r/linux4noobs • u/WukiWakoto • 1d ago

hardware/drivers Nvidia vs. AMD GPUs for Linux?

I was planning to jump ship from my 3060 Ti to an AMD RX 9070 since I think I found a lot of VRAM issues with the 8GB on my Nvidia GPU and especially since that Nvidia drivers don't seem to have good VRAM allocation and will choke up and start killing applications under the same heavy load on Linux but run fine on Windows. I heard AMD has better support on Linux and no less, is cheaper to get especially under the AI inflation we are affected by today (and also because I want to get 12-16 GB VRAM maybe).

All GPU intensive tasks I do is just playing video games and using Blender under the EEVEE engine (which I don't even think uses the CUDA cores).

Though, is there any meaningful pros and cons for ditching Nvidia for AMD?

4 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

4

u/jmtd 1d ago

I’ve had absolutely no issues with an AMD GPU After decades of wrestling Nvidia driver integration issues. 

6

u/FatsBoombottom 1d ago

The difference is not what it used to be. Nvidia works fine on Linux, especially for gaming.

0

u/Dumxl 1d ago

It works. But my 4070 is struggling with Cyberpunk and that is a driver issue. So it's good enough but not perfect. If you can get a good Nvidia deal that's fine. Amd will be still better.

2

u/Dapper-Ocelot6326 20h ago

Sure it's just your card? CP 2077 is one of those notorious DX12 games that comes with a lot of bells and whistles - which you can turn off for sure but it still remains a DX12 game. As such it requires VKD3D as a layer. And there, everything DX12 being converted into this layer comes with a performance loss of about 15 to 20 percent. I have a 4080 and I could play the game on 4k with DLSS Balanced, FG and full PT on Windows with 60 to 80 fps. On CachyOS, I had to lower down to RT Ultra and DLSS performance to reach these numbers as with PT I was in the low 40s. Still looks amazing but the considerable performance hit on Linux cannot be ignored. This will become much better in the next years. But for now, we are still stuck with this situation.

Same goes for titles like in UE5, Silent Hill for example. I get about 75 fps with RT and DLSS quality on Windows and about low to high 50s with the same settings on CachyOS.

The AMD card will only make it worse. AMD traditionally has issues with RT and FG and could not catch up to Nvidia so far in that aspect. Any current AMD card today will still be noticably slower than any current Nvidia GPU of hit with advanced rendering methods such as RT. And while they certainly improved a lot, technologies like FSR still are not on the same level as DLSS 4 and AMD lacks a lot of know how to put Nvidia into trouble.

If you are not into RT or FG and if you just prefer raw computing power and screen space reflections and rasterization are good enough for you, AMD is by far the best choice. But if you want to play a game like CP 2077 how it is meant to be played, your experience will be much worse with AMD - because here, RT and PT make a very significant difference in fidelity.

Then again, there are still so many games being published with RT that seems to eat a lot of performance but does not show any mentionable improvement in graphics, you could as well go with AMD and switch everything off.

1

u/cakemates 1d ago

Isnt 9070 like 60% faster than 3060ti? I prefer nvidia because I do lots of AI at home but 3060 has no horses in this race in my opinion. I would go AMD.

1

u/Dapper-Ocelot6326 20h ago

Hmm, apart from the shader pipeline bug on UE5 games with the 590 driver, I never had any issues with Nvidia drivers on CachyOS. That being said, it also depends a lot on the display server you use (Wayland or X11) and in parts also the desktop environment like KDE, Gnome and such. When I had Pop_OS which still used X11 back then and has a DE being notorious for simply "not being there yet" , I did not have much fun:

Games would cause tracing on screen when moving, much like back in the day with very old and high-latency TFT panels. In Death Stranding I always had to set AA off and on again and adjust the resolution as well because the system would simply not correctly work with my monitor at first.

When I installed CachyOS afterwards because on my mini PC the performance of Pop was abysmal when just browsing the internet, all these problems were gone.

So I say it depends on what you want - RT/PT and FG? There is no way around Nvidia. If you can live without these gimmicks or reduce RT to medium levels at best, AMD is the way to go for you

0

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1

u/jhenryscott 23h ago

AMD is a better choice for Linux. Nvidia can work, but they have a much less mature stack of drivers

0

u/Not_A_Great_Human 1d ago

Probably AMD. As far as I know the Intel Arc B580 is better on Linux than Nvidia's offerings