers.
So I would say if you a simple setup Nvidia is fine and AMD is better. It all depends on the best deal you can get. If ray tracing is not that important AMD is new the best value. If you more on a budget second AMD Rx 5700 XT are pretty cheap here and there are some good deals on Nvidia 30 series cards.
As far I have read intel cards can be a pain on Linux. So I would not recommend it for now.
This sums up my feelings on Nvidia.
This better be angry Torvalds
Edit: It was
It’s a very heartfelt, genuine, and relatable moment.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/i2lhwb_OckQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
“Better” is relative to your own use case. If you’re a casual user, who maybe play some games on Linux, and don’t really care about getting those games to work with Nvidia’s version of ray tracing upscaling stuff, getting an AMD card is no brainer because it’s cheaper and works out of the box too, and many games are starting to support ray tracing and upscaling on AMD card as well.
But, if you absolutely need to have access to CUDA, RTX and DLSS, then you’ll have to get an Nvidia card and deal with consequences of using their drivers (buggy on Wayland, etc).
I am on AMD, as I had too many problems with Nvidia over the years (e.g. driver borked after upgrade and stuck on console). That said, AMD driver ain’t of great quality these days either. Playing around with StableDiffusion and running out of VRAM will crash the driver and require a reboot. Some Xorg/kernel/driver versions crash frequently. One of my monitors does not work when connected over HDMI in Linux (flickering image), but works fine in Windows.
AMD is also quite a bit more challenging with AI stuff in general, as everything is using Nvidia’s CUDA. The situation is however improving. On the positive side, AMD cards have more VRAM than equally priced Nvidia cards, which is far more important than raw performance in AI workloads (not having VRAM means you just can’t do some things).
So not exactly smooth sailing, but AMD mostly works ok. For plain gaming via Proton I didn’t have any issues.
I was running a LLM earlier this evening and my 3090 started to make a ticking noise everytime a token was generated. Panicing, I look for the first time in years at AMD’s lineup. A 7900 XTX goes for $1400 CDN, but a 4090 is almost $2500.
I also use Daz Studio/Iray to render characters before feeding them to Stable Diffusion, because it’s a lot easier to get exactly what you want without spending hours tweaking prompts and seeds and hoping for the best.
An extra grand isn’t really that bad when you factor in the lifetime of the card.
If it’s a ZOTAC card it might just click when the fans start and stop. My ZOTAC 3060 makes a click when the fans start and stop. It’s a good way to know when my PC wakes itself up lol
Naw this was a click everytime a token was generated, and they were generating really slowly so I knew something was wrong. I think it was bouncing off the 24GB memory limit and something was being tripped, so I changed the loader from AutoGPQ to ExLlama_HF and everything works fine now.
If I were buying a card right now I’d get either the 6700XT or the 6800XT because they’re both at crazy good value for the money right now, especially if you can get one used or refurbished from a reputable seller with a return policy.
@entropicdrift @Yoru love my 6700XT, it’s been a great card so far. Runs fantastic on Linux too.
AMD is generally better
STOP recommending Intel Arc for Linux, people. Do any of you saying that even own one?
AMD. I’d get the rx 6800 xt
I had a gtx1060 when I started using linux, then upgraded to 2060 then again to 2080, they all worked fine without any major problem (except that file system checking at boot sometimes and wayland). Last year I upgraded to RX6800 and man everything just works, no more filesystem checks at boot, Wayland is mu way to go now.
If I have a nvidia card now I would just use, but if I’m buying a new/used gpu it will definitely be AMD.
The file system check at boot thing is a symptom of NVIDIA? I was wondering about that, but kept forgetting to look into it. Thanks for saving me time :D
Literally Intel or AMD. You may pick Intel dGPU as well.
Intel dGPU
That’s not the best idea. Performances are not even close of what they are on Windows
Also there’s an idle power draw issue which can sometimes be fixed on windows but not on linuxThat’s not the best idea. Performances are not even close of what they are on Windows
Personal experience or rumors? First link I found says it’s slightly(4%) better than on windows.
Also there’s an idle power draw issue which can sometimes be fixed on windows but not on linux
Can you share how to fix it? What to write in which registers?
Upd: just set scaling governor to powersave, lol
Your link is for an iGPU
Here for Intel Arc
From January but it hasn’t improved all that much
The fix for power consumption is changing a setting for ASPM in motherboard (if it supports it) and pluging the monitor in the motherboard directly. It worked for me on windows but not on linux (no workaround AFAIK) This means 40W idling instead of 1W
You need CONFIG_PCIEASPM in kernel for ASPM support
