AMD Fanboy - Ready to jump ship to Nvidia - Frustrated semi rant

Hello all,
Big AMD fanboy - what can I say I root for the little guys.
Really happy with what is happening in the CPU world … but cannot say the same for GPUs.
I run linux and love the community support, however the lack of a proper gui and most importantly the performance hit is really depressing. I run Arch and have not gamed in about a decade … but recently my young son expressed interest in Flight simming. This was once a big passion of mine and the little guy got me excited.

Then I did some Unigine Heaven benchmarks and got quite depressed with the linux vs windows performance on my RX 570 Armor OC. I realize this is not a high end card but the sheer losses were a bit much for me.

Thinking of jumping ship to Big Green … I run Arch/Plasma and aside from a small hickup with icons after wake from sleep (since fixed) never had an issue.

In my assessement AMD is just not competitive in this space at this time, a quick check on ebay and some older gtx 770 cards are getting more than my 570s for resale. That was the final clincher for me I think. Value proposition is not there [for me] anymore.

I cringe at the thought of going through 5700xt pain.
What are your experiences thoughts ?

Just run windows? Or get another gpu and run looking glass?

The used market is priced high right now because of all of the people buying computer stuff since they are at home all the time.

Is plasma not a proper GUI?

Unigine heaven is more of stress test utility than a reasonable benchmark imo. What does your current card not do?

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All you’ve mentioned is gaming/video acceleration at the moment. That’s Linux’ largest unique weak point right now.

If you don’t do things that necessitate the use of Linux, it might make sense to switch to Windows. :confused:

Or like @CybeastRaystriker said, use Looking Glass.

Look, Linux is always going to be server first desktop second. It’s also reactionary development, instead of proactive. Linux sees something that exists and doesn’t work, then they fix it.

And until AMD’s devs get their head in the game, they’re not going to get first-class performance with Linux. Nvidia’s GPUs get close to equal performance because they build a complete driver and ship it as a proprietary binary. They have full control over it, so they don’t have to worry about fitting into the Linux development cycle and don’t have to worry about open sourcing any secrets.

Window will never be an option for me as a full time OS.
10 is … well lets not go there.

I keep an Win 8.1 seperate ssd purely for updating devices or in the now thankfully super rare case that something ‘requires’ ms.

For the AMDGPU driver ?

I am not sure I agree with the assessment that Linux will always be server side prioritized or that proprietary blobs are what give nvidia a performance edge. I do however agree fully about AMD getting their head in the game. Which I guess was the motivation for this post.

After researching Looking Glass … will imho never be a serious option for Gaming … though I do appreciate the education on an alternative of which I was not aware.

Sgtawesomesauce you are right. Time to take off the rose colored glasses and buy Nvidia till AMD finally gets squared away in the GPU space.

Ooh… Your experiences is somewhat dissuading me from my future (whenever that will be) upgrade path I’m currently still on a GTX970.

Oh, tech wizards here do a lot of linuxy things and I’ve often get the impression that they do know a lot more of server and IT related stuff rather than normie desktop use case.

It is exactly what gives Nvidia its edge. See how proprietary drivers work between AMD and Nvidia and compare how they perform on open source drivers as well. Whatever open sourced improvement AMD makes in their open source drivers, Nvidia can theoretically get and integrate into their binary blobs and we wont know. Nvidia just takes and never gives back. Hence the love of AMD on us Linux users. Their open source drivers are great!

Well then say so. You switched contexts in the op without saying so.

Is wattmangtk not a good enough gui?

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I think there’s some misconceptions here but if you’re set on buying a GPU then I won’t stop ya :wink:

It’s self evident.

Server-first: Linux runs the world. Not to say that it doesn’t care about desktop, but Linux is funded by companies that use it on the server. That comes with gravitas.

Proprietary blobs: Nvidia doesn’t have to conform to the kernels standards, style or practices. They can do whatever they want, and they can develop at a much faster cadence. Additionally, by going closed source, they are unbound by the inherent insecurity of their trade secrets being known to the competitors simply by looking at the source code. It is well documented that amd keeps some of their special sauce out of the open source driver. If that translates to performance increases or not, I don’t know.

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I did. I thought the op was pretty clear.
Wattman, Radeon-Profile, Corectrl … ect which of these is AMD supported again ? This was the thrust of my op.

NO argument here. Love AMD for that very reason … sadly that does not equate to performance. I guess I just was really hoping to run the Flight Sim in wine and get somewhat close to windows performance.

Haha !! Wish I dn’t have to but Multiplayer Combat Flight Sims at 1440p require more juice than my rx570. :grinning:

Thanks for letting me vent and face the music. See you in the IL2 Great Battles skies soon.
Nvidia 2060 here I come.

Cheers everyone !

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DCS world?

AMD should indeed start to getting their stuff together,
and develop a proper driver.
Not only for Linux but also for Windows.
And not just a half ass decent one.

K


I do agree that AMD should do a lot more of work on their Linux driver, and should port over/create/support a GUI.

Negative. Do you fly ?

IL2 Great Battles

Link and pic (hope that is ok)

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AMEN !

I do, but not IL2

I gamed with an rx 580 for two years on ubuntu. It ran everything I threw at it.

Not every game will run well on Linux, it’s not only about drivers but also about wrappers, graphics apis and game quality. In this case, if the game you want to play runs well on amd, then fine, otherwise you need a better graphics card.

There’s nothing to be competitive about. Linux Desktop isn’t really a thing it’s a hobby, and linux gaming is even less of a thing.

I’ve found the drivers perfectly adequate for gaming on linux. Are there any specific games you’re having performance issues with?

As for a GUI, there is corrected but I’m not sure why would anyone care to need one? It’s just a graphics driver, if you’re looking for gaming specific performance tweaking then you should use the windows platform for your gaming instead, as this isn’t a focus on Linux for either AMD or Nvidia for obvious reasons.

Looking at the benchmarks against games, and and Nvidia both have high performers, Nvidia have a few more but it just depends on the card you want.

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The numbers say you are right. I think that as long as that mindset is prevalent you will always be right.
Personally I am glad that there are others pushing to make my linux desktop more than a hobby.
My own opinion is polar opposite. I AM competitive and believe in rising up to a standard as opposed to settling for minimum floor.

But as the saying goes … "Wish in one hand and **** in the other and see which one fills up first.

I will stay with linux even though it is a hobby, as I believe it is the superior os … but hardware decisions will be based on hard numbers as opposed to ‘feelings’ for me going forward.

Cheers everyone and thanks for your thoughts.
/end semi rant