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I'm getting ready to build a new Linux Desktop- and I am thinking about an AMD CPU, but a Nvidia GPU- from everything I have read, Nvidia's performance on Linux

I'm getting ready to build a new Linux Desktop- and I am thinking about an AMD CPU, but a Nvidia GPU- from everything I have read, Nvidia's performance on Linux is far better than AMDs? Is that information out of date, or are you just forecasting future improvements by AMD? I do really appreciate the open source driver efforts by Nvidia, but I'm not sure I am willing to sacrifice that much performance at this point.

lettergram 10y ago
AMD was trying to push code into the linux kernel to speed up performance. However, it was recently rejected, publicly, and rather harshly. With the push to the linux kernel AMD GPU's would be better than Nvidia... that being said, I wouldn't hold my breath.
- snuxoll 10y ago
  AMD wasn't pushing code for better performance, they were pushing a janky abstraction layer for their devices to make porting their Windows driver easier, that basically did what NVidia does and skipped a lot of the existing DRM infrastructure in the kernel. If you want to write a kernel driver that's effectively a Russian train toilet nobody will stop you, and you can feel free to maintain the engineering effort on it - but it's not going to be accepted into the mainline Kernel and you'll have to maintain it out of tree. If AMD wants a shim to make it easier to port their Windows drivers over that's perfectly acceptable, but they need to work with the existing DRM infrastructure and the people that maintain it to get a kosher driver that everyone can be happy with.
- digikata 10y ago
  I think that was infrastructure to support the closed driver, not the open driver.
- nhaehnle 10y ago
  You're thinking about the display code. That code is not that important for performance; it's about detecting and driving displays connected to your graphics cards, managing page flips and so on. It only interacts with performance in that driving displays requires memory bandwidth and consumes power.
- justabystander 10y ago
  Actually, it was rejected only in its current state. AMD is still iterating on that driver to get it in the kernel, and is working with the kernel team to get that in there. That said, they were warned 6 months before the rejection that abstraction layers in the kernel would probably get rejected. The rejection wasn't news in any sense - Dave Airlie just decided to be more direct about it because the warning from half a year ago was ignored. No one knew that was what they were doing because AMD did all the development in private and then just handed over the code. Had they been more open and engaging with the kernel developers, they could have saved a lot of time. There were a few emotional responses, and then it was made clear that they weren't done yet, and were still willing to work together. So everybody calmed down and got back to work. This all happened within a few days of the initial rejection, so you really shouldn't push the "it's never going in the kernel" narrative. Because much of it will probably be in there by the middle of next year.
snuxoll 10y ago
The new RadeonSI Mesa driver is a massive improvement over the previous generation drivers. My R9 290 only gets better every 6 months when I upgrade to a new Fedora release, and it's all because AMD publishes specification documents while the majority of nouveau development is still based on reverse engineering. If you care about performance, the Volcanic Islands cards and newer are all supported by AMD's proprietary AMDGPU-PRO driver which is still better than the open source ones, but I expect that gap to continue closing a lot faster than the past as the Gallium-based RadeonSI driver is a lot easier for developers to work on. Still, comparing NVidia's current lineup to AMD isn't apples to oranges. If you want a 1070 or 1080 just get one, Vega is still months away and while we see AMD stomping in Vulkan and DX12 benchmarks compared against similarly priced cards (RX480 vs GTX 1060) they don't have a proper answer for the higher end cards until Vega is out. Otherwise, don't let driver support deter you, the whole design behind AMDGPU-PRO is much like NVidia's proprietary drivers - it lets AMD reuse the majority of their Windows drivers to keep parity between platforms; and, again, the open source drivers only keep getting better at a rapid pace.
- mjevans 10y ago
  I do have to say that my experience between the OLDER fglrx driver (for an R9 285 card (GCN 1.2)) and the mesa 13/13.1 releases (amdgpu driver) has been that the fully open stack is MUCH MORE STABLE. It isn't perceptibly slower, but it is a lot less likely to have some weird corner case bug in random games.
bisby 10y ago
nvidia raw performance is better, but requires installing a proprietary driver (like you would on windows). amd is a bit lower, but you can use the built in open source driver and get roughly the same performance as the proprietary driver (From what i understand, the proprietary driver is going to only be there to support their direct clients, and in general, they are working on getting all generic improvements into the open driver). From what i understand, this means kernel updates mean you have to re-build the nvidia drivers, whereas with AMD, the new drivers are included in the new kernel. either way, I went with an AMD rx480 this month because i dislike nvidia's closed off business practices (especially in comparison to AMD's open practices). it runs everything I want it to run just fine, so its not like i suddenly cant play some game because i went AMD.

lettergram 10y ago

AMD was trying to push code into the linux kernel to speed up performance. However, it was recently rejected, publicly, and rather harshly. With the push to the linux kernel AMD GPU's would be better than Nvidia... that being said, I wouldn't hold my breath.

snuxoll 10y ago
AMD wasn't pushing code for better performance, they were pushing a janky abstraction layer for their devices to make porting their Windows driver easier, that basically did what NVidia does and skipped a lot of the existing DRM infrastructure in the kernel. If you want to write a kernel driver that's effectively a Russian train toilet nobody will stop you, and you can feel free to maintain the engineering effort on it - but it's not going to be accepted into the mainline Kernel and you'll have to maintain it out of tree. If AMD wants a shim to make it easier to port their Windows drivers over that's perfectly acceptable, but they need to work with the existing DRM infrastructure and the people that maintain it to get a kosher driver that everyone can be happy with.
digikata 10y ago
I think that was infrastructure to support the closed driver, not the open driver.
nhaehnle 10y ago
You're thinking about the display code. That code is not that important for performance; it's about detecting and driving displays connected to your graphics cards, managing page flips and so on. It only interacts with performance in that driving displays requires memory bandwidth and consumes power.
justabystander 10y ago
Actually, it was rejected only in its current state. AMD is still iterating on that driver to get it in the kernel, and is working with the kernel team to get that in there. That said, they were warned 6 months before the rejection that abstraction layers in the kernel would probably get rejected. The rejection wasn't news in any sense - Dave Airlie just decided to be more direct about it because the warning from half a year ago was ignored. No one knew that was what they were doing because AMD did all the development in private and then just handed over the code. Had they been more open and engaging with the kernel developers, they could have saved a lot of time. There were a few emotional responses, and then it was made clear that they weren't done yet, and were still willing to work together. So everybody calmed down and got back to work. This all happened within a few days of the initial rejection, so you really shouldn't push the "it's never going in the kernel" narrative. Because much of it will probably be in there by the middle of next year.

snuxoll 10y ago

The new RadeonSI Mesa driver is a massive improvement over the previous generation drivers. My R9 290 only gets better every 6 months when I upgrade to a new Fedora release, and it's all because AMD publishes specification documents while the majority of nouveau development is still based on reverse engineering. If you care about performance, the Volcanic Islands cards and newer are all supported by AMD's proprietary AMDGPU-PRO driver which is still better than the open source ones, but I expect that gap to continue closing a lot faster than the past as the Gallium-based RadeonSI driver is a lot easier for developers to work on. Still, comparing NVidia's current lineup to AMD isn't apples to oranges. If you want a 1070 or 1080 just get one, Vega is still months away and while we see AMD stomping in Vulkan and DX12 benchmarks compared against similarly priced cards (RX480 vs GTX 1060) they don't have a proper answer for the higher end cards until Vega is out. Otherwise, don't let driver support deter you, the whole design behind AMDGPU-PRO is much like NVidia's proprietary drivers - it lets AMD reuse the majority of their Windows drivers to keep parity between platforms; and, again, the open source drivers only keep getting better at a rapid pace.

mjevans 10y ago
I do have to say that my experience between the OLDER fglrx driver (for an R9 285 card (GCN 1.2)) and the mesa 13/13.1 releases (amdgpu driver) has been that the fully open stack is MUCH MORE STABLE. It isn't perceptibly slower, but it is a lot less likely to have some weird corner case bug in random games.

bisby 10y ago

nvidia raw performance is better, but requires installing a proprietary driver (like you would on windows). amd is a bit lower, but you can use the built in open source driver and get roughly the same performance as the proprietary driver (From what i understand, the proprietary driver is going to only be there to support their direct clients, and in general, they are working on getting all generic improvements into the open driver). From what i understand, this means kernel updates mean you have to re-build the nvidia drivers, whereas with AMD, the new drivers are included in the new kernel. either way, I went with an AMD rx480 this month because i dislike nvidia's closed off business practices (especially in comparison to AMD's open practices). it runs everything I want it to run just fine, so its not like i suddenly cant play some game because i went AMD.