I am going to buy a new graphics card and can’t choose between Nvidia and AMD. I know that Nvidia has bad reputation in Linux community but how really it works? And I heard recently their drivers got better. What can you recommend?

P. S. I don’t want any proprietary drivers (so I am talking about Nouveau or any other FOSS Nvidia driver if it exists)

  • pineapple@lemmy.ml
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    3 hours ago

    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.

    Intel arc is also always an option if you are aiming for a lower tire/mid range card. They have really price competitive cards and unlike amd they have very decent ray tracing and productivity capability’s. They also have lots more vram for the price compared to Nvidia.

    Also I highly recommend buying a used graphics card, you help the environment, save a lot of money and if you don’t like the card you chose you can sell it for the same price your bought it and buy a different one.

    Maybe if you could specify your use case and what cards you are currently looking at I could help you out more.

  • Bulletdust@lemmy.ml
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    4 hours ago

    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 earlier 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. EDIT: I in no way see value for money in the new 5080/5090 cards and I eagerly await what AMD has to offer (although I won’t be switching from my 4070S for quite some time yet).

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.ml
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    4 hours ago

    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

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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    11 hours ago

    if you are on linux AMD is the better choice, period.

    don’t get me wrong nvidia will work relatively well, ive ran it before on linux and its actually improving. but it isnt worth the pricetag to have tons of small issues everywhere.

  • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    Honestly even on Windows I preferred AMD’s software suite compared to Nvidia control panel and GeForce Experience. Currently using a 7900XTX and pretty happy with it. Also I missed Radeon Chill when I was on Nvidia, didn’t expect to care about that at all, but I love it.

  • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I don’t want any proprietary drivers

    So then you don’t want any NVIDIA.

    The AMD open source Linux driver performs better than their Windows driver. And there is no proprietary AMD Linux driver, the official AMD driver for Linux is open source.

  • HouseWolf@lemm.ee
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    23 hours ago

    As someone who started using Linux while on Nvidia and stuck with it for over a year before going full AMD.

    Just go AMD, so many little things I had to find workarounds for just because of Nvidias shitty drivers.

    Even after Nvidia claimed to support wayland I could never get it to run on my install, then having to manually configure my xorg just to get my 170hz monitor working which then introduced graphical issues I just couldn’t fix…NONE of that was an issue the moment I swapped to a RX 7800 XT, didn’t even have to install any drivers they’re just standard in the kernal.

    • Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works
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      17 hours ago

      Same, been using an AMD card since building a new PC a few years ago and its been completely smooth sailing. My spouse also built a new PC at the same time but decided to go nvidia instead and has had constant problems (now regrets not going AMD as well) and has yo regularly downgrade the driver and/or kernel just to have a working system or games that don’t have things like vertices explosions.

  • Synapse@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    FOSS driver only, the choices are AMD and Intel. Nvidia is out of the picture.

    Of coursenouveau drivers are still around and under active development, but as far as I know the performance if still very far from reasonable expectations.

  • warmaster@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    I have 2 PCs, both on Linux. One with an AMD XTX 7900 XT, the other one has an Nvidia 3080 TI.

    The Nvidia one is running the latest proprietary drivers, and they suck HARD. They just are far inferior to AMD’s. The only reason to go Nvidia is to do local AI or video (editing / transcoding).

    If your primary use is gaming and go Nvidia, you will be sabotaging yourself.

  • bruce965@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    If you don’t want proprietary drivers the choice is quite straightforward: AMD. The official drivers are open source.

    As for my experience, I’ve had absolutely no problems in the last few years with AMD, but I have to admit that I have always been using an iGPU, which has always been good enough for my needs.

    I used to have problems with Nvidia proprietary drivers, but that was at least a couple years ago, things might have changed. I’ve never had issues with the free unofficial drivers, besides worse performance.

  • Eugenia@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    I bought an A-series Intel card (A310, bought for $110), and I’m very happy with it. Very good drivers that work perfectly with Wayland, and its recent OpenCL drivers now work with Blender and DaVinci Resolve too (despite Resolve saying that it only works with nvidia or amd, the new drivers make the dedicated intel cards work too). Gaming is not too bad either, but I don’t game much.

  • nyan@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    If those are your criteria, I would go with AMD right now, because only the proprietary driver will get decent performance out of most nVidia cards. Nouveau is reverse-engineered and can’t tap into a lot of features of newer cards especially, and while I seem to recall there is a new open-source driver in the works, there’s no way it’s mature enough to be an option for anyone but testers.

  • insufferableninja@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    AMD cards work great with the open source driver. As i understand it, the nouveau driver is getting better but might not be there yet? So if the non-proprietary driver is a must you might be better off with AMD.

  • Korkki@lemmy.ml
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    23 hours ago

    Do you play a lot of games with ray tracing, or do you care about that stuff? If you don’t then AMD, it’s better bang for the buck for rasterization and works better on Linux.

      • Korkki@lemmy.ml
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        21 hours ago

        I haven’t been on NVIDIA for a while so i couldn’t tell for sure. I know that nvidia raytracing works on linux, but I’m not sure how it goes with the open drivers. If the noveau performance and stability is still somewhat lacking in general, then if both open drivers and raytracing are important to you then AMD is still the better bet.