6 ms·

Having owned an r9 380, I can safely say I will never buy an AMD gpu again. Buggiest drivers(windows), even for day to day work. And lackluster support to boot.

pimeys 6y ago
Having RX 580 at work and it's way nicer with Linux compared to whatever NVIDIA offers. The 6900 XT will definitely replace my 2080Ti.
- eloff 6y ago
  Yeah, the nvidia driver support on Linux was so bad that I rage quit Linux and bought a Spanish windows 8 (I was in Latin America at the time) at a ridiculous price after days of troubleshooting a black screen on boot. AMD had been rock solid for me with Linux ever since I realized that was the issue and bought an AMD card. I'll never go back to nvidia until they make Linux drivers a priority. I still have the Spanish windows that I use for games with my very old nvidia graphics card. It's time to retire that system soon.
- philliphaydon 6y ago
  I moved from Nvidia to AMD because of driver issues in linux. Definitely had less issues with AMD. I’ll be replacing the 5700xt with 6800xt.
- heelix 6y ago
  Ended up with the last few weeks of December off last year and sat down with the mission of getting my Centos 8 box to work with steam. The RX580 worked lovely for VIM, but... went on a grand adventure to get their drivers working. Oh what a pain. Took me, with my limited knowledge most of that time to sort out the potion miscibility roles between steam, centos, and amd. About January, they released a set of updates where all the planets aligned. Went from a grand adventure to a handful of commands. The rest of this year has continued to be a non-event for updates. I'll be looking at one of the ATI cards as lord knows I've failed to find any 3080s, of any make, in stock since launch.
  - pimeys 6y ago
    Did you use their closed source drivers or the ones provided in the kernel? I've been just using Arch Linux and the mainline kernel with the OSS AMD drivers, and everything's super good and solid since last year when I got the workstation.
    - heelix 6y ago
      Closed source. At that point in time I was trying to get Steam up and running on my Linux box to play some games which needed something more than stock. I'd only used the open source drivers for coding/work, which were lovely. A buddy had gifted me a stack of RX580s when he exited bitcoin mining - so I had a way better video card than I needed for IntelliJ/GoLand/VIM. Not saying it was the right rabbit hole, but my god that was an adventure getting 19.30 closed source drivers to work on a Centos 8 Streams box. Ended up spending much of December compiling kernels and banging a dead chicken on my monitor... rather than the original mission of playing Oxygen Not Included. https://www.reddit.com/r/CentOS/comments/eplicu/steam_on_centos_8_and_an_amd_video_card/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CentOS/comments/eplicu/steam_on_cen...
- zanny 6y ago
  Kernel 5.9 seems to have finally made the 5700XT stable for me. Since 5.6 the crashes have gotten less frequent per release, but I haven't had one in almost two weeks since this latest kernel.
- snvzz 6y ago
  Absolutely. And NVIDIA's blob driver doesn't work AT ALL on current kernels ATM. Apparently, it's going to take months this time around.
Zardoz84 6y ago
Having owned a few NVIDIA cards (and using now a RX580), I can say that I will avoid NVIDIA. Buggiest drivers(Linux) and strange artifacts and tears, even for day to day work. And the drivers are closed source.
- shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  The Nvidia open source drivers (Nouveau) are awful (which is Nvidia's fault), but the proprietary drivers are decent IME. G-SYNC works out of the box (unlike FreeSync) in Linux, and Nvidia even has a nifty control panel app. But it is a hassle having to worry about having proprietary drivers in-situ during installation or else your G-SYNC monitor won't work or when your G-SYNC monitor doesn't work if you switch to an AMD GPU. ; p (Yes, the ones with the dedicated G-SYNC hardware, which aren't all G-SYNC monitors, brick when not plugged into an Nvidia card.)
  - snvzz 6y ago
    >or else your G-SYNC monitor won't work or when your G-SYNC monitor doesn't work if you switch to an AMD GPU. ; p (Yes, the ones with the dedicated G-SYNC hardware, which aren't all G-SYNC monitors, brick when not plugged into an Nvidia card.) This is intentional, by design. It's called vendor lock-in. NVIDIA abused their position at the time to plant g-sync screens everywhere. Of course, later they had to adopt FreeSync like everybody else (TVs and Monitors across the industry, with HDMI and DisplayPort, Intel and AMD, on consoles and computers), but there's a significant base of sold screens with gsync modules that will tilt many GPU purchases to the NVIDIA side. Even when they adopted FreeSync, they pressured screen vendors to use their own "gsync compatible" name for the same technology, by leveraging their market position.
gitweb 6y ago
Getting AMD graphics drivers are easy now and they are great. NVIDIA has been trying to force users to login to even download their latest graphics drivers. I think you should try again and you'll likely be pleasantly surprised.
- redisman 6y ago
  That's not the experience on Linux at all. It's very barebones and doesn't have a UI at all like on Win10. I will say Nvidias Windows experience is pretty good. You can upgrade the driver without a reboot!
  - zanny 6y ago
    Theres a third party open source clone of the AMD settings app available on Linux: https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl It supports a lot of what the Windows version does, per application settings, frequency / temp / fan monitoring and curve adjustment, etc.
taurath 6y ago
Their Linux support is very good compared to Nvidia but I will agree that their drivers are quite buggy on windows relative to Nvidia.
unethical_ban 6y ago
Having owned an X600, X800, X850XT, X1900XT, 3850, 4870, 7850, RX580, and 5700XT, I can say I have rarely if ever had driver issues with ATI/AMD. Historically, I did use nvidia when I wanted to do native linux on desktop/media center, because their closed source drivers were supported much better (even FreeBSD had hardware media decoding support). This was before nouveau.
- bradlys 6y ago
  And yet - here I am - having owned probably close to as many AMD/ATI graphics cards as you and I want to never go back due to their drivers. The 4850/4870 launch left me with trauma. I've mainly used my cards on Windows. Since I've been using my 980 Ti and 2070 Super - I've not really had any issues with Nvidia. I'll get a 3080 instead of a 6800 XT - presuming supply is available. I'm super hesitant to go back to AMD. Been burned too many times!
  - snvzz 6y ago
    >The 4850/4870 launch left me with trauma. I bought HD4850 on release and had no trouble on Windows. Linux support wasn't there on release (unlike these days) but came quite fast, a matter of weeks IIRC, with open drivers. Support has been there on release for all my newer AMD cards. All cards still work, and are still well-supported by the open drivers. In contrast, all my NVIDIA cards from before that ended up as dead hardware, and were a nightmare while it worked, with the moody NVIDIA blob drivers.
snvzz 6y ago
FUD. And on the topic, the early experiences with the 3xxx Ampere lineup have been horrible, with reliability issues, ridiculous PSU requirements, and high return rates. This is despite few cards have actually been sold, with availability being extremely low.
cududa 6y ago
Interesting that the only comments below supporting the R9 series drivers are Linux folks.

pimeys 6y ago

Having RX 580 at work and it's way nicer with Linux compared to whatever NVIDIA offers. The 6900 XT will definitely replace my 2080Ti.

eloff 6y ago
Yeah, the nvidia driver support on Linux was so bad that I rage quit Linux and bought a Spanish windows 8 (I was in Latin America at the time) at a ridiculous price after days of troubleshooting a black screen on boot. AMD had been rock solid for me with Linux ever since I realized that was the issue and bought an AMD card. I'll never go back to nvidia until they make Linux drivers a priority. I still have the Spanish windows that I use for games with my very old nvidia graphics card. It's time to retire that system soon.
philliphaydon 6y ago
I moved from Nvidia to AMD because of driver issues in linux. Definitely had less issues with AMD. I’ll be replacing the 5700xt with 6800xt.
heelix 6y ago
Ended up with the last few weeks of December off last year and sat down with the mission of getting my Centos 8 box to work with steam. The RX580 worked lovely for VIM, but... went on a grand adventure to get their drivers working. Oh what a pain. Took me, with my limited knowledge most of that time to sort out the potion miscibility roles between steam, centos, and amd. About January, they released a set of updates where all the planets aligned. Went from a grand adventure to a handful of commands. The rest of this year has continued to be a non-event for updates. I'll be looking at one of the ATI cards as lord knows I've failed to find any 3080s, of any make, in stock since launch.
- pimeys 6y ago
  Did you use their closed source drivers or the ones provided in the kernel? I've been just using Arch Linux and the mainline kernel with the OSS AMD drivers, and everything's super good and solid since last year when I got the workstation.
  - heelix 6y ago
    Closed source. At that point in time I was trying to get Steam up and running on my Linux box to play some games which needed something more than stock. I'd only used the open source drivers for coding/work, which were lovely. A buddy had gifted me a stack of RX580s when he exited bitcoin mining - so I had a way better video card than I needed for IntelliJ/GoLand/VIM. Not saying it was the right rabbit hole, but my god that was an adventure getting 19.30 closed source drivers to work on a Centos 8 Streams box. Ended up spending much of December compiling kernels and banging a dead chicken on my monitor... rather than the original mission of playing Oxygen Not Included. https://www.reddit.com/r/CentOS/comments/eplicu/steam_on_centos_8_and_an_amd_video_card/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CentOS/comments/eplicu/steam_on_cen...
zanny 6y ago
Kernel 5.9 seems to have finally made the 5700XT stable for me. Since 5.6 the crashes have gotten less frequent per release, but I haven't had one in almost two weeks since this latest kernel.
snvzz 6y ago
Absolutely. And NVIDIA's blob driver doesn't work AT ALL on current kernels ATM. Apparently, it's going to take months this time around.

Zardoz84 6y ago

Having owned a few NVIDIA cards (and using now a RX580), I can say that I will avoid NVIDIA. Buggiest drivers(Linux) and strange artifacts and tears, even for day to day work. And the drivers are closed source.

shrimp_emoji 6y ago
The Nvidia open source drivers (Nouveau) are awful (which is Nvidia's fault), but the proprietary drivers are decent IME. G-SYNC works out of the box (unlike FreeSync) in Linux, and Nvidia even has a nifty control panel app. But it is a hassle having to worry about having proprietary drivers in-situ during installation or else your G-SYNC monitor won't work or when your G-SYNC monitor doesn't work if you switch to an AMD GPU. ; p (Yes, the ones with the dedicated G-SYNC hardware, which aren't all G-SYNC monitors, brick when not plugged into an Nvidia card.)
- snvzz 6y ago
  >or else your G-SYNC monitor won't work or when your G-SYNC monitor doesn't work if you switch to an AMD GPU. ; p (Yes, the ones with the dedicated G-SYNC hardware, which aren't all G-SYNC monitors, brick when not plugged into an Nvidia card.) This is intentional, by design. It's called vendor lock-in. NVIDIA abused their position at the time to plant g-sync screens everywhere. Of course, later they had to adopt FreeSync like everybody else (TVs and Monitors across the industry, with HDMI and DisplayPort, Intel and AMD, on consoles and computers), but there's a significant base of sold screens with gsync modules that will tilt many GPU purchases to the NVIDIA side. Even when they adopted FreeSync, they pressured screen vendors to use their own "gsync compatible" name for the same technology, by leveraging their market position.

gitweb 6y ago

Getting AMD graphics drivers are easy now and they are great. NVIDIA has been trying to force users to login to even download their latest graphics drivers. I think you should try again and you'll likely be pleasantly surprised.

redisman 6y ago
That's not the experience on Linux at all. It's very barebones and doesn't have a UI at all like on Win10. I will say Nvidias Windows experience is pretty good. You can upgrade the driver without a reboot!
- zanny 6y ago
  Theres a third party open source clone of the AMD settings app available on Linux: https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl https://gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl It supports a lot of what the Windows version does, per application settings, frequency / temp / fan monitoring and curve adjustment, etc.

taurath 6y ago

Their Linux support is very good compared to Nvidia but I will agree that their drivers are quite buggy on windows relative to Nvidia.

unethical_ban 6y ago

Having owned an X600, X800, X850XT, X1900XT, 3850, 4870, 7850, RX580, and 5700XT, I can say I have rarely if ever had driver issues with ATI/AMD. Historically, I did use nvidia when I wanted to do native linux on desktop/media center, because their closed source drivers were supported much better (even FreeBSD had hardware media decoding support). This was before nouveau.

bradlys 6y ago
And yet - here I am - having owned probably close to as many AMD/ATI graphics cards as you and I want to never go back due to their drivers. The 4850/4870 launch left me with trauma. I've mainly used my cards on Windows. Since I've been using my 980 Ti and 2070 Super - I've not really had any issues with Nvidia. I'll get a 3080 instead of a 6800 XT - presuming supply is available. I'm super hesitant to go back to AMD. Been burned too many times!
- snvzz 6y ago
  >The 4850/4870 launch left me with trauma. I bought HD4850 on release and had no trouble on Windows. Linux support wasn't there on release (unlike these days) but came quite fast, a matter of weeks IIRC, with open drivers. Support has been there on release for all my newer AMD cards. All cards still work, and are still well-supported by the open drivers. In contrast, all my NVIDIA cards from before that ended up as dead hardware, and were a nightmare while it worked, with the moody NVIDIA blob drivers.

snvzz 6y ago

FUD. And on the topic, the early experiences with the 3xxx Ampere lineup have been horrible, with reliability issues, ridiculous PSU requirements, and high return rates. This is despite few cards have actually been sold, with availability being extremely low.

cududa 6y ago

Interesting that the only comments below supporting the R9 series drivers are Linux folks.