NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 / RTX 4090 Linux Performance

[avis]

As an owner of GPUs from both vendors, I agree with this. It may perform better on gaming/compute tasks but the overall desktop experience is shit on any modern composited DE because anything using the GPU stutter everything else with just a threat of a fart.

I've been using NVIDIA under Linux since the late 90s and I've not had any major issues whatsoever.

No idea what "the overall desktop experience is shit on any modern composited DE" is or implies. I've not seen it. I've not heard of any major complaints from KDE/Gnome users running Xorg either. Of course, if "desktop experience" is another way of saying "Wayland under NVIDIA sucks" - that's correct. But it would be pertinent to be precise in complaining about something or shitting on NVIDIA which is oh so popular here in Phoronix.

After all the company forces people to buy its GPUs and use them under Linux. Oh, wait, they don't. Why do Linux fans feel so disgusting, I've no idea. You love Linux? Go and buy stuff which is known to work (well) under Linux.

Again, why do we have a 10000th topic here on Phoronix about NVIDIA? This company is pure evil, move on, forget about it! OK?

Let people discuss its products for God's sake. It's not a topic about "I hate NVIDIA", it's a RTX 4090/4080 review.

[user1]

1. Haven't had screen tearing for over a decade now thanks to

Option "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {ForceCompositionPipeline=On, ForceFullCompositionPipeline=On}"

Try it, it works. Besides tearing is not an NVIDIA issue, it's an Xorg issue. There's none under Wayland (which doesn't work perfectly - no need to remind me of that).

2. "Poor Wayland stability" will be resolved sooner or later when enterprise starts to use it. So far all the major professional applications work perfectly under Xorg. There's also an issue of outdated Wayland design in terms of synchronization which is not NVIDIA's fault and which is the main reason behind their most recent struggles.

3. "Breakages with the Linux kernel" has been a non-issue for 99% of Linux users out there for quite some time now. In fact I've been using the vanilla kernel since forever (late 90s) and I last had issues maybe five years ago. The vast majority of Linux users have what their distro has in store and they weren't really affected.

4. NVIDIA is indeed better in terms of gaming and graphics standards support (OpenGL, Vulkan). OpenCL is a different story but NVIDIA has a much more powerful proprietary solution pretty much the entire world uses.

5. Lastly, NVIDIA has a much better regression testing. I welcome you to AMD's bug tracker to get a sense of how many regressions each Linux kernel has. It doesn't help that you cannot use a certain AMD driver because they are tied to kernel releases - it's yet another Linux kernel "perk". On the other hand with NVIDIA you can use any of the last let's say three to ten releases depending on your kernel version.

6. NVIDIA Linux drivers absolutely have a fair share of serious issues but you've not listed any of them. The ones you've listed are irrelevant.

"I can't help but laugh" - sorry, couldn't help repeating you.

1. I actually tried it and it's a terrible solution. It causes random stuttering and horrible input lag. Maybe it's ok if you're using something like Xfce, but on compositing window managers like KDE and Gnome it's a no no. Yes, screen tearing is an X issue, but somehow Mesa drivers have mitigated it a long time ago. I've never experienced screen tearing on Xorg with AMD since ages ago.

2. We'll see about that. For now it doesn't look soon.

3. Look at r/Fedora and r/openSUSE. Almost all complaints about unbootable system are caused by Nvidia.

4. It is better for compute and ray tracing, but gaming in general is more of a mixed bag. In many cases AMD actually performs better in certain games, especially those that use OpenGL. Also, please explain how is it "better in supporting OpenGL and Vulkan" than AMD or Intel.

5. Do you have a source about Nvidia's regression testing? I do agree however that Linux DRM drivers in general need better regression testing.

6. I know it has other issues as well, but how is that link you provided different from the one you provided for AMD. I see both have their fair share of issues.

[CochainComplex]

1. Haven't had screen tearing for over a decade now thanks to

Option "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {ForceCompositionPipeline=On, ForceFullCompositionPipeline=On}"

Try it, it works. Besides tearing is not an NVIDIA issue, it's an Xorg issue. There's none under Wayland (which doesn't work perfectly - no need to remind me of that).

2. "Poor Wayland stability" will be resolved sooner or later when enterprise starts to use it. So far all the major professional applications work perfectly under Xorg. There's also an issue of outdated Wayland design in terms of synchronization which is not NVIDIA's fault and which is the main reason behind their most recent struggles.

3. "Breakages with the Linux kernel" has been a non-issue for 99% of Linux users out there for quite some time now. In fact I've been using the vanilla kernel since forever (late 90s) and I last had issues maybe five years ago. The vast majority of Linux users have what their distro has in store and they weren't really affected.

4. NVIDIA is indeed better in terms of gaming and graphics standards support (OpenGL, Vulkan). OpenCL is a different story but NVIDIA has a much more powerful proprietary solution pretty much the entire world uses.

5. Lastly, NVIDIA has a much better regression testing. I welcome you to AMD's bug tracker to get a sense of how many regressions each Linux kernel has. It doesn't help that you cannot use a certain AMD driver because they are tied to kernel releases - it's yet another Linux kernel "perk". On the other hand with NVIDIA you can use any of the last let's say three to ten releases depending on your kernel version.

6. NVIDIA Linux drivers absolutely have a fair share of serious issues but you've not listed any of them. The ones you've listed are irrelevant.

"I can't help but laugh" - sorry, couldn't help repeating you.

If one would write such a Hommage to AMD. The threat would be tormented by your comments. But anyway I'm glad that it works well in your case (this is meant seriously)

[avis]

1. I actually tried it and it's a terrible solution. It causes random stuttering and horrible input lag. Maybe it's ok if you're using something like Xfce, but on compositing window managers like KDE and Gnome it's a no no. Yes, screen tearing is an X issue, but somehow Mesa drivers have mitigated it a long time ago. I've never experienced screen tearing on Xorg with AMD since ages ago.

2. We'll see about that. For now it doesn't look soon.

3. Look at r/Fedora and r/openSUSE. Almost all complaints about unbootable are caused by Nvidia.

4. It is better for compute and ray tracing, but gaming in general is more of a mixed bag. In many cases AMD actually performs better in certain games, especially those that use OpenGL. Also, please explain how is it "better in supporting OpenGL and Vulkan" than AMD or Intel.

5. Do you have a source about Nvidia's regression testing? I do agree however that Linux DRM drivers in general need better regression testing.

6. I know it has other issues as well, but how is what that link you provided different from AMD. I see both have their fair share of issues.

1. Not noticed stuttering or input lag. Tested in CSGO. Oh, I don't use a compositing WM - I find them useless, flashy and distracting. Maybe that's why I've not had the issues you describe. But then compositing WMs enable VSync by default, so here's an input lag for you. It's inevitable. And with VSync on you shouldn't be getting tearing at all. In short I have more questions about your "experience" than answers. You are talking as if you had an NVIDIA GPU ages ago. If AMD and Intel work so "well", why are you still on NVIDIA?

3. Unbootable? Never ever heard about that. Are you talking about Secure Boot? That's a known issue. Take it to Linux distros which continue to refuse to sign NVIDIA drivers even though they perfectly can. Not an NVIDIA issue.

4. Games generally run better under Windows, not Linux. Let's be brutally honest here.

5. Too lazy to find the sources right now but geforce.com has info on that. At least for Windows they cite many thousands of hours of regression testing for each Windows driver. I can imagine their Linux driver getting a whole lot less of that but it shares a lot of code with their Windows driver and directly benefits from it. On the other hand AMD and Intel open source drivers don't share anything with their Windows drivers.

6. Yeah, all GPUs under Linux have a fair share of issues but according to Linux fans "NVIDIA is just bad, nothing but bad". That's so insincere it's just outrageous.

[WannaBeOCer]

The RTX 4090/4080 are beast compared to AMD’s 7000 series. When it comes to performance per watt they’re even. Nvidia going with 4nm definitely paid off.

I switched from a Radeon VII to a Titan RTX in 2020 and haven’t been happier. At that time the ACO compiler was still in beta. Going from AMD to Nvidia felt like a night and day difference in terms of time to play a game. I’m sure this improved with the ACO compiler but that ruined my AMD experience.

Edit: Forgot to mention during that time I had to make all my configs manually in regards to enabling VRR on AMD. While on Nvidia I just had to check a box in their Nvidia settings. Enabling overclocking was a pain too on AMD compared to Nvidia on Linux since it was a boot parameter.

Haven’t had any issues with driver installs/updates. Nvidia drivers were easy to install on the distros I used. For example Solus has Doflicky. Nobara Project auto detects my card and prompts for an install. Ubuntu installs the driver during the setup. I could see an issue with the latest generation cards, but that’s an issue for all GPU manufacturers.

[avis]

If one would write such a Hommage to AMD. The threat would be tormented by your comments. But anyway I'm glad that it works well in your case (this is meant seriously)

I'd love to write something good about AMD but over the past decade I've only touched their GPUs once, it was an RX 5600 XT which worked horribly both under Windows and Linux (black screens, instability including BSODs, crashing games), so after six months of use I sold it to a miner. The whole series was marred with HW issues some people claim are unresolved to this day. I cannot confirm or refute those - but you can visit r/AMD and check for yourself.

[avis]

The RTX 4090/4080 are beast compared to AMD’s 7000 series. When it comes to performance per watt they’re even. Nvidia going with 4nm definitely paid off.

I switched from a Radeon VII to a Titan RTX in 2020 and haven’t been happier. At that time the ACO compiler was still in beta. Going from AMD to Nvidia felt like a night and day difference in terms of time to play a game. I’m sure this improved with the ACO compiler but that ruined my AMD experience.

In terms of energy efficiency GeForce 40 series cards are much better than RX 7000 series cards but I expect upcoming AMD cards (RX 7800, 7600, etc) to fair better in this regard because they will be "classical" monolithic designs unlike 7900 XT/XTX which have the chiplet design which cannot be as efficient.

[milmil]

My experience so far with NVidia on Linux is that if I had to use it on my desktop any longer, I would simply go back to Windows (or get a lobotomy, they are both the same) . Instead of that, I just sold my NVidia card and bought an AMD 6800XT, I have 0 problems with it, everything works great for desktop and gaming tasks.

[user1]

1. Not noticed stuttering or input lag. Tested in CSGO. Oh, I don't use a compositing WM - I find them useless, flashy and distracting. Maybe that's why I've not had the issues you describe. But then compositing WMs enable VSync by default, so here's an input lag for you. It's inevitable. And with VSync on you shouldn't be getting tearing at all. In short I have more questions about your "experience" than answers. You are talking as if you had an NVIDIA GPU ages ago. If AMD and Intel work so "well", why are you still on NVIDIA?

3. Unbootable? Never ever heard about that. Are you talking about Secure Boot? That's a known issue. Take it to Linux distros which continue to refuse to sign NVIDIA drivers even though they perfectly can. Not an NVIDIA issue.

4. Games generally run better under Windows, not Linux. Let's be brutally honest here.

5. Too lazy to find the sources right now but geforce.com has info on that. At least for Windows they cite many thousands of hours of regression testing for each Windows driver. I can imagine their Linux driver getting a whole lot less of that but it shares a lot of code with their Windows driver and directly benefits from it. On the other hand AMD and Intel open source drivers don't share anything with their Windows drivers.

6. Yeah, all GPUs under Linux have a fair share of issues but according to Linux fans "NVIDIA is just bad, nothing but bad". That's so insincere it's just outrageous.

1. So you basically confirm that with Nvidia you'll get better desktop experience only if you're using non compositing X11 desktops. I was also talking about input lag when dragging windows for example. Not when gaming. Specifically in X11 session, compositing desktops usually have the ability to disable the compositor like KDE, or fullscreen unredirection like Gnome/Compiz in order to prevent stutter and input lag in games. I don't own Nvidia, but I have been using it for some time while I was waiting for a motherboard replacement in 2020.

3. No, this is after doing a simple kernel update. It's unrelated to secure boot which afaih, lately works better with Nvidia.

4. Not in my experience. Since I have AMD, its Linux OpenGL driver is vastly superior to the one on WIndows, so its not unusual to get twice the performance on Linux in some games. Even with DXVK I actually get better performance than on WIndows in most of my games. There are also cases where DXVK performs better than native DX on Nvidia as well.

6. I actually never said that. Notice how I mentioned some good point about Nvidia like superior ray tracing performance. Also, when it comes to the driver with the best stability track record among all drivers on both Windows and Linux, I would say Nvidia Windows driver is the best one.

[clapbr]

I've been using NVIDIA under Linux since the late 90s and I've not had any major issues whatsoever.

No idea what "the overall desktop experience is shit on any modern composited DE" is or implies. I've not seen it. I've not heard of any major complaints from KDE/Gnome users running Xorg either. Of course, if "desktop experience" is another way of saying "Wayland under NVIDIA sucks" - that's correct. But it would be pertinent to be precise in complaining about something or shitting on NVIDIA which is oh so popular here in Phoronix.

After all the company forces people to buy its GPUs and use them under Linux. Oh, wait, they don't. Why do Linux fans feel so disgusting, I've no idea. You love Linux? Go and buy stuff which is known to work (well) under Linux.

Again, why do we have a 10000th topic here on Phoronix about NVIDIA? This company is pure evil, move on, forget about it! OK?

Let people discuss its products for God's sake. It's not a topic about "I hate NVIDIA", it's a RTX 4090/4080 review.

Good for you birdie, but that doesn't change facts.

Why don't you just open a couple of lightweight OpenGL apps on X11 with vsync on and see what happens Or if you think that's too synthetic, open a mpv window with display sync and see the whole desktop crawl to shit. Or open a simple youtube video, and try to open anything that uses the GPU, including new composited windows. Try to resize windows while doing that.

The only reason you think that's normal is because, as you said, you've only used nvidia cards ever.

The proprietary Nvidia driver is the only one that stutter on all those situations, even when a simple surface spawns to the screen EVERYTHING ELSE blocks long enough to miss a a few or in some cases a gazillion vblanks.

Won't even get into animations, you'd better disable those on nvidia unless you want to spend half your time with the desktop stuck waiting for it to finish.

It's not a particularly unknown issue either, it's been a known fact for years and every bug report on DE's/compositors end up blaming the Nvidia driver for not playing nice and ignoring the implicit sync DRM infrastructure.

Also couldn't care less about wayland, but FWIW even with all it's nvidia and non-nvidia quirks it vsyncs smoothly most of the time, unlike x11.