AMD vs Nvidia

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Definitely bookmarking this reply. I haven't tried ComfyUI yet, but I've had it starred on Github from back when it was fairly new. I'm no stranger to building from source, but I have not dived into Docker yet, which is becoming more and more of a weakness by the day. Docker is sometimes required by some really cool projects and I'm missing out.

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Both work, just in different ways. I think AMD's value proposition is better on Linux but if you were choosing between a 6700XT and a 4080 (for sake of example) of course the latter is still gonna be faster despite the drivers being a bit weirder to manage

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I have no beef in this argument, and I'm certainly not biased in relation to AMD/Nvidia. However, my 980Ti, my 2070S and now my 4070S have all run really well under Linux. I run KDE Neon and a quick 'sudo apt install nvidia-driver-570' installs the latest beta's in under 5 mins, if I want to roll back the driver a quick 'sudo apt install nvidia-driver-565' has me back on the latest feature branch. Yeah, Wayland adoption under Nvidia was slow, and Nvidia's choices weren't what anyone could call 'ideal' - But momentum is building, and as a result I've been using Wayland for about eight months now without issue. Before that, X11 was largely faultless running Nvidia hardware/drivers.

People say Nvidia struggle in relation to VKD3D performance. I'm not too sure what they're doing, but VKD3D runs fine here.

It's the one advantage we have over Mac users: We can run AMD, Intel and Nvidia. We also have ongoing OGL support, native Vulkan support, better game support under Steam, a larger user base under Steam, and the amazing Proton implementation.

Whether it be AMD or Nvidia, I personally think it's Linux for the win.

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From what i've heard if your not willing to use the nvidia proprietary drivers then DON'T go for nvidia you will get terrible performance and amd will always be significantly better.

If you consider the proprietary drivers then I think it depends on your use case. For example AMD is better value if your gaming without ray tracing if you want to play with ray tracing or do any kind of productivity Nvidia is generaly the better option.
For machine learning Nvidia has much better compatibility with everything so you will have a better time and better performance, Although if you only care about running the largest models you can with the available vram then AMD gpu's will have more vram for the price.

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I’m curious. Say you are getting a new computer, put Debian on, want to run e.g. DeepSeek via ollama via a container (e.g. Docker or podman) and also play, how easy or difficult is it?

On the host system, you don't need to do anything. AMDGPU and Mesa are included on most distros.

For LLMs you can go the easy route and just install the Alpaca flatpak and the AMD addon. It will work out of the box and uses ollama in the background.

If you need a Docker container for it: AMD provides the handy rocm/dev-ubuntu-${UBUNTU_VERSION}:${ROCM_VERSION}-complete images. They contain all the required ROCm dependencies and runtimes and you can just install your stuff ontop of it.

As for GPU passthrough, all you need to do is add a device link for /dev/kfd and /dev/dri and you are set. For example, in a docker-compose.yml you just add this:

    devices:
      - /dev/kfd:/dev/kfd
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri

For example, this is the entire Dockerfile needed to build ComfyUI from scratch with ROCm. The user/group commands are only needed to get the container groups to align with my Fedora host system.

::: spoiler spoiler

ARG UBUNTU_VERSION=24.04
ARG ROCM_VERSION=6.3
ARG BASE_ROCM_DEV_CONTAINER=rocm/dev-ubuntu-${UBUNTU_VERSION}:${ROCM_VERSION}-complete

# For 6000 series
#ARG ROCM_DOCKER_ARCH=gfx1030
# For 7000 series
ARG ROCM_DOCKER_ARCH=gfx1100

FROM ${BASE_ROCM_DEV_CONTAINER}

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y git python-is-python3 && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
RUN pip install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly/rocm6.3 --break-system-packages

# Change group IDs to match Fedora
RUN groupmod -g 1337 irc && groupmod -g 105 render && groupmod -g 39 video

# Rename user on newer 24.04 release and add to video/render group
RUN usermod -l ai ubuntu && \
    usermod -d /home/ai -m ai && \
    usermod -a -G video ai && \
    usermod -a -G render ai

USER ai
WORKDIR /app

ENV PATH="/home/ai/.local/bin:${PATH}"

RUN git clone https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI .
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt --break-system-packages

COPY start.sh /start.sh
CMD /start.sh

:::

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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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AMD vs Nvidia