Does It Even Matter?

I choose the blue pill: intel integrated graphics

I recently upgraded from a GTX970 to an RX7600 and I thought that the driver experience would be better... I was wrong lmao.

One thing I always struggled with before I got an AMD gpu was screen tearing on X11. My monitors have different refresh rates and on my Nvidia gpu I'd get horrendous screen tearing for almost anything I did. The only workaround was to simply set both monitors to 60Hz, a problem that disappeared on AMD for me even om X11. The only time amd has been worse for me was what was mentioned in this video though. I needed OpenCL support and could not get it to work right even after a lot of tinkering

I agree, amd gets support for games first but in the end it doesnt matter. I just hate this discussion because if you recommend nvidia to anyone you get downvoted into oblivion or you get trash talked badly. If you want easy negative karma just say "nvidia isnt bad" on the linux gaming subreddit.

Well if you update your graphics card regularly I can see that both brands work. But if we are using an old nvidia gpu for longer than 10 years we will not be able to boot the computer (or use the dedicated gpu) because nvidia does not seem to offer more support than that (a workaround would be staying in a older kernel, but that has its own disadvantages). So if one is planning for a more long term use of the gpu I would say that AMD is the best option, because the drivers are builtin in the kernel (and linux rarely drops supports for older hardware).

I wonder how is it with intel dedicated graphics. Even if the performance was poorer, if the software stack is fine, then that would be very attractive option

I have an AMD GPU on Linux but whenever I use hardware encoding I just use my intel CPU's iGPU for it with quick sync, its so much better than AMD's encoding on par with nvenc imo

Well, at least the situation is slowly improving on both sides: NVK and Rusticl are steadily being developed. That means Vulkan in Mesa on Turing+ (and maybe even Kepler) as well as better OpenCL support across the board. free software ftw

AMD makes generally great video cards (good performance for their price), but I have not liked their drivers since the days of ATI (that's when I personally switched to Nvidia). I was recently upgrading a friend's computer with an RX 6500 XT and I ran into some issues that I've never encountered with Nvidia cards. For example, I got a jerky picture in Stellarium, as if the video card was outputting several new frames, and then one old. You may ask what distribution and driver did I used? Windows 10, naturally with proprietary drivers from the AMD website. Of course I had problems with Nvidia on Linux, especially with older hardware or hybrid graphics, but at least it worked fine on Windows. I don’t want to do anti-advertising for AMD, especially since I like that they make more open drivers. But for some reason, my attempts to try their video cards usually end in failure. Now I’m building a computer for a work colleague with a Ryzen 5600G and built-in Vega graphics. Hope this will work well.

Hey man, as always great video. Just wanted to share my prespective on using multiple nvidia gpus generations on linux. 1. Nvidia situation on laptop is horrible, few a resons as follows: 1.a Poor/Lack of gpu power managent on linux. 1.b On the fly switching (Nvidia Prime Advanced) not supported on linux. 1.c HDMI port on most laptop is hardwired to nvidia gpu. The biggest problem of using nvidia laptop gpu on linux is that most nvidia laptops are hardwired on HDMI port and since the drivers are not included with the kernel, External displays are not supported on boot. This may not seem like a problem, but if your laptop display breaks (Happened to me stopped work one day) then you are helpless as the laptop will not share the screen on external display.

Great info, thanks for this

Didn't know that for OBS, if you use an AMD GPU with Mesa, you can use hardware encoding using VA-API? You can specify your video card as a renderer using VA-API and encode with your GPU on OBS using Mesa rather than proprietary drivers. It's only if you want AMF specifically that you need the proprietary drivers.

I've been really happy with the open source drivers on Linux for AMD, but it really does drive me bonkers that I need to get an inferior proprietary driver to do any OpenCL stuff! I mean, I would use the proprietary AMD driver if it was the same or better in performance with games + I got my OpenCL. But they make you pick between the two. The biggest benefit to the open source AMD drivers for me though is that it lets me run OpenBSD in my dual boot ;D

Great videos! Keep up the good work! 👍

Great video! Can you comment on power consumption/battery life? I encountered that the lack of proper driver for Nvidia would make my battery life very short. I used my laptop with the GPU deactivated most of the time because of that. I was hoping that AMD drivers would be more efficient, really following the hybrid mode.

I used Linux on laptop with NVIDIA card. Eventually I switched out, as this was too annoying to maintain - NVIDIA drivers randomly breaking during updates or even TV via HDMI not working properly. On another laptop, this time with AMD dGPU, it actually works better than on Windows, as some games on DirectX seem to be working worse than they should - but it's fine on Linux with DXVK.

I went with RX 7900 XTX. Not having to install a driver on Fedora Atomic is a big plus.

Mesa will soon ship their own OpenCL driver implementation

Both are bad. Kernel 6.5 is showing constant visual glitches and audio glitches on my all AMD Ryzen 5 3500U integrated graphics laptop and Kernel 6.1 had stutters on devices that use fTPM, and it took months to fix it. I think it's more of a kernel problem than an AMD/Nvidia problem.

I really wonder how well this works with Intel Arc... Considering they also rely on Mesa, I assume they work well. Does anyone have any experiences with Arc GPUs on Linux under Wayland?