Best distro + AMD drivers for gaming?

Hi all! So I’ve recently switched to Linux (although I still have Windows on the second drive), want to use it for gaming (native, Steam and GOG) and I have 2 big questions:

  1. Should I stick to Ubuntu 18.04 which I have at the moment? Again - I will use it for games, browsing, music and other regular stuff.

  2. What are the best drivers for my RX480? I currently have amdgpu-pro as it works and comes with Vulcan, I’ve seen on the phoronix.com that is leading quite a lot of benchmarks. I really like idea of free drivers (mesa) but tbh I like performance boost even more :wink:

Debate and share your precious opinions!

Let me preface this by saying I am NOT particularly experienced with Linux - I can do stuff, but not a ‘power user’, and this is just my opinion.

People worry far too much about which distro to use. I like to think of it like a house. The kernel is the foundations and the distro is the way you decorate it. You can interact with it all you like any way you like, but at the end of the day its still a house, and you still live in it.

If you want bleeding edge, newest of everything, Id say Manjaro - its basically Arch, but with a better (again IMHO) community who will actually help you rather than screech READ THE WIKI NOOB
Bleeding edge can come with issues, so if youre not able to fault find, or roll back updates then Id suggest NOT a rolling release yet.

For non Arch/rolling Id say Ubuntu. The forums cover a vast array of issues, there is a guide for almost every problem. Ubuntu is also the only Distro aside from SteamOS with steam support.
If you want to use the newset kernel you can - use UKUU to do it and keep at least one known working kernel for if you ruin into problems.

These days with Lutris, Steam/proton and DXVK, along with Snaps and Flatpacks, the distro you use is becoming more and more irrelevant.

Again just my 2c, hope it helps. There are quite a few VERY experienced Linux users on this forum, be open to all advice and in the end, choose what suits you.

To be fair though 90% of issues are solved by RTFM so there’s that.

Other then that I agree, distro is more of a personal choice and if you install the first one properly (e.g. /home on a separate partition) you can hop between them rather freely anyway.

As for drivers, I’m wondering why you have amdgpu-pro in the first place, as amdgpu (the gaming oriented driver) should be enabled by default anyway.

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I’ve googled (DuckDuckGoed to be specific :wink: ) best AMD drivers after OS installation and found it recommended with good performance and Vulcan included.

AMD drivers are now included in the kernel. So unless you have something like Vega 64, or need the newest Vulcan libraries, your card should work no matter what with the newer kernels. anything after 4.17 I believe.

So you should already be up to date, but it may behoove you to update your Vulcan libraries.

I forget how to do that though.

Vega 64 worked fine for me under fresh Fedora 29 install.

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I think he is referring to the fact that the closed source driver still outperforms Mesa a bit in a few games on Vega hardware.

Don’t think he was referring to compatability as last time I checked the closed source drivers crashes with a few games.

Precisely - I’ve not tried open source driver, just checked few benchmarks and seen slight advantage of amdgpu-pro with RX580.

How exactly do you update the AMD free drivers (the ones that come with the kernel)?
Do you need to install newer kernels?

The open source drivers and especially RADV seem to have better compatibility. Phoronix benchmarks are cherry picked for the most part (amdgpu-pro fails in a lot of games).
With Ubuntu you have the option of mesa ppas and easy to install kernel packages, so it is very trivial to go “bleeding-edge” in regards to video drivers (and rolling back in case of a problem).
Personally I use Kubuntu with the oibaf ppa, making sure to install the latest kernel (right now I’m using 4.19.1). Works pretty well and can use Proton with most of my Windows only games.

I have a Vega 64 Fedora 29 with AMD-GPU (open-source) and two of my three high refresh rate monitors are not working. Well not working at their advertised refresh rates. First I thought it’s my stupid monitor, then I bought a LG ultrawide at 75hz just two days ago. It’s not even reporting an option to switch. It just stays at 60hz.

As far as I know there is nothing to do other than to wait and see if they fix it. Only downgrading helps. For instance Ubuntu 18.04 stock lights all my monitors up fine. But that’s hardly a fix if you need the newest to play around with Proton and DXVK.

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There is an issue with amdgpu and some kernels that affects a wide range of things like monitor refresh rates and frequency scaling. Some fixes (particularly power management) were introduced in the latter point releases for the 4.18 kernel.
As far as I know, FreeSync is still a work in progress and is not expected to land until the 4.20 kernel. So there is that too.

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The drivers that are built into the kernelware, in my opinion, what you should use. You can use the proprietary drivers, but those are better suited to the workstation cards.

As for distro, whatever you want. Theres no difference in any distro really, its junt what tools are you used to.

Theres no ‘gaming’ distro. Thats not a thing. Hasn’t been for like 20 years lol.

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I have an RX 480 I jumped around distro’s for awhile when I first got it back in kernel 4.13 or 4.14. Long time ago. I settled on Fedora and have been gaming fine all the way to Fedora 29 now.

AMDGPU is build into the kernel so newer is better in general :slight_smile:

Most games support ubuntu so if you do get stuck you can email the developer.

Running fedora I had a few developers tell me I would have to wait or not supported. The last few took close to a year. The developer did email me when it was fixed however. I guess there were closing out the bug I submitted.

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18.04 is a good place to start as you will find lots of help if something goes wrong. Which flavor you choose depends simply on your taste. If you come from windows, Gnome might be a bit overwhelming at first, but absolutely feasible to handle. Cinnamon, Mate or KDE might be better choices for a former win user. Linux Mint would be my recommendation.

On the other hand, as time progresses, this Long Term Support (LTS) Release 18.04 will get a bit long in the tooth. The kernel is pretty much stuck at 4.15 as are the drivers. The drivers can be updated via PPAs (as long the PPA is around).

Which brings us to the choice of driver. As long as you don’t need opencl (like for cryptomining or BOINC workloads) the amdgpu open source driver is just fine. I own a RX480 myself and seldom have performance issues. Mostly due to bad optimisation in the game itself.

When you feel comfortable and secure with an Ubuntu derivative, you may want to step up your game and try an Arch derivative. Manjaro and Antergos are great choices if you want a rolling release with much more up to date software, which might be occasionally more buggy than you were used from an Ubuntu derviative. At the moment, Arch is sporting kernel 4.18.9, mesa (the graphics driver) is at 18.2.6 on the jump to 18.3. If you, for any reason, need even the most bleeding edge 19.0 it’s not a very big deal to get set it up. Though it is necessary for you to understand what to do when the edge has cut to deep and something breaks. (As happened to me with 19.0, which I had to downgrade to 18.2.6)

Go step by step, so if you step in a puddle, only one foot gets wet. :wink:

Hope I could help.

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Ubuntu / manjaro / fedora.

I’m using the first two, both are fine.

thanks a lot for you input guys, I’ve settled down for Ubuntu 18.04 but updated kernel to 4.19.8 and Mesa. All works great so far!

One more question - is there any GUI software to overclock my RX480 (like Wattman in Win)?

Cheers

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Not at the moment. We have a user working on a terminal script for this, as part of our devember challenge though. It’s linked below.

It’s being focused on Vega, but I’m sure it’ll work just fine with RX 400 series cards as well.

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Not entirely true :slight_smile:

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Thanks, good stuff, I will give it a go and post some feedback here.