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An AMD GPU on a Laptop that will primarily be used to run Linux? Gonna be a hard pass. I have been using a T495 since spring 2020 and only after upgrading to F

An AMD GPU on a Laptop that will primarily be used to run Linux? Gonna be a hard pass. I have been using a T495 since spring 2020 and only after upgrading to Fedora 39 in December have I been able to run it without having to reboot at least once a day due to the amdgpu driver hanging up.

anotherhue 3y ago
What's the underlying card? I've had excellent experience with amdgpu and the vega integrated graphics. There's a second driver amdgpu pro that might be worth a look though I've never used it.
- anilakar 3y ago
  The CPU is a Ryzen 3700U so the accompanying GPU is RX Vega 10 as far as I can tell. FWIW, most of the issues happened with an alt mode display and/or USB-C dock plugged in. Very few issues when undocked, but as it is a work machine, it's not going to be used by itself too much. In any case, I've lost more productivity than the price difference to the equivalent Intel model laptop would have been.
zilti 3y ago
I have a Framework 13 with AMD running Linux, with absolutely no issues at all. I reboot it once a week after installing updates.
nrp 3y ago
That’s not an issue we’ve seen with either the AMD-powered Framework Laptop 13 or 16. A large chunk of our user base are Linux users.
belthesar 3y ago
Unsure if your thoughts come from recent experience, legacy experience, or a need to run CUDA-accelerated workloads, but if you're citing the old wisdom that AMD GPUs on Linux are a pain to deal with, I'm happy to tell you that your knowledge is a bit out of date. AMD's OSS drivers (with closed source firmware blobs, yes) are mainlined in pretty much every modern distro's package manager, and work surprisingly well. Mind you, I tend to not run Linux on laptops, so if there's some nuance you're aware of wrt sleep or something that I'm not, please feel free to share. I will say "Here There Be Dragons" wrt CUDA/OpenCL workloads however. You have to switch from Mesa to the AMD closed source drivers, and I did have some wonky issues, with, for example using things like Davinci Resolve with those drivers.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
Is it still the case that Wayland is better supported with AMD GPUs than with nVidia? IIRC, the last time I tried using Wayland, my nVidia GPU was the barrier.
COGlory 3y ago
Not sure about that exact chip, but my experience with AMD GPUs has been fantastic on Linux.
nfriedly 3y ago
FWIW, the proprietary nvidia linux drivers for the 2070 in my desktop PC are absolute trash. Last year they failed so bad that I couldn't even get it to boot and ended up just reinstalling ubuntu to fix the problem. On the other hand, my AMD Framework 13 hasn't had any issues with the iGPU with Linux. (It bluescreened and rebooted twice in two months with Windows, and I suspect both of those were graphics-related, but no issues in the month or so I've had ubuntu on it.)
rjsw 3y ago
I'm typing this on a T495s, but running NetBSD. Thanks for the data point on the working amdgpu driver, I'm just using a dumb framebuffer driver right now.
saltcured 3y ago
Recently, I got a P14s with the AMD Ryzen PRO 7840U. Its CPU and GPU are a different architecture than the Ryzen PRO 3700U in the my old T495. The P14s seems very fast and stable with Fedora 39. I tested OpenCL as well as Steam games and general desktop usage with Firefox. But to be honest, I didn't have as much trouble as you describe with my T495 either. I ran it exclusively with Fedora since right before the pandemic. My main problem was that I could not use OpenCL at all. But for desktop usage and even Steam games, it worked well enough. I'll admit I rarely use suspend/resume, so if your problems were related to that, it might explain my different experience. I've noticed the T495 is very slow to resume compared to most other machines I've used including the P14s and lots of Intel-based Thinkpads.
mdhen 3y ago
Man what? I always use AMD with zero issues (arch). AMD is known as the best graphics card for linux. Your experience does not match up with what is typical.

anotherhue 3y ago

What's the underlying card? I've had excellent experience with amdgpu and the vega integrated graphics. There's a second driver amdgpu pro that might be worth a look though I've never used it.

anilakar 3y ago
The CPU is a Ryzen 3700U so the accompanying GPU is RX Vega 10 as far as I can tell. FWIW, most of the issues happened with an alt mode display and/or USB-C dock plugged in. Very few issues when undocked, but as it is a work machine, it's not going to be used by itself too much. In any case, I've lost more productivity than the price difference to the equivalent Intel model laptop would have been.

zilti 3y ago

I have a Framework 13 with AMD running Linux, with absolutely no issues at all. I reboot it once a week after installing updates.

nrp 3y ago

That’s not an issue we’ve seen with either the AMD-powered Framework Laptop 13 or 16. A large chunk of our user base are Linux users.

belthesar 3y ago

Unsure if your thoughts come from recent experience, legacy experience, or a need to run CUDA-accelerated workloads, but if you're citing the old wisdom that AMD GPUs on Linux are a pain to deal with, I'm happy to tell you that your knowledge is a bit out of date. AMD's OSS drivers (with closed source firmware blobs, yes) are mainlined in pretty much every modern distro's package manager, and work surprisingly well. Mind you, I tend to not run Linux on laptops, so if there's some nuance you're aware of wrt sleep or something that I'm not, please feel free to share. I will say "Here There Be Dragons" wrt CUDA/OpenCL workloads however. You have to switch from Mesa to the AMD closed source drivers, and I did have some wonky issues, with, for example using things like Davinci Resolve with those drivers.

CoastalCoder 3y ago

Is it still the case that Wayland is better supported with AMD GPUs than with nVidia? IIRC, the last time I tried using Wayland, my nVidia GPU was the barrier.

COGlory 3y ago

Not sure about that exact chip, but my experience with AMD GPUs has been fantastic on Linux.

nfriedly 3y ago

FWIW, the proprietary nvidia linux drivers for the 2070 in my desktop PC are absolute trash. Last year they failed so bad that I couldn't even get it to boot and ended up just reinstalling ubuntu to fix the problem. On the other hand, my AMD Framework 13 hasn't had any issues with the iGPU with Linux. (It bluescreened and rebooted twice in two months with Windows, and I suspect both of those were graphics-related, but no issues in the month or so I've had ubuntu on it.)

rjsw 3y ago

I'm typing this on a T495s, but running NetBSD. Thanks for the data point on the working amdgpu driver, I'm just using a dumb framebuffer driver right now.

saltcured 3y ago

Recently, I got a P14s with the AMD Ryzen PRO 7840U. Its CPU and GPU are a different architecture than the Ryzen PRO 3700U in the my old T495. The P14s seems very fast and stable with Fedora 39. I tested OpenCL as well as Steam games and general desktop usage with Firefox. But to be honest, I didn't have as much trouble as you describe with my T495 either. I ran it exclusively with Fedora since right before the pandemic. My main problem was that I could not use OpenCL at all. But for desktop usage and even Steam games, it worked well enough. I'll admit I rarely use suspend/resume, so if your problems were related to that, it might explain my different experience. I've noticed the T495 is very slow to resume compared to most other machines I've used including the P14s and lots of Intel-based Thinkpads.

mdhen 3y ago

Man what? I always use AMD with zero issues (arch). AMD is known as the best graphics card for linux. Your experience does not match up with what is typical.