I understand that AMD drivers are open source and less of a hassle to work compared to Nvidia. But what else? What model should I look for? I don’t care for raytracing or other dumb gimmicks. Just want to run my map games and cowboy games without lag and crashes. Upscaling compatible is preferred in case I want to play newer slop without buying a new card.
Do you already have a system or are looking to build a new one? If its new I'd say just go AMD if it's Linux you're running because half the Nvidia features you'd get on the card don't even work with their crappy blob drivers. Its probably gotten better since the last time i tried but its not a plug and play experience. I don't believe anyone who says it works fine I'm like the biggest linux advocate I've been using it for almost 2 decades but nothing on linux has ever been as simple as "it just works" especially for nvidia.
There are some decent value AMD cards on the market something like the 7800xt wins out over the 4070 at the same price point. You're also more likely to be able to use the full feature set of an AMD card on Linux and it will work without any issues on Wayland which is important as more and more distros are dropping xorg completely. Cheaper AMD cards in the 6000 series have very competitive price to performance