AMD vs Nvidia
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It's the pro driver for workstation use. If you are gaming then you don't need it. The gaming driver is only open source
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Very cool, thanks for the in depth explanation.
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I put a 3060Ti in my latest build. The NVidia drivers would consistently hard lock my PC after about a day of uptime no matter what I did. I spent ages trying to hunt down the issue, and waited through several kernel and driver versions in vain hope, fuelled by people insisting that the NVidia drivers were "good now". I switched to nvidia-open once that released (or once I realised it existed) to no avail. Nouveau was not available at all for those cards when I started and was still missing critical features at the end.
I think this is the first time I've ever encountered a kernel crash in nearly two decades of Linux computing. And second, and third and...
I switched to an AMD card, a 7600 (a generation newer! In case anyone thought this was a "new hardware" issue) and the problem was immediately gone, and my PC has returned to being my sanctuary.
My problem is exceptionally rare - I think i found one other person experiencing it over the course of 1-2 years. But the concept that NVidia had redeemed themselves continues to ring hollow for me.
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A workaround's been developed for the issue regarding FFVII.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/8408#issuecomment-2657340142
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I don't want any proprietary drivers (so I am talking about Nouveau or any other FOSS Nvidia driver if it exists)
In that case AMD, no doubt about it.
If you were considering proprietary drivers it would still be AMD but there would be some discussion about it.
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If you're unwilling to use proprietary drivers AMD or Intel if yout friend. If you use proprietary drivers NVIDIA is mostly fine now.
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The proprietary part is in the userspace. For the kernel, they use the same open source base.
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My two cents.
I have quite a few Nvidia GPUs I still use (2080,3080ti,3090) but recently purchased two AMD cards. I have a 5700xt and 7800xt.
I recently started using Universal Blue Linux as my daily driver on most of my systems. Bluefin for my desktop with Nvidia, Bazzite for my gaming PC with AMD.
They do both work however I have still had more issues with NVIDIA than AMD. For example, running games tends to be buggier but that is specifically an Nvidia driver issue. I'm guessing most hot fixes come out for the windows driver first. For instance, FF7 Rebirth does not render world geometry on Nvidia on Linux. I do not have this problem under AMD
I started purchasing the AMD cards because I was growing tired of waiting for Nvidia stability on Linux.
Is it much better than it was before , yes
Do you use Nvidia CUDA apps or AI? Check, that works!
Is it still as smooth and seamless as AMD, nope, you're still going to end up with regressions.I think it's only a matter time before Nvidia finally figured this out as they heavily rely on Linux as a platform in their own work. But right now your best user experience overall is going to be on AMD hardware.
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I have an RTX 4070 ti super and it works great. But I use proprietary drivers.
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The nouveau drivers are just barely enough to have a desktop, anything actually needing a GPU will perform very poorly (in my anecdotal experience with 4K). Or, to put it another way, choosing an NVIDIA card is choosing their proprietary drivers.
So you're left with AMD (and Intel). The open amdgpu driver is pretty good and is suitable for gaming. Which I do.
I have no experience with Intel, but I believe their open drivers are pretty good.
So I recommend AMD.
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In my experience older nvidia cards (~5 years old +) work fine, newer ones are very hit-or-miss
Amd cards of any age work pretty much perfectly as far as I can tellThough if the drivers not being proprietary is a hard line for you then amd is your only option really
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If you want Nvidia Reflex,DLSS and RTX and GSYNC,etc and your fine with installing out of tree proprietary drivers and fine with some issues Nvidia
If you don't care about Nvidias features AMD. -
Just not true anymore. Must have been years ago that you used Nvidia on Linux. As someone who has been using Nvidia GPUs under Linux (Manjaro KDE mostly), recently also under Wayland (since plasma 6), I can attest that the experience is very good, no "tons of small issues".
Still though, since OP wants no proprietary drivers, he has to go for AMD, since nouveau is dog shit.
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As someone who has been using Nvidia and Linux nearly exclusively for many years, I am interested in the aspects you think their drivers suck in. I have had literally no problems with them in the past 2 years, performance is incredible, Wayland just works, ...
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If by that you mean ray tracing, no. Nouveau can't and won't ever, NVK might but it will take time.
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When was the last time you used an Nvidia card under Linux? There are no performance issues compared to windows, haven't been any in YEARS.
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When playing the exact same games on the exact same machine with NVidia GPU you can get 8-20% better performance on Windows compared to Linux.
On the AMD side you can get up to 5% boost on Linux, that's just the reality. Though you could also loose 5% performance compared to Windows in some games.And to answer your question it should have been around 2022.
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Where are you getting these numbers? I have a 3080, used a 1080Ti before, and though my last direct comparison was a while (like a few years) ago, I had more like 3-5% difference in FPS in the games I tested, at most 10% in RS2 Vietnam, but this ultimately turned out to be a CPU bottleneck. I would assume (and, reading reviews on reddit, this seems confirmed) that the drivers have mostly gotten better since then.
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funny thing! my amd card just crapped itself and i went back to nvidia. everything worked fist time after installing the driver, actually.
i do notice plenty of stuttering when using the desktop though. im pleasantly surprised with the newer driver, and its gonna do very well until i get the other one fixed.
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