GTX 1060 vs. RX 480 - The ~$200 GPU Decision For Linux Gamers

[Ericg]

The open AMD drivers are such a better path forward that buying Nvidia for Linux at this point is just short-sighted.

Okay, so to all the haters and naysayers: I don't care

Michael was kind enough to snag this card up for me (thank you!) as a replacement / side upgrade for my R9 290. I will continue to use both cards because I have two systems running, one of them using the R9 (Windows) and one of them currently using Skylake integrated (Linux. More details on my setup coming in a future article). This will let me test games under either system, as well as testing out games using both the AMD FOSS stack and the Nvidia closed source stack.

Additionally, beyond the better power usage, having an Nvidia card lets me test the upcoming improvements to Nvidia support under Fedora, my preferred distro.

[faldzip]

So there several flaws of opensource AMD driver mentioned so there choice is to but GTX 1060 where you have to use binary blob... So why not consider RX480 with binary blob? I have this installed and HDMI audio just works, performance wise my R7 260X equals GTX 760 in DX:MD (vompared to phoronix tests) while it is rather 750ti competition.

[Gusar]

some idiots can't understand that nvidia has one driver for all platforms

Your interpretation that an all-platform driver means "there is no linux driver", *that* is the idiotic thing here.

[eydee]

The ~$200 GPU Decision For Linux Gamers

The $200 GPU which is sold for 300€...

[birdie]

[QUOTEWhen weighing all factors, Eric ended up choosing the GeForce GTX 1060. There is the binary driver, but once that driver is installed, you can basically expect all functionality to be working, performance basically on-par with Windows, and new Linux games to be working from day-one. ][/QUOTE]

Except resume after suspend is broken with NVIDIA binary driver for too many people. When I had my GTX 660 it didn't work at all - the PC was dead after resume. Now that I have a GTX 1060 card, it seemingly works, aside from the fact that after resume there are various visual glitches to the point that the X.org server restart is required to keep everything working properly.

[helloworld922]

So there several flaws of opensource AMD driver mentioned so there choice is to but GTX 1060 where you have to use binary blob... So why not consider RX480 with binary blob? I have this installed and HDMI audio just works, performance wise my R7 260X equals GTX 760 in DX:MD (vompared to phoronix tests) while it is rather 750ti competition.

For some reason the AMD proprietary driver doesn't handle opengl ES right, so certain programs segfault, or don't draw correctly: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...n-ubuntu-16-04

I just recently got an Rx480 and have this issue. Hopefully this gets fixed soon, but for now the open source driver is working just fine for me. If only the open source OpenCL stack was in better shape, then I'd have no reason to want to install the binary blob (I do double precision GPGPU stuff, which is why I wanted the AMD card in the first place).

[GreatEmerald]

Okay, so to all the haters and naysayers: I don't care

Michael was kind enough to snag this card up for me (thank you!) as a replacement / side upgrade for my R9 290. I will continue to use both cards because I have two systems running, one of them using the R9 (Windows) and one of them currently using Skylake integrated (Linux. More details on my setup coming in a future article). This will let me test games under either system, as well as testing out games using both the AMD FOSS stack and the Nvidia closed source stack.

Additionally, beyond the better power usage, having an Nvidia card lets me test the upcoming improvements to Nvidia support under Fedora, my preferred distro.

Of course, in your case it makes a lot of sense. But your case is probably more of an exception rather than a rule around here.

[starshipeleven]

The $200 GPU which is sold for 300€...

So what? all GPUs get the euro-fun-tax, not just these.

[bug77]

Okay, so to all the haters and naysayers: I don't care

Michael was kind enough to snag this card up for me (thank you!) as a replacement / side upgrade for my R9 290. I will continue to use both cards because I have two systems running, one of them using the R9 (Windows) and one of them currently using Skylake integrated (Linux. More details on my setup coming in a future article). This will let me test games under either system, as well as testing out games using both the AMD FOSS stack and the Nvidia closed source stack.

Additionally, beyond the better power usage, having an Nvidia card lets me test the upcoming improvements to Nvidia support under Fedora, my preferred distro.

I got the SC model instead and I couldn't be happier. I'm not whether the factory overclock amounts to anything as the card seems to have no problem boosting to nearly 2GHz (and staying there), but nothing beats the peace of mind of knowing your new purchase will be functional no matter what distro you throw at it.
And one more thing: this is one of those designs that turns off its fan when not under load.

[haplo602]

gaming ? nvidia all the way ... regular desktop ? AMD has slight edge ...