A graphics card for Linux, not for gaming

Please advise which graphics card model to use in the configuration:

  • Ryzen 3900x / 3950x processor
  • linux operating system - that’s why I think radeon and its open drivers will be a better choice
  • two high resolution monitors
  • development, web browsers, youtube, video
  • I do not play games

I care about trouble-free cooperation with linux and low temperatures.

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I think for just running displays with video players even a gtx1070 is fine, it’s what I have running two monitors (a 1440p and a 1080p) nicely. At least with Mint it’s super ez to use Nvidia gpus. IDK anything really about the Radeon ones, just what I see in the forums.

For example: AMD Fanboy - Ready to jump ship to Nvidia - Frustrated semi rant

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I would just look at something cheap in the used market.

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Take a look at GeForce GT 710. I think they’re $40-$50 new and should be able to power two high-res monitors.

Avoid Nvidia like the plague, everything just works a LOT better with AMD and free drivers.

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I beg to differ when we come to most recent graphics cards

but maybe some “older” amd cards would do the trick, like a r7 240, r7 370 (had this, was a breeze), maybe rx 550 would do, maybe wx 2100

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A lot of the issues people have with nvidia boils down to nouveau. The proprietary driver is often included in major distro repos and generally is hassle free. If you must have a libre driver then AMD is obviously the better way to go for now. I think nvidia is throwing some bones at the nouveau project but its still a long way from parity to the AMD driver. If you dont mind proprietary software in your install, the nvidia driver does a great job these days.

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I bought an AMD RX460 for basic graphics usage, two or three years ago. It’s my goto build card. I got mine new and it was about $70 (more after taxes).

Before that I was using an HD5750 but it was a very sad card in 2017. :slight_smile:

Both of those worked OK in Linux and I bet you can find those or something similar for a good used price.

Currently any AMD polaris card will get you perfect support right out the box with open drivers. So any RX460/470/480/550/560/570/580/590 or Radeon Pro WX2100/3100/3200/4100/5100/7100. Vega 56 and 64 will work the same and does have benefits but those cards are hard to get these days. Navi should be fine with a 20.04 based distro or any other system with up to date kernel. But I haven’t tested that yet myself. If support is finally good, Navi would be the way to go simply for support of newer video codecs and so on.

I don’t like nvidia as a company but even less on linux because of the closed drivers.

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Please don’t turn this into an AMD vs Nvidia pissing match. We’ve gone so, so long…

That said: GT 1030 is #winning in my book.

AMD screen teared to death when I ran it on Linux. Your mileage may vary, but I think giving “wrong think” feedback and input is necessary. I’ve heard their open source driver has improved significantly. At the end of the day it was always better than nouveau

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My setup at home consists of a 1080p ultra wide and a 4k TV. I had been using an RX570 for about a year and a half with no issues. I’ve just recently upgraded to a used 1080 which has also been working well after a touch of tweaking.

The system has had Arch, Fedora, PopOS and MX Linux, it worked flawlessly across the board with the RX 570. The GTX 1080 has been great as well and in MX is was no problem getting stable drivers working. I am often running games on the Ultrawide and Media on the TV and I can’t think of a single graphical issue I’ve had with the 1080 in the last year.

I’m sure something like an RX 460/560 will work and should be easy enough to find used on the market. Depending on what distro you run, you should have no issues getting a stable experience out of a use Nvidia card as well. Especially if you aren’t going to be gaming.

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Possibly a GT1030 or RX560…I am not too sure about the GT710 as I use to get screen tearing with video playback at 1440p on a GT610.

Both cards can be had new around the 100US range depending on models. It may not be the best value compared to the used market options but at least it’s new. It’s possible to get new mining variants of the RX560 on ebay in the 50US range but the physical display outputs are limited on these versions.

Agreed. Have been running a Gigabyte 1650 Super in a relatively new no-gaming build and the experience has been good. The card idles around 35-39C with the fans at 50 percent. I haven’t kept close track of the max temps, but I know it has never hit 60C because my fan curve ramps up at that point. GreenWithEnvy has worked well for monitoring temps and setting the fan curve. (This after temporarily mothballing a Radeon 5500xt due to stability problems. Had bought that card exactly for the 7nm process and low power consumption.)

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I’ve had no linux problems with open drivers on

RX480
RX550
RX560
Vega 10

they all use amdgpu and all work just fine.

Its really nice not having to worry about downloading third party drivers from Nvidia any more, I just update my system with DNF or APT and forget about video being a thing to manage.

I’d consider an rx560.

The 550 would do that job just fine as well, but the 560 isn’t much more expensive and if you DO want to do something using 3d it is significantly more powerful, more VRAM, etc.

That said, my rx550 in my work machine has been pretty solid - since the kernel caught up with it - the 550 has a different variant of Polaris to the other cards and support was a tad wonky initially very early on.

My work machine doesn’t run games or do 3d stuff (like yourself) and it is solid. The 550 doesn’t even need PCIe add-on power (just PCIe bus powered).

It is pretty much dead silent, in a HP elite desk of some form (Skylake 6700 in it).

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As I remember it, both Intel and Nvidia drivers for X.org include features to prevent screen tearing. However, they are kind of hacks that shouldn’t be necessary.

If you use Wayland instead of X screen tearing is eliminated. I haven’t seen it happening on my Vega 56 in Linux, anyway. Wayland Gnome on Ubuntu 20.04 seems to work great.

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With respect to Nvidia and AMD, this is inaccurate. I will still get “ripples” unless I change my nvidia-settings. Especially on Gnome.

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I’m not sure what you’re saying is inaccurate. In the X Server Intel has the “TearFree” setting and Nvidia does triple buffering I think. It’s been a long time since I ran Nvidia on Linux.

Both are not default settings because they use more VRAM and add display latency.

Wayland absolutely does not have screen tearing. Eliminating that was one of the primary design criteria.

Now, an application like Firefox can tear inside its own window. That’s the applications fault. And if it is running in the XWayland server there can be tearing inside the window too. Apps that have converted to using Wayland through the GTK3 toolkit don’t tear that I’ve observed, and Firefox runs well in Wayland mode these days too.

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Ah, I thought you were saying “If you use Wayland you will not have screen tearing by default”

I agree with you, you just have to do some tweaking

I was editing my answer because I realize I didn’t specify. I did mean that if you use Wayland you won’t have screen tearing. I added some detail above.

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I would get something passively cooled and low profile, like this asus 1030 for less than $100:
ASUS GT1030-SL-2G-BRK
I think there are also passively cooled GT710 for less than $50
nvidia opensource drivers (nouveau) are significantly slower than the official closed source drivers, but for your use case, I highly doubt you would notice a difference. From my experience they are stable enough especially with older chips like gt710 or 1030.
If you need a passively cooled radeon gpu, I think your options are quite limited, bulky and more expensive, since currently available AMD gpus are hot in comparison, it would take quite a radiator to cool one down.

Note: I did a quick seach and there seems to be silent HD6450 amd cards … But those are ancient, like ten years ago, I am not sure I would wanna buy one today.

Edit: Giving it another thought, I definitely wouldn’t buy anything older than 1030, as you need the hardware acceleration for decoding HEVC and VP9 video codecs.