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> My requirements are basically powerful hardware, a real GPU with nvidia strongly preferred, and good Linux support. Unless the NVIDIA GPU is for Windows usag
by m45t3r 3y ago
> My requirements are basically powerful hardware, a real GPU with nvidia strongly preferred, and good Linux support.
Unless the NVIDIA GPU is for Windows usage or CUDA, I would strongly recommend a AMD GPU instead. My last laptop had a NVIDIA GPU and it was a hell of issues inside Linux, that was amplified for the fact that I needed to use the NVIDIA GPU or I would get no output in its HDMI port. For sure, this was a gaming laptop and I expect a Dell XPS or Precision to use the sanest choice (connect all outputs to the iGPU instead). My Thinkpad P14s Gen 1 (new old stock) with AMD Ryzen 4750U and a Vega 7 iGPU is much better, no issues at all.
I had a Dell Precision 5530 from my previous workplace with a NVIDIA GPU (don't remember what) that was much better behaved in Linux, but in this case I just disabled the NVIDIA GPU and used the integrated Intel graphics (that really sucked). So if you are not interested to using NVIDIA GPU at all in Linux I would recommend this one, but to use it day-to-day in Linux desktop I would avoid NVIDIA GPUs.
- ACS_Solver 3y agoI do some gamedev work and Nvidia GPUs are the standard there. They dominate the market so it's more useful to develop with Nvidia, and any new graphics library, feature or such will inevitably be better supported and tested on Nvidia. Unlike the CPU situation, where Intel and AMD CPUs are perfectly viable competitors, AMD definitely makes second-tier GPUs. Nvidia on Linux has its annoyances but I consider the issue overblown. On desktop, it's annoying that Nvidia drivers have a separate installation workflow and require you to regenerate the kernel module after every kernel version change, but it's far from the worst Linux issue I've dealt with. On laptops, yes, Optimus is one of the most annoying technologies I've encountered but in the past, I've been able to circumvent it by disabling the iGPU (not a good choice if you need longer battery times though) and on the latest Debian, GPU switching actually works transparently.