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Any of AMD's recent discrete graphics cards are very well supported. Both the proprietary blob driver and the Mesa-based free driver share an upstream kernel mo

Any of AMD's recent discrete graphics cards are very well supported. Both the proprietary blob driver and the Mesa-based free driver share an upstream kernel module. The Mesa-based driver tends to have better performance for most applications, but currently lacks some of the bleeding-edge display technologies from the proprietary driver. That is likely to be completely rectified in the next couple of kernel release cycles. They continue to expand their team, and there is a certain amount of broader community involvement in the Mesa-based driver. Valve software has at least one full time developer working on the driver in addition to the full time developers working directly for AMD on it. The peak performance of AMD's top (pre-vega) cards right now is less than the peak performance of NVIDIA's top cards, but for similarly priced cards, the performance is basically on par. Finishing out 2017, and starting 2018, I think AMD may reach or exceed NVIDIA in flagship performance.

flukus 9y ago
> Any of AMD's recent discrete graphics cards are very well supported. This is true and I'm a happy linux gamer these days but I wanted to point out that these are new drivers and the mesa support is really only in new kernels. Ubuntu 16.04 - don't bother, Ubuntu 16.10 - getting there, Ubuntu 17.04 - worked great for me since day 1. Arch will also work fine.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Gamers know to either use rolling distros, or to make sure to install recent kernels and Mesa from backports and etc. instead of being stuck on LTS kernel / drivers.
  - slavik81 9y ago
    Even without going out of your way to get newer versions, the kernel and video drivers get updates on Ubuntu LTS releases as a part of the hardware-enablement stack. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack
    - shmerl 9y ago
      Not by default. Default updates are much slower than what might be needed for gaming. Rolling distros work better for this.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  Oh, you're right. I always forget that I'm running Arch and building upstream drivers (also fiddling with development). Easy to forget to tell people that bit. :P
  - majewsky 9y ago
    You don't really need to compile upstream drivers for a good AMD experience. I have a Fiji card and have been running (also on Arch) stock drivers and kernels since around Linux 4.5 (when they merged powerplay support for Fiji into the amdgpu driver). Haven't had a single problem; just installed Mesa and xf86-video-amdgpu and everything just works.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      I have a Polaris 10 card, and I'm interested in build options which improve performance somewhat. The stable release works fine, but I have peculiar interests. ;- )

flukus 9y ago

> Any of AMD's recent discrete graphics cards are very well supported. This is true and I'm a happy linux gamer these days but I wanted to point out that these are new drivers and the mesa support is really only in new kernels. Ubuntu 16.04 - don't bother, Ubuntu 16.10 - getting there, Ubuntu 17.04 - worked great for me since day 1. Arch will also work fine.

shmerl 9y ago
Gamers know to either use rolling distros, or to make sure to install recent kernels and Mesa from backports and etc. instead of being stuck on LTS kernel / drivers.
- slavik81 9y ago
  Even without going out of your way to get newer versions, the kernel and video drivers get updates on Ubuntu LTS releases as a part of the hardware-enablement stack. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack
  - shmerl 9y ago
    Not by default. Default updates are much slower than what might be needed for gaming. Rolling distros work better for this.
microcolonel 9y ago
Oh, you're right. I always forget that I'm running Arch and building upstream drivers (also fiddling with development). Easy to forget to tell people that bit. :P
- majewsky 9y ago
  You don't really need to compile upstream drivers for a good AMD experience. I have a Fiji card and have been running (also on Arch) stock drivers and kernels since around Linux 4.5 (when they merged powerplay support for Fiji into the amdgpu driver). Haven't had a single problem; just installed Mesa and xf86-video-amdgpu and everything just works.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    I have a Polaris 10 card, and I'm interested in build options which improve performance somewhat. The stable release works fine, but I have peculiar interests. ;- )