better than AMD hardware on Windows or better than Nvidia hardware on Linux?

IMHO both are half-truths...


What we (I use Linux Mint on an AMD RX580) do have that is a good advantage over Nvidia is an opensource driver (AMDGPU) that is shipped as part of Mesa (a default component to any Linux distro) so we get full driver support out-of-the-box for them!

Nvidia has closed source drivers that have comparable performance (sometimes bettern sometimes similar and a couple times worse... depends on the game / workload / benchmark)... but this need to be installed (though latest versions of Linux Mint and Ubuntu have been experimenting with it being installed automatically for liveboot and for initial setup)


The other thing AMD on Linux has that is really exclusive (for now at least) and has a noticeable positive performance impact compared to the same GPU on Windows (and arguably against Nvidia on Linux, but I haven't seen that being benchmarked yet) is ACO.

This is a gaming-optimized shader compiler developed by Valve (yeah, not even by AMD themselves, how cool is having opensource drivers, right?!) that sometimes cuts game loading times in half and frequently eliminates microstutters. It doesn't impact fps, only very sligthly, but feels great to use it anyway because motion is more fluid at the same fps if stuttering is eliminated.

thanks for reply good info

no problem!

one more thing I should say: I'm a few months behind on reading the news on Phoronix... That's THE authority in Linux benchmarking, so if you don't know it yet, you should definitely check it outl

Despite COVID-19 wreaking havoc on all our lives, the pace of development was so furious recently that I may have just missed recent news where AMD on Linux actually proved to be ahead of everyone else... they were definitely getting the performance gaps smaller and smaller until recently.

Originally posted by Marlock:

(though latest versions of Linux Mint and Ubuntu have been experimenting with it being installed automatically for liveboot and for initial setup)

Not for live boot: you still might need nomodeset. The driver's included on the image so you can have it from first boot without an internet connection, but having it running in the live boot would mean that the image wouldn't work on non-Nvidia hardware. Pop OS gets round it by having an Nvidia image and an Everything Else image.

It depends on the game and the card.

As comparison between windows performance from Windows to Linux on AMD Cards and nVidia Cards AMD cards run equal or better when both the Windows and Linux versions of the game are equally optimized, while nVidia cards see a lesser increase or a minor loss.

Unfortunately not all Linux ports are properly optimized.

The performance loss on Wine and Steamplay is smaller on AMD to the point that the performance gained is actually exceeding the loss on a very small number of titles that rub the Windows handling of certain system resources the wrong way but like the way Linux handles it.

That said, the top-end nVidia cards are available with higher GPU power and memory bandwidth in the current generation than anything produced by AMD, this gain exceeds the advantage of AMD processors, but you pay through your nose for, and end up generating a lot of heat inside your case due to nVidia GPUs using over twice as much power and outputting nearly all of that as heat.

The nVidia drivers have gotten better in recent years, and they have started providing some minimal support to the Mesa project. However, they don't provide near the support of the AMD project in the number of hours spent, how many engineers they have assisting, or how often they donate software technology to the general project beyond fixing bugs in basic drivers (nVidia never does this, AMD frequently does this. The technology behind the current Gallium Infrastructure was sold to VMWare with the express intent of it being integrated into Mesa, as both companies wanted it in Mesa. I suspect AMD sold it for a lot less money than it was worth, as derived technology is now part of the official OpenCL, OpenGL and Vulkan standards as SPIR.)

The biggest difference is in OpenGL titles, since Windows OpenGL driver sucks on AMD platforms, and since OpenGL is old as hell, they won't improve anything related to that ancient driver. I get up to 40% more performance on Linux while playing OpenGL games.

nashe amd breo

Originally posted by Marlock:

better than AMD hardware on Windows or better than Nvidia hardware on Linux?

IMHO both are half-truths...


What we (I use Linux Mint on an AMD RX580) do have that is a good advantage over Nvidia is an opensource driver (AMDGPU) that is shipped as part of Mesa (a default component to any Linux distro) so we get full driver support out-of-the-box for them!

Nvidia has closed source drivers that have comparable performance (sometimes bettern sometimes similar and a couple times worse... depends on the game / workload / benchmark)... but this need to be installed (though latest versions of Linux Mint and Ubuntu have been experimenting with it being installed automatically for liveboot and for initial setup)


The other thing AMD on Linux has that is really exclusive (for now at least) and has a noticeable positive performance impact compared to the same GPU on Windows (and arguably against Nvidia on Linux, but I haven't seen that being benchmarked yet) is ACO.

This is a gaming-optimized shader compiler developed by Valve (yeah, not even by AMD themselves, how cool is having opensource drivers, right?!) that sometimes cuts game loading times in half and frequently eliminates microstutters. It doesn't impact fps, only very sligthly, but feels great to use it anyway because motion is more fluid at the same fps if stuttering is eliminated.

Using nvidia nouveau u don't have nvidia settings like when u use nvidia property drivers,does that also happen with amd?

Originally posted by aaads:

Originally posted by Marlock:

better than AMD hardware on Windows or better than Nvidia hardware on Linux?

IMHO both are half-truths...


What we (I use Linux Mint on an AMD RX580) do have that is a good advantage over Nvidia is an opensource driver (AMDGPU) that is shipped as part of Mesa (a default component to any Linux distro) so we get full driver support out-of-the-box for them!

Nvidia has closed source drivers that have comparable performance (sometimes bettern sometimes similar and a couple times worse... depends on the game / workload / benchmark)... but this need to be installed (though latest versions of Linux Mint and Ubuntu have been experimenting with it being installed automatically for liveboot and for initial setup)


The other thing AMD on Linux has that is really exclusive (for now at least) and has a noticeable positive performance impact compared to the same GPU on Windows (and arguably against Nvidia on Linux, but I haven't seen that being benchmarked yet) is ACO.

This is a gaming-optimized shader compiler developed by Valve (yeah, not even by AMD themselves, how cool is having opensource drivers, right?!) that sometimes cuts game loading times in half and frequently eliminates microstutters. It doesn't impact fps, only very sligthly, but feels great to use it anyway because motion is more fluid at the same fps if stuttering is eliminated.

Using nvidia nouveau u don't have nvidia settings like when u use nvidia property drivers,does that also happen with amd?

You don't get the adrenalin control panel (like on windows) with any driver.

true, but there are 3rd-party opensource alternatives to at least some of the core functionality in such panels...

A while back I started this thread exactly to figure out what was available in that scenery:

GUI tools for monitoring and managing clock/voltage/temp/fans on Linux
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/221410/discussions/0/1777136225015918222/

It won't be a 1:1 replacement, but depending on what you want a couple tools may actually be great at it.