AMD is by far the best choice for foss drivers. Intel might be an option in the future but I have no experience with their new cards. A second option would be good for Linux users but it's unlikely to be NVIDIA.
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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Honestly even on Windows I preferred AMD's software suite compared to Nvidia control panel and GeForce Experience. Currently using a 7900XTX and pretty happy with it. Also I missed Radeon Chill when I was on Nvidia, didn't expect to care about that at all, but I love it.
if you are on linux AMD is the better choice, period.
don't get me wrong nvidia will work relatively well, ive ran it before on linux and its actually improving. but it isnt worth the pricetag to have tons of small issues everywhere.
Like others have already said, if you want Foss drivers then AMD is your only choice.
However, if you want the most performant cards on the market then you can safely choose nvidia. The drivers work really well now, no tinkering required. Even multi monitor vrr works now with the latest drivers.
Stop listening to what people are parroting, nvidia used to be a bad choice, but not anymore. Even Linus Torvalds has changed his mind
So, when AI people came in, that was wonderful, because it meant somebody at NVIDIA had got much more involved on the kernel side, and NVIDIA went from being on my list of companies who are not good to my list of people who are doing really good work.
I don't want any proprietary drivers
So then you don't want any NVIDIA.
The AMD open source Linux driver performs better than their Windows driver. And there is no proprietary AMD Linux driver, the official AMD driver for Linux is open source.
there is no proprietary AMD Linux driver
I mean, there is. It just isn't recommended for most users.
didn't know this. is it no good then? does it have the HDMI 2.1 driver missing from the open source driver?
the driver is called AMDGPU PRO. it sits on top of the normal driver, and contains stuff specific to high performance compute and workstation workloads. i think it's a requirement for properly fast ROCm but i'm not sure.
100% AMD, for sure. AMD won't make much problems and works ootb.
Nvidia on the other hand... if you already have a Nvidia GPU, then the proprietary drivers work pretty well, but even those won't work flawlessly and still cause problems for many people.
And the FOSS drivers are still in the early stages and won't cut it. So why spend lots of money for a piece of hardware that won't give you the performance you paid for?
Also, Nvidia clearly doesn't care about PCs or its' users, so why support such a shitty company with your money?
I had a better desktop experience with the FOSS driver than the proprietary driver when testing a 2060 on Fedora 41.
I have 2 PCs, both on Linux. One with an AMD XTX 7900 XT, the other one has an Nvidia 3080 TI.
The Nvidia one is running the latest proprietary drivers, and they suck HARD. They just are far inferior to AMD's. The only reason to go Nvidia is to do local AI or video (editing / transcoding).
If your primary use is gaming and go Nvidia, you will be sabotaging yourself.
As someone who started using Linux while on Nvidia and stuck with it for over a year before going full AMD.
Just go AMD, so many little things I had to find workarounds for just because of Nvidias shitty drivers.
Even after Nvidia claimed to support wayland I could never get it to run on my install, then having to manually configure my xorg just to get my 170hz monitor working which then introduced graphical issues I just couldn't fix...NONE of that was an issue the moment I swapped to a RX 7800 XT, didn't even have to install any drivers they're just standard in the kernal.
Same, been using an AMD card since building a new PC a few years ago and its been completely smooth sailing. My spouse also built a new PC at the same time but decided to go nvidia instead and has had constant problems (now regrets not going AMD as well) and has yo regularly downgrade the driver and/or kernel just to have a working system or games that don't have things like vertices explosions.
FOSS driver only, the choices are AMD and Intel. Nvidia is out of the picture.
Of coursenouveau drivers are still around and under active development, but as far as I know the performance if still very far from reasonable expectations.
If you don't want proprietary drivers the choice is quite straightforward: AMD. The official drivers are open source.
As for my experience, I've had absolutely no problems in the last few years with AMD, but I have to admit that I have always been using an iGPU, which has always been good enough for my needs.
I used to have problems with Nvidia proprietary drivers, but that was at least a couple years ago, things might have changed. I've never had issues with the free unofficial drivers, besides worse performance.
Could be game specific, but there is no ground rendering in final fantasy. https://youtu.be/DxE-4ZxYxDA
I bought an A-series Intel card (A310, bought for $110), and I'm very happy with it. Very good drivers that work perfectly with Wayland, and its recent OpenCL drivers now work with Blender and DaVinci Resolve too (despite Resolve saying that it only works with nvidia or amd, the new drivers make the dedicated intel cards work too). Gaming is not too bad either, but I don't game much.
NVIDIA is more problematic than AMD on Linux. So AMD.
Do you play a lot of games with ray tracing, or do you care about that stuff? If you don't then AMD, it's better bang for the buck for rasterization and works better on Linux.
Does nouveau support RTX?
I haven't been on NVIDIA for a while so i couldn't tell for sure. I know that nvidia raytracing works on linux, but I'm not sure how it goes with the open drivers. If the noveau performance and stability is still somewhat lacking in general, then if both open drivers and raytracing are important to you then AMD is still the better bet.
Just to add some variation to these comments.
Nvidia works absolutely fine on (arch) linux, that needs to be said. Performance is on par with windows.
Depending on what your needs are its the better choice. (I have a few pieces of software that greatly rely on CUDA)
But the elephant in the room is your need for non proprietary driver. The only open source nvidia does is the strict minimum to catch up and stay competitive on linux (they where losing before). There is a clear winner on this front. Que all the other comments.
Only the kernel bindings are open source. The actual driver is still closed source. So that only leaves you with AMD and Intel.
If those are your criteria, I would go with AMD right now, because only the proprietary driver will get decent performance out of most nVidia cards. Nouveau is reverse-engineered and can't tap into a lot of features of newer cards especially, and while I seem to recall there is a new open-source driver in the works, there's no way it's mature enough to be an option for anyone but testers.
AMD cards work great with the open source driver. As i understand it, the nouveau driver is getting better but might not be there yet? So if the non-proprietary driver is a must you might be better off with AMD.
Anything but Nvidia
Everyone's gonna suggest AMD here because of your requirement of no-proprietary drivers; but unless you're some sort of high-value target to a foreign government, I honestly choose the more pragmatic route of just using the proprietary NVidia driver and going NVidia. Especially if I'm not budget constrained on card.
The fact of the matter is, AMD has just simply fallen behind. NVidia cards are (and have been for like 3 generations now) more performant. There is good reason why they dominate the market right now; they're just simply better.
It really depends on how far you want to take your zealotry on open source; there are parts of the CPU microcode that can see everything you do. Those are proprietary. Your bios is proprietary. You're probably running 100 different proprietary blobs even IF you choose not to use the drivers that NVidia supplies; so why hobble yourself with a slower card that doesn't have CUDA instructions? (often also very good for AI work if you are interested in that at all)
I certainly understand wanting to push that direction for the sake of pushing that direction but - is performance and stability less important than using a proprietary driver?
I often hear how prprietary drivers breaks and have a lot of issues. But AMD card usally work very stable
I wouldn't say the proprietary nvidia drivers are any worse than the open-source AMD drivers in terms of stability and performance (nouveau is far inferior to either). Their main issue is that they tend to be desupported long before the hardware breaks, leaving you with the choice of either nouveau or keeping an old kernel (and X version if using X—not sure how things work with Wayland) for compatibility with the old proprietary drivers.
It was the opposite experience for me last time I tried an AMD card. But that was like 8 years ago.
if( you need CUDA ){ Use Nvidia (note that OSs officially supported by CUDA often use "old" versions of linux, like Debian 12 (6.1) or Fedora 39 (6.8), I personally use Arch); } else { Use AMD, you will have less problems and it'll probably be easier to setup; }
Also do some research over whether you actually do need cuda if you need cuda. It's synonymous with a lot of AI stuff, but in my experience it all works with rocm anyway.
If you're on Linux AMD is clearly superior because NVidia has Linux performance issue compared to Windows so you're ending up paying more for less. However NVidia has the monopole for a reason their product are superior but at what price ? Also if you want to avoid proprietary drivers AMD gets the win too.
I do think AMD is the better option for anyone that spend less than 800-1'000$ on a GPU even for Windows gamers. Personnaly I have made the switch from NVidia to AMD 2 years after ditching Windows for Linux, Never looked back even though Cyberpunk2077 looks amazing on NVidia RTX and some other things.
I have upgraded last year to a RX 7800 XT and have no regrets on spending that money.
AMD. Unless you need blender.
I am AMD and use Blender just fine. What do you mean?
Cuda and optix are anecdotally three times faster at rendering than any amd solution.
That doesn’t mean amd doesn’t perform well though, its personal preference on how much that time saving is worth it.
AMD-HIP works just great for me.
"Works great" and "Could work 3x faster" matter to a lot of people.
Well then you're just nagging about hardware, which isn't the issue being spouted on here. Blender works with AMD hardware just great, which OP was saying is not the case.
Blender works with AMD hardware just great
No it doesn't. That's our point. It works 30% as fast as its competition. That's not "working just great"...it's working slowly and like shit. The whole damn point of a GPU is to accelerate that work. The work that your AMD-HIP is doing in blender, could take an hour, and the NVidia would pump it out in 20 minutes.
You're bitching about hardware capabilities. Read OP's comment and stop showing up just to comment if you can't provide anything constructive except whining pedantry.
Nobody is bitching. Rage less. My constructive point is that NVidia is a better option. NVidia's CUDA stack is software - and unfortunately for us, that means it's also paired with their hardware.
Many people care if choosing something is going to hobble their workflow. In this point, if you're using Blender, choosing AMD is going to hobble your productivity. I'm just stating facts.
Is your information applicable to the nouveau drivers? I’d understood they’re many years behind in performance and capability but blender has never been in my use case.
Blender supports cuda for much of its gpu work. It will work with amd. And there are projects allowing gpu rendering via amd. But they are (and have been for a while) a long way behind the cuda stuff.
For major rendering projects nvidia is still the fastest set up to use.