New build, stuck with some existing compenents looking for advice before I blow any more money :)

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I have a RYZEN 2700X on an auros 470X Ultra Gaming OC’d to just under 4.2Ghz Noctura D-series twin fan.

I got this second hand, off a crypto miner who was using it to mine Verus, and it only had 4GB of ram. I since added 2x16Gb Gskill SniperX but due to the stupid motherboard, cant get it to clock any higher than 3200mhz. Sadly FlareX was out of stock at good speeds in the whole of Australia, so I got what I could get. The 3600 was a steal at $500 though :smiley:

I also have a 750W EVGA Gold PSU to put in to it to replace the very old 750w silverstone silver. Not much difference, but better none the less. I am currently rocking a 280X as GFX as I have 8 of them here from an old crypto mining rig. Linux driver support for this card is non existent, so I need upgrade.

I have a RX580 and can get a choice of HIS, XFX or MSI vega64 second hand for $430 AUD, which is pretty god damn cheap if you ask me, at that price I’m keen to just get 2 of them, some reports say 750w wot be enough, juice but I dont think at stock speeds it will be too much I had 3x7970 on the 750w silverstone last year mining without issue all 3 cards OC’d massively.

Now I put win10 on this system when I first built it, with a hyper-V for linux VM’s for software development. Since moved off that and installed Manjaro vanilla… And very keen to stay on linux totally if possible. I run i3 Arch on my laptop and have used that exclusively for blockchain dev work and general internet stuff since the start of the year. Starting to get pretty good at it now though and need to go back to more screen space to be more productive. Only requirement is the host OS can run utbuntu/debian VM’s for development testing, as on Arch based its just flat doesn’t compile 90% of the time. :frowning:

I ordered a 35" Ultra Wide 1440p monitor, that works with AMD fresync today, so I think for gaming , the RX580 is out at that at res yes? Defiantly keen to get some newer titles and get back to some gaming, played a lot of D3 until last year, but not looking to go back to playing that any time soon.

Few questions:
Can I crossfire 2 vega64’s in Linux easily? Is it possible to pass through two if them in crossfire to a win10 VM for gaming, if I cannot manage to game nativly? (will try to avoid this, but I’m sure it will need to be done in the end). I have an old Gforce gfx card to use as a third card if need be, very very cheap one, liek $30 brand new cheap.

Host OS would prefer arch based, I like Manjaro for GUI stuff, latptop is mostly terminal based, but not looking to enforce that on the main PC at all. I wont be going with an i3 setup for example.

Is manjaro of some kind workable as a host for games, or do I need to use ubuntu 18.04?

Any other tips you might have for me? Really want to avoid windows at all costs if possible, I am fairly versed in linux and have been deving on it for about a year now and getting things working isn’t an issue as long as once its all working it stays working, I’m happy. Don’t like ubuntu if I can avoid using it I will.

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No, and crossfire isn’t something generally recommended in the first place.
Too much power and potential issues.

No

Ubuntu, or its offsprings is preferable for gaming.

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To confirm: crossfire is windows only. The linux drivers do not support it.

Also to confirm:
As an ex crossfire (on 2700X) Vega 64 user… don’t bother. I ended up pulling my second card out and putting it in another PC for the girlfriend and reclaimed my old RX480 off her to make VFIO under Linux easier.

You will spend more time fucking around trying to make crossfire work or resolve graphical glitches in games than you will spend gaming. Some games (looking at YOU Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands) get NEGATIVE SCALING with crossfire, even though they explicitly mention crossfire support.

Crossfire is great when it works. But often the games it works well with are a piece of cake for any modern card to run anyway (they’re old, have been out for ages and the driver/engine support for them is good).

The modern games where crossfire would be a great thing generally have more issues.

edit:
i bought my second vega for other reasons than crossfire (mining, lol) and crossfire was an experiment because i had the hardware available :smiley:

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Thanks for the very fast replies… I wont go twin vegas :smiley:

And is that a “I have to use ubuntu host” for linux gaming :frowning: Does no one use an arch based system?

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If you’re looking for the path of least resistance, steam and the associated games are generally tested against Ubuntu.

It’s not that you CAN’T make games work on other distributions, but if you run into issues (and you will from time to time) the support network via steam forums, the game developer, etc. are Ubuntu biased.

For that reason, I would suggest Ubuntu if gaming is a thing. Various people will tell you ubuntu is shit, or you should run distro XYZ or whatever.

But they’re idiots. Unless you have a specific requirement that Ubuntu can not fulfil (and whilst that may be a thing, if so, you’re the edge case of all edge cases), why make life more difficult than it needs to be?

I’ve been running Linux since 1995 and I currently run ubuntu, purely due to the above reasons. Commercial software targets it, and i have better things to do with my time than trying to fix something that would “just work” out of the box on Ubuntu.

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Fair enough… I guess there is always the option of using a minimal server install and just installing what I want. Like I do with my dev VM’s. can anyone give me some links for setup guides etc for linux gaming stuff, I saw a linux TT video about it, but havent found much in the way of docs at this stage.

btw my dislike for ubuntu is that Linux is not ubuntu and centralizing everything around ubuntu == linux is very bad move for decentralization. Corporate interests can and are influencing linux already, and having every person use hte same distro is asking for trouble.

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The level1linux youtube channel very recently had a few(? at least one) ubuntu gaming videos.

Things recently changed for the better with the driver situation, and steam now including steamplay emulation for various windows titles or “all” windows titles if you want to test stuff that may or may not work :smiley:

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That’s fair enough, and if that matters to you, go nuts. Run something else. Fedora works pretty well with Steam and GOG, but sometimes you might need to chase down some obscure dependencies that ubuntu may have that fedora doesn’t ship by default (and that your game package may expect to be present).

My statement is mostly aimed at the distro fanboy types who will poo-poo whatever distro they don’t happen to run (this week). The types who continually search for the niche obscure bleeding edge thing because it’s cool or whatever and then try to sell everybody else on it for no real valid technical reason.

We’re not in the 90s any more and any distro is pretty much good enough now. You don’t need bleeding edge to get a usable desktop, like we did before KDE and Gnome reached some level of usefulness :smiley:

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The RX580 is fine for 3440x1440 but not at highest detail. I have an Acer XR34 and I can play at 3440x1440 with my R5 2600, 16GB RAM and a GTX770 4GB almost all games at medium details. Only in Far Cry 5 I had to use low details. The RX580 is probably 20% faster than my GTX770.

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You don’t have to run ubuntu or a debian based distro for gaming. It makes it easier to setup but you can do it fine with Arch, manjaro, antergos etc.

In fact, my arch install runs later versions of DXVK so I’d argue it’s probably worth it if you want the best experience (if you know how to work around weird errors etc)

edit: OP if you need specific help setting up a vega on arch feel free to reach out. I can get you my package list etc

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Great will do … and yes ive been on arch for a while, and do blockchain development as a job atm, so working around errors and figuring things out is no issue.

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and in a sense you are right! The problem lies with using default set-up schemes!
typically a new user will set up the distro in a guided mode and just use the default settings. and this weakens it tremendously.

many distro developers are focusing on making it an easy install for a non linux user.
while thats a commendable idea not teaching a user the difference is a disservice to them.
most likely overlooked by the developers in an effort to finish the release rapidly.
using varied partitioning schemes and strong encryption can make your system nearly bullet proof.

but lets face it Unless you are paranoid or a real linux power user you will just set the system up with defaults to save time.

Gentoo is a prime example!
you compile the code on your own system and therefore must select the correct software to install (choosing the wrong software set can brick your installation and you have to start over)
you can choose a vanilla install but you are faced with the inherent weakness of it
but when you install everything correct ,you have a powerful brilliant system

each file system format has its strengths and weaknesses and as these weaknesses are found they are exploited ferociously by criminal hackers.
knowing how to harden your file system makes their efforts many times harder if not futile.
I found this out while learning to be an admin on a phpbb forum securing your ports and hardening the system brought the spam-bots to a standstill and the firewall and ssh settings put a stop to the hackers in short order.

I also use ubuntu but i have to say my biggest complaint is the ever changing repositories, (you get no notice when a repo goes defunct or when a new one is available)

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You don’t need to use gentoo for that. Just run debian or FreeBSD or any other distribution and install the precompiled packages you need.

One could argue that having a compiler and the system libraries source code installed on a system is a security risk (definitely if the system is to act as a launchpad for further penetration of your environment)…

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Cool, I’m just using the latest install kernel (4.18) right now. I’m getting ready to toss 4.20 however have been reading up on optimizations for modern hardware first. I know that this version works right out of the box but I did have to install quite a few packages to get KDE running right, and specific packages for Lutris, DXVK etc. Let me know if there’s anything you need!

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Manjaro is fine for games. I actually get better performance out of it, probably because it is running newer shit. Support is gonna be easier on ubuntu, sure. But … meh.

I’m also waiting for 4.20 to release so I can switch my main gaming rig back over to manjaro.

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You don’t have to. I use base arch, you might have to tinker some to get certain games to work but i don’t really have any issues with that.
So if you prefer arch/derivatives you might need to put in some more work but that is normal for those distros anyway

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I have a 7850K+R7 250 in dual gfx
Saw this thread
“Oh Wow another poor person I can help!”

Wrong thread for me :slight_smile: :stuck_out_tongue:

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haha… I was poor up until recently :slight_smile: I have the vega64 installed in my system atm, still missing other parts. I’m on 4.19 kernel right now, and not sure how to tell if things are working or not… guess I need to install some games and see. I get screen tearing still on desktop is this normal?
My new monitor should be here tomorrow, which has fresync does this work on linux and how to I enable it ? Googling came up with my own thread here as the top result LOL.

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I’m also waiting for 4.20 to drop because it supposedly fixes the AMD GPU reset bug properly which will make VFIO a lot easier for me… (polaris10 + vega10 = both impacted by said bug if i’m not mistaken)

Getting ubuntu running current (nightly build) vulkan/mesa and kernel isn’t hard.

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compiling 4.20 mainline from AUR now… Going to try and increase the powerlimit … vega is throttling hard on me… despite being very cool… its a strix model, so at 65% fan, its not that noisy and sitting on 60 degrees C, which seems fairly low.