Hey this maybe a stupid question. I am considering on buying a GPU. I am in conflict between nvidia and AMD. I know AMD works better on linux in general but I am curious to follow the NVIDIA advancements as they go with the new open source kernel modules and stuff... I don't know if it is worth it to pick team green over team red. Also typically performance will be better with NVIDIA on compute and stuff like that.

P.S.

Yes, this is related to the previous post I made here.

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
    ·
    3 months ago

    Unless you are a power user who is confident in your ability to troubleshoot weird/esoteric issues and bugs, just go AMD.

    If there aren't any specific features you need from Nvidia, like CUDA for CAD/Render workloads, AMD is going to have a higher chance of #JustWorking and will give you awesome gaming performance.

    I've got a 6700XT paired with a 5800X3D running Nobara Linux for my main gaming rig. Love it to death, runs everything butter smooth.

    For instance, Deep Rock Galactic maxed settings at 1080p, I don't ever see it dip below about 160FPS, and most of the time it's between 180-210, which feels amazing on my 240Hz monitor.

    In defense of Nvidia, things are wayyy better than they were even 2-3 years ago, and the majority of folks, especially with older Nvidia GPUs, seem to have a pretty decent experience on Linux.

    That being said, I would estimate that roughly 75% of the posts I see from users who are having really odd/random issues with Linux have an Nvidia GPU.

    • Telorand@reddthat.com
      ·
      3 months ago

      Only recent issue I've seen from AMD folks is VRR problems via HDMI. No idea if that affects Nvidia users, but I'd imagine it's a small subset of AMD users experiencing that.

      • jrgd@lemm.ee
        ·
        3 months ago

        The VRR problems are specifically related to either monitors not supporting Freesync over HDMI or the user running a monitor expecting HDMI VRR to work on HDMI 2.1 specs (>4k@60hz or equivalent bandwidth negotiation requirements). I would concur a small subset of users is correct for the use-cases where this becomes a problem.

  • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
    ·
    3 months ago

    I don't think the new open-source modules will help bring the features to Linux. NVIDIA isn't interested in making their monopolist features reverse engineerable.

  • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.website
    ·
    3 months ago

    AMD unless you’re actually running AI/ML applications that need a GPU. AMD is easier than NVidia on Linux in every way except for ML and video encoding (although I’m on a Polaris card that lost ROCm support [which I’m bitter about] and I think AMD cards have added a few video codecs since). In GPU compute, Nvidia holds a near-dictatorship, one which I don’t necessarily want to engage in. I haven’t ever used an Intel card, but I’ve heard it seems okay. Annecdotally, graphics support is usable but still improving for gaming. Although its AI ecosystem is immature, I think Intel provides special Tensorflow/Torch modules or something, so with a bit of hacking (but likely less than AMD) you might be able to finagle some stuff into running. Where I’ve heard these shine, though, is in video encoding/decoding. I’ve heard of people buying even the cheapest card and having a blast in FFMPEG.

    Truth be told, I don’t mess with ML a lot, but Google Colab provides free GPU-accelerated Linux instances with Nvidia cards, so you could probably just go AMD or Intel and get best usability while just doing AI in Colab.

  • Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    ·
    3 months ago

    Single person’s data point:

    I’ve had numerous gpus-I’ve been all over the map for years. Sometimes amd sucks, sometimes nvidia sucks. Right now, I’m rocking a 4090 and it’s working better in endeavoros than I’ve ever seen nvidia work in linux. (I’ve always had problems with nvidia cards screen tearing, stuttering, and general installation issues).

    But honestly, those complaints have been resolved at least with my distro. I think both brands are in a good spot right now. I think you’re safe to buy whatever floats your boat.

    IMO

  • bastion@feddit.nl
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    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I must say, I switched to a system with AMD and there's no going back for me. If Linux is going to be your daily driver, it's absolutely AMD.

  • sovietknuckles [they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    I know AMD works better on linux in general but I am curious to follow the NVIDIA advancements as they go with the new open source kernel modules and stuff...

    How is it open source? In the history of the whole repository, there were 11 merged PRs in 2022 (when the project began), and no merged PRs after, even though lots of PRs have been submitted since then. There has never been an issue-fixing PR merged, and no issues or PRs are submitted by the maintainers of the project.

    A maintainer explains their workflow:

    Because we will be sharing this code with our proprietary driver, we won't be developing in the open for now. So far, our strategy is to apply proposed changes to our internal code base, merge pull requests on github, and then do one NVIDIA github commit per driver release (and because the internal code base also contains the change, the release-time commit should not revert the merged pull request). It is not a great workflow, but we're trying to navigate the constraints as best we can.

    All of their commits are tagged versions, none of which tell you in words what they did or what changed. As the maintainer says, they still do their actual development internally, and the GitHub repository does not contain that incremental work. Because the commits are releases only, there are only 66 commits on the main branch from May 2022 to the latest commit/release 2 weeks ago.

    So whatever benefit you were hoping to get from Nvidia's kernel modules being open source probably is not there.

    • Markaos@lemmy.one
      ·
      3 months ago

      How is it open source?

      How is it not? Open source doesn't mean you have to accept other people's code. And it is perfectly valid to only dump code for every release, even some GNU projects (like GCC) used to work that way. Hell, there's even a book about the two different approaches in open source.

      So whatever benefit you were hoping to get from Nvidia's kernel modules being open source probably is not there.

      It allowed the actual in-tree nouveau kernel module to take the code for interacting with the GSP firmware to allow changing GPU clock speed - in other words no more being stuck on the lowest possible frequency like with the GTX 10 series cards. Seems like a pretty decent benefit to me.

  • TomBombadil [he/him, she/her]
    ·
    3 months ago

    I started my Linux time on a 1080 and never really had issues. Never really knew I supposed to haha. Now on a AMD card that works great but actually took a bit more setup for myself to make work perfectly.

    So who knows

  • Lojcs@lemm.ee
    ·
    3 months ago

    Gpu brand shouldn't be a factor, just buy whatever's better value.

    I've used nvidia on Wayland for a year and the issues are greatly exaggerated, and if you have a cpu with an igpu you can plug your monitor(s) into the motherboard to get around wayland-related ones (there's probably some latency impact for games but I can't tell).

    Currently the problems (that I know of) with nvidia drivers are that colors get muted if you enable hdr, steam's web interfaces appear corrupted or flicker unless you resize them, there is no memory spillover to ram, and the nvidia 'x server' settings app doesn't support wayland.

    And keep in mind that issues tend to get resolved over time. When I first built my PC the nvidia gpu would cause xwayland apps to flicker and didn't support nigth light or transparent panels in kde. The amd igpu would turn the screen pure white if I changed windowing related kde settings. These don't happen anymore.