I plan on moving over to Linux as my daily driver on my desktop and was looking to upgrade my 980 Ti. I was curious how the support for the Radeon VII is in Linux. I am going with Fedora. The price for the Radeon VII seems really good compared to the GTX 2070.
There is a phoronix article on the subject from February and based on that the support seems to be pretty good, see for yourself https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-vii-linux&num=1
nvidia binaries tend to be a lot more consistent if you plan on using a rolling release or updating your software/firmware often. nvidia cards also tend to have a narrower performance delta between windows and linux,
chances are either one will be good enough though
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I would go with AMD. The drivers are built in to the kernel and worry-free. The Nvidia card will work but there is a chance a kernel update will break the Nvidia driver. Has happened to me a few times.
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This.
I was Nvidia for 20 years and i can not stress enough how much a breath of fresh air it is to not have to deal with the kernel blob stuff from Nvidia any more.
Updates? Just download them and install. If your distro is new enough everything works properly out of the box. The install and update experience with my R7-2700X plus Vega 64 is better than Windows now. It’s almost as seamless as macOS now.
I’d pay 5, 10, 15% performance penalty for that convenience personally. But with Radeon VII vs. 2070, you aren’t.
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worry free with about a dozen asterisks if you aren’t waiting a while to let early adopters iron things out
even then, not consistent.
Well, OP says he’s going to use Fedora (30 I presume) and a Radeon VII should work right out the box. Once it works properly, it will continue to work properly and continue to improve until the driver is dropped from the kernel or the card dies.
While Nvidia cards will work with the binary drivers from day 1, it’s up to Nvidia to continue supporting the driver. This will cause problems eventually with up-to-date Linux kernels. Support for older cards is dropped all the time.
If you don’t intend on upgrading hardware for a long time which, with a Radeon VII or GTX 2070 is quite likely, I would go for long-term stability of the Radeon card over the possible future issues of the Nvidia card.
As for performance, the difference should be minimal. I don’t see a need to make a fuss over a few FPS difference.
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Yeah, I don’t plan on upgrading anytime soon. I know people are telling me to wait for Ryzen 3000 but then once that comes they’ll tell me to wait for Ryzen 4000 and whatever new GPU is out there. It just seem like the Radeon VII is a good long term piece of hardware for Linux support.
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iirc wendell mentioned a regression introduced in recent kernels for vega VII. Also they still haven’t fixed the hardlocks on the 550 or wx3100 and I’m pretty sure those are quite a ways in on support at this point.
if you are unfortunate enough to be running a geforce 7 or fx somehow on a modern PC, nouveau isn’t going to be all that much slower.
You do definitely need to run an up to date distro if you have a new card. However since Fedora 28 or Ubuntu 1804 my Vega 64 experience has been pretty hassle free. I.e., click/drool through the OS installer and thats all.
As to RX550 - at least with Fedora 29+ it has been hassle free for me. I had all sorts of issues with it on CentOS however (hard lockup/panic).
Given Radeon VII is basically an instinct card, I’d suggest that things should stabilise pretty quickly, but if you’re worried about bleeding edge, Vega 64 or 56 is much cheaper now and still a decent performing card under Linux. Certainly Vega 64 will be in the same sort of ball-park as a 2070 will be (i.e., +/- 10% at a guess, unless you need CUDA).
I’m sure this will be temporary. Roll back to the previous kernel; wait for it to be fixed or whatever.
There are occasional performance regressions on everything - including NVidia’s Windows drivers.
Radeon 7 seems to be working fine under Linux aside from the performance regression that will likely be resolved.
I guess I could send the card back and get a Vega 64. I heard NAVI was going to be cheaper but I am not sure if it’s worth the wait. I have a feeling when it comes out it will just sellout and be hard to find for months(crypto miners at stuff, lol). I don’t upgrade often and I just want to get a decent setup that will last a few years for light gaming maybe at 4K@60Hz ( I won’t hold my breath), and good Linux support as I am trying to free myself from Windows.
EDIT: I am seeing Vega 64 for only about 100 less on Amazon. I am wondering if it’s worth getting that card, or to just stay with the Radeon VII.
Vega64 is a good card but Radeon VII is quite a bit faster. It is both pretty much the same architecture so support should be almost flawless already.
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Definitely.
All depends on your appetite for cost, performance and maturity.
Vega 64 has been out for a while, is cheaper and good enough for 1080p/1440p.
Radeon VII is a fair bit faster, but its drivers are a little less mature and it is more expensive.
Unless you’re running stuff in 4k i’d say either card is plenty…
If you’re looking to purchase any time soon I’d go Vega 56/64 over Navi at this point personally as Navi is another few months away (hardware wise) and then there will presumably be a couple of months of driver stuff to sort out, and THEN another few months for the distro to get official support, so you’re looking at probably anywhere between December '19/April '20 before Navi is properly stable in Linux, to get performance either similar to Vega 64 at less cost or only slightly faster. Which you can have today.
Which is a lot of waiting…
If you already have a 2070 though i’d just keep it and revisit next time.
Can confirm. 
If you’re willing to turn a few details down a shade, Vega 64 runs 4k at “definitely playable” frame-rates just fine too (have one plugged into my living room TV plugged into a 4K TV and it runs great.
4k60 on ultra may be a struggle (depending on the game), but either 4k50 on ultra or 4k60+ with some settings dropped a tad is certainly achievable.
And IMHO for couch-type games that’s good enough.
I am coming from a 980 Ti. I have a Radeon VII coming from Amazon today. The price for a Vega 64 and Radeon VII was 100 bucks difference so I went with the Radeon VII. It’s just an update version of Vega 64, right?
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AMD Share holder (small position) but Radeon 7 > 2070, and if going linux it makes it even more so imo
Rvii has lower power, higher clocks and better performance due to more hbm stacks which gives more memory bandwidth.
It does take some tuning to get the best out of it but it’s definitely worth it. Radeon profile works nicely. That said it is a bit of silicon lottery. I have a pretty good card with stock 1061mv but i still decided to go with custom cooling. With a morpheus and noctua fans it can do 2000/1200 at 1083mv while being inaudible. Higher is possible with a bit more noise but not necessary.
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Why are there 2 threads on this?
I understand what you’re trying, but please don’t create 2 almost identically named threads @haptizum.
If you want I can merge them for you or rename them.
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