Hey folks. I’m a new dad which means my gaming time is at a premium, but I am going through a big cleanse of the enshittification era of the internet right now, and Windows 11 is kinda giving me bad vibes.
Last time I tried to run Linux it was ok and worked the majority of the time, but ray tracing and a few games caused some issues. I was also using game pass which of course doesn’t work on Linux, so I dropped back to windows.
How is Nvidia life these days? I’ve got a 3080 and an AMD 9800X3D so it should be fine for most games I imagine.
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If you’ve already got an Nvidia card, there’s no sense in going out and buying a new one just for Linux. Just make sure you choose a distro that explicitly supports Nvidia out of the box.
I started with Nvidia as well and then just got AMD at the next upgrade.
I have an RTX 3080 Ti working beautifully on EndeavourOS (Arch based).
I haven’t done any research into GPUs on Linux in awhile. I wasn’t aware nvidia finally released an open source driver. Looks like it’s recommended for the 3080. Seems like this was a fairly recent development so you may have more luck?
I’ve been running Fedora for over a year now with an Nvidia 4090 RTX with no major problems. I can think of one game (Path of Exile 2) where I needed to make a minor configuration tweak to get it working.
It’s much better these days - at least it works fine on arch and fedora. I wouldn’t worry about nvidia on Linux. That said, I’d go AMD for another reason - $. There’s just no reason to spend the kind of money nvidia wants when you can get something just a tad slower for 1/4 the price. AMD makes cards that can drive a huge monitor at high fps.
Bottom line: whatever is fine.
Some things to consider:
- RTX on AMD sucks, though not sure how RTX on Linux is
- AMD drivers are FOSS, which means things like Wayland work better sooner (I think Wayland works on Nvidia now?)
- if you’re on a rolling release, you’ll occasionally have breakage with Nvidia due to kernel mismatch (happened to me on Arch and openSUSE Tumbleweed); no issues with AMD
In short, AMD will be more seamless on Linux and cheaper for raster performance. Nvidia may be a little annoying, but has higher top end performance.
I go with AMD because I’m done paying more and having a bit worse experience, but I mostly stick to mid tier cards anyway.
RTX is Nvidia’s brand of gaming GPU’s. It can’t be “on AMD”
RTX means Ray Tracing Texel eXtreme, and people use it to mean “ray tracing” regardless of who is doing it. AMD can do it, just with crappy performance compared to Nvidia.
Don’t buy nvidia. Intel and AMD opensourced their drivers and, more importantly, care for their customer needs. And i am talking about gaming customers.
The only thing nvidia cares about is AI and lots of money.
They lie to their customers (fake frames, paperlaunch) und neglect the gaming needs in favor of AI.
And, after all, AMD does not use 12V high power connectors, just simple, non burning, dual 8 pins
OP already has a Nvidia card and isn’t planning on buying anything. Yes Nvidia is a horrible company, but that doesn’t answer OP’s question. What answers OP’s questions is: Yes, go ahead and try Linux, your Nvidia card is going to work just fine.
AMD is ideal but Nvidia is fine. Basically any game that would work on AMD will work on Nvidia (
only exception I know of is the VR mode of Phasmophobiaedit: apparently this was fixed ~1yr ago). Gamepass still won’t work though - blame Microsoft for that one.That said, Nvidia has more of a performance hit when switching. Ancient Gameplays recently did a video comparing Nobara vs Windows 11, with both the RX 7900XTX and the RTX 4080 Super. These were his average results across 20 games:
RX 7900XTX: 1080p +2%, 1440p +0%, 4k -2.2%
RTX 4080S: 1080p -13.8%, 1440p -13%, 4k -10.2%
So your games will work. They just might run 10%-15% slower until you can snag an AMD card. If you’re interested in fully committing, looks like most used 3080s are going for ~$500 on ebay, so you could probably get an AMD card and get most of your money back.
AMD is ideal but Nvidia is fine
Not in all cases. I need GPU passthrough to play VR games in a VM. Only Nvidia cards work for that.
Is that true? It looks like at least some people have gotten AMD GPU passthrough to work unless I am misunderstanding.
Also, as an FYI most VR games worked well for me on baremetal linux through proton. Half Life Alyx, Beat Saber, The Lab, COMPOUND, Walkabout Minigolf, and 2-3 more indie titles all worked. Although I guess you need to have the right headset - I think only the Valve Index and a few HTC headsets work with minimal effort on linux, others might work with a lot of tinkering.
Linux Mint, a 3090 and zero problems
Linux Mint and 3060 - no problems here either.
linux mint and 3060ti rolling smoothly
I got a 3080 and I have not encountered any issues on the latest drivers, released a few days ago.
Before that, I had a minor issue (artifacts) on some websites when on a high refresh rate. Fixed with latest drivers.
My next card is going to be nvidia, too.
Alrighty, I’m going to give it a real go when I finish moving house and see how it goes.
I have a 7900 XTX. It just works™.
This. I moved to the 7900 XTX after trying to get my 4080 to work properly for a solid month. Works perfectly now.
I just did a new build with AMD 9800X3D and RTX 5080. I’ve been dual booting Win 11 and Nobara. I haven’t done direct head to head benchmarks but Deep Rock Galactic, Deep Rock Survivor, Satisfactory, Skyrim, Atomic Heart all have run fine on Nobara.
The big difference I’ve noticed is Cyberpunk 2077. For whatever reason the AI frame generation tool doesn’t seem to work on Nobara so max FPS is around 65-70 with max raytracing/graphics settings. On Windows I got around 75+ and with the AI frame generation it goes up to 180 (I realize this is not a feature that some people like, please just realize I’m reporting my testing results).
Now all of that said, there is this weird jitteriness along the edges of objects with rapid camera movement in Cyberpunk on Windows, even at 180 fps, that isn’t there on Nobara. So even though the objective frame rate is much lower on Nobara, it actually feels much smoother and nicer.
¯\(ツ)/¯
I’m using endeavourOS with Nvidia 4090 with proprietary drivers and it works fine for most games without tinkering. For issues with Linux gaming you can check protonDB. Steam, lutris and heroic game launchers are doing wonders for a big portion of the gaming options on Linux. I wouldn’t change the 3080 with AMD if I were you.
I have been using a 1080TI for years on Linux. It works fine for the most part. If I am going to build a new system which I am planning to do. I would avoid it.
To me, Nvidia isn’t worth the trouble on Linux unless you have specific (non-gaming) needs that can’t be met with AMD or Intel hardware.
With this in mind, I kept using my last Nvidia card until it needed replacing, and then switched to AMD. Seems like that might make sense for you, too.
I’ve been doing almost all of my gaming on Linux for 2 years now, running a 5800X3D and an RTX 3080.
Why the “almost”? I love to fly flight simulators, mostly DCS World, in VR and am still using an HP Reverb G2 (Windows) headset.
Everything else works without issues on Linux for me. I’ve been sitting on Pop!_OS 22.04 but if I were to install today, I’d go for Linux Mint
I’d also recommend considering a more gaming-focused distro, they are increasingly popular, easy to use and tuned for gaming with everything you’re going to need. SteamOS, Bazzite, PikaOS are all strong choices with rapidly ongoing development at this point (and there are others).
Gaming distros may not be as inherently “stable” as more productivity-focused distros like Mint, but for gaming you don’t really want to be. Gaming is pretty cutting-edge, even on Windows you need to get your updates promptly and keep your drivers up-to-date etc if you want many games to work properly. And that situation is doubly true on Linux since it is still a bit less mature for gaming and some parts of the ecosystem are a bit “experimental”. A gaming distro balances the need for stability with the need for the latest and greatest games to run properly and with good performance.
I’ll second bazzite, works amazingly well for what it’s intended!
For gaming, pop os has always been good for me on amd
Same here. I’ve never run into any of the edge cases that need the bleeding edge updates, and I’ve been running the same install for a while without any stability issues.
Yeah, I literally tested my whole steam library. Around 100 games. Only like 3 wouldn’t work at all, and those were old somewhat wonky games. I even got most non steams working too. In steam, a minute looking at proton db and making minor adjustments to the config was needed maybe 5-10% of the time.
Important to note that most of my games are 10+ years old
I’m amazed by how well it works, Proton is literally a game changer! Most of my games are older too, but I purchased the Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Farming Simulator 25 on launch day or soon after with zero Linux associated issues. Not being very interested in multiplayer games helps a lot. My only multiplayer game is Elder Scrolls Online, and they’ve made Steam Deck specific tweaks, so I’m lucky there!
