Which GPU to choose for Linux gaming?
so my old GPU died a few days ago and I was thinking which brand of GPU to get next. AMD or Nvidia? I've heard Nvidia drivers are very annoying with Linux but I've never had an AMD GPU before. Which would be better? I'll sometimee switch to Windows to play specific games as well.
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Short answer: AMD
Long answer: AMD used to be very bad, NVIDIA has always been the same, i.e. if you're willing to use proprietary drivers it works, but it has some hiccups. A while back AMD open source their drivers so the game turned around, nowadays they're very easy and compatible from what I've heard. I've used NVIDIA for over a decade, but my next card Winn be AMD for sure.
PS: if you're still in doubt, the latest Linux kernel purposefully broke the NVIDIA proprietary driver because NVIDIA has been copyright infringing the Linux kernel by using functions that are considered so integral to the kernel that if you have to use them you work should be considered derivative and be bounded by GPL licence.
No, they abandoned their proprietary driver and joined development of existing mesa driver. Basically as if Nvidia joined nouveau.
Pre-Pascal GPUs aren't supported by closed source driver, so your only option there is nouveau.
He's asking to buy a new one, so old cards not working is not really an issue. But are you sure about the Turing line (i.e. 20 series)? I thought the Maxwell (i.e. 7 series) was the oldest you can use on the proprietary drivers. In fact up until recently I had a 1080 that I used with the proprietary drivers.
Oops. Pre-Pascal? The one after Maxwell.
Also Maxwell AFAIK only 750, 700-780 except 750 are Kepler.
Do you know if nvidia still has issues with Wayland or are nvidia and MAD on par nowadays in that area?
The only way nVidia works well with Wayland is with nouveau
Their proprietary drivers still don’t work. They announced plans to make them work better, but they haven’t put in the work to merge them yet
Sounds like currently AMD is a safer bet if one was in the market for a new card.
Thanks for your answer.
Last I tried it didn't worked, however last I told Reddit/Lemmy that NVIDIA didn't worked on Wayland I was downvoted to hell and told it obviously worked and had worked for a long time. So in theory it works, but I was never able to get it to work and I have given up trying until I get an AMD card.
To add to the AMD part, RDNA3 drivers were actually quite bad at launch, I think they were mostly fixed only by April-May 2023. Now they work great. Also, if you're interested in AI, stick with Nvidia. You can run most stuff on AMD cards, but it's always an issue (The main one I'm having is that a lot of stuff depends on torch 2.0, while there's only 2.1 for ROCm 5.5+)