Escapee from Nvidia: What AMD cards work best on Linux?

[birdie]

What are you exact problems with NVIDIA?

I've owned their cards for over 16 years already and so far I've had zero problems with their drivers.

However each of my friends who's ever had AMD cards, hates their drivers with passion.

AMD's drivers are usually bad, like really bad.

[Guest]

What are you exact problems with NVIDIA?

I've owned their cards for over 16 years already and so far I've had zero problems with their drivers.

However each of my friends who's ever had AMD cards, hates their drivers with passion.

AMD's drivers are usually bad, like really bad.

And I've had the opposite experience. I use AMD and drivers are hardly an issue (on Windows anyway; but even Linux is alright compared to what most people state). Meanwhile, I have a friend who complains of issues with NVIDIA's drivers, and he owns a single-GPU Alienware laptop.

Drivers are random. And it's also nice to note that people having issues will report them, whereas people without issues won't say anything. Both vendors have driver issues, and no side is perfect. And also note the manufacturer of the card can also mess up.

As for my card of choice, I use a Radeon HD 7850 that works fine. Being GCN might have more advantages later on down the road (like Mantle; if/when it comes to Linux).

[drspinderwalf]

What are you exact problems with NVIDIA?

I've owned their cards for over 16 years already and so far I've had zero problems with their drivers.

However each of my friends who's ever had AMD cards, hates their drivers with passion.

AMD's drivers are usually bad, like really bad.

I've been using their cards since 2007 and while they're GENERALLY fine, I had a sudden epiphany that my desktop experience just. plain. sucks with them.

I remember the 70-series driver completely effing up gnome's desktop way back when and it took them years to fix it. After the 80-series driver finally fixed all that and boosted performance by a lot, more things were broken. Suspend and resume were such a constant nightmare and often broke for me with their drivers. It was always just a game of 'find the right version'. Things have mostly been better in the last few years, but I've had the final straw with this crap:

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/729908/linux/-gt-334-21-redrawing-problems-in-gnome-3-10-3-12-gtx-580/1/

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/784322/linux/nvidia-340xx-causes-flickering-desktop-no-dual-monitor-possible-no-hd-videos-on-archlinux-x-ubunt/1/

The first link has been open for seven months now and it seriously messes up the desktop experience. Long story short, there's a fix that Nvidia needs to push before Gnome can push their fix and NOBODY from Nvidia has bothered to even acknowledge for seven months. It's just always one thing after another. I have recently had the pleasure of using a friend's Intel integrated chips and they're really SOLID. They're fast, they're open-source, and they're functional. She says that she's never had any problems with those chips and she does some moderate gaming (civ 4 on wine, terraria, minecraft).

I'm just ready to taste the air and try out the alternatives. I'm absolutely sold on the Intel chips, but I'd like a little more 'umph' in performance at the moment. So I'm gonna experiment with AMD because I've had some really pleasant experiences on livecds with what I imagine are well-suppored AMD cards.

Plus, with non-nvidia, I could get some 2009 features like KMS.

[edit] also, you didn't specify what driver your friend was using but I have absolutely no intentions of using binary blobs with AMD. I've dealt with that before (years ago, admittedly) and I don't think I ever want to again.

[boffo]

For those that like to have a nice out of the box (installation) experience, buy intel or amd. Don't buy nvidia if you don't care about 3D graphics.
I have an Amd APU and it's great with opensource drivers!

[chithanh]

I think it is not a good idea to buy a 6950/6970 series card today unless you get a very good deal. With the proprietary driver it is about as fast as a R7 260X or 265, and it consumes more power. Also the performance with the open source drivers is still a bit lacking and sometimes behind the 6870 even.

OTOH, $79.99 before shipping and after rebate is unmatched in value by any other offering. Tough call.

[stevenc]

HD6870 always seemed to work better on Linux than even some of their more recent cards. Although that may change someday in the future.

And if you prefer to use a free, open-source drivers, this has been considerably better than my experiences of using Nouveau.

[xeekei]

I second the HD 6870 notion. Try to find the 2 GB version.
Also, if you want to go RadeonSI, I recall seeing good numbers from R7 270. It beats the 6870 in some tests, and will probably only get better.

[Kano]

I would absolutely never buy an outdated gfx card. If you really want something from amd get the latest one, but selling the nvidia card before you tested it is stupid, bet try and send back in time

[xeekei]

I would absolutely never buy an outdated gfx card. If you really want something from amd get the latest one, but selling the nvidia card before you tested it is stupid, bet try and send back in time

Why? What's wrong with an "outdated" card? Especially since (s)he's not going to use the proprietary drivers?

[Guest]

Why? What's wrong with an "outdated" card? Especially since (s)he's not going to use the proprietary drivers?

At the very least, I wouldn't recommend buying anything non-GCN just because it seems that's what AMD is supporting nowadays. Plus when/if Mantle comes along, that'll be a nice reason for such a card.

Plus, the GCN architecture is nice for GPU computations, so things using OpenCL would benefit nicely from that.

Pretty sure the 7xxx series is fine with open-source drivers for the most part. The only real issue that could be a problem is this bug; but as for how much of an issue it is depends on what you do.