# NVidia or AMD for Linux



## mastermunj (Dec 25, 2013)

I am planning to buy new PC in coming weeks and contemplating to switch to Ubuntu. I do play games but not hardcore gamer hence planing a GPU in range of 15K.

Need help with following points:
1. How is driver support from Nvidia / AMD for Linux?
2. How is game playing experience on Linux? (May be via WineHQ). I know it won't be as good as Windows, but I am a casual gamer only.

In nutshell I want to go with GPU with best driver support for Linux.


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## Minion (Dec 25, 2013)

Best driver support for linux is from AMD but i can't tell about game playing experience.


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## harshilsharma63 (Dec 25, 2013)

Why is there a poll? This isn't a question of opinion. It's a question of fact.


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## mastermunj (Dec 26, 2013)

Many a times it becomes personal preference too. So far I have received mixed information from various forums. Anyways, poll can be ignored, don't know how to disable it now.


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## ico (Dec 26, 2013)

Want to use open source driver fit for everything except gaming? Use AMD. It is okay for gaming these days. 60-70% of Catalyst in most cases. Catalyst only works well with Ubuntu. Not with other distributions imo.

nVidia only for their proprietary driver which is better than Catalyst everywhere. So, if gaming is concerned - nVidia should be the choice. nVidia's open source driver nouveau sucks in comparison to AMD open source driver though.


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## flyingcow (Dec 26, 2013)

try steam for linux, has limited games. and also games aernt fully optimised, youll get poor performance compared to win,


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## anirbandd (Dec 26, 2013)

gaming on Linux?? bad choice. 

why dont you go for dual boot with win7/8??

anyway, for linux, amd has better supprot than nvidia.


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## mastermunj (Dec 27, 2013)

Dual boot is other option I am thinking of, but Windows will then only be for Gaming.



anirbandd said:


> gaming on Linux?? bad choice.
> 
> why dont you go for dual boot with win7/8??
> 
> anyway, for linux, amd has better supprot than nvidia.



Linux won't be fore gaming mainly. It's for my research on bigdata and other programming stuff.
If I could get decent gaming experience on Linux then I won't have to go for Dual boot, otherwise will do Windows 7 / Ubuntu.


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## harshilsharma63 (Dec 27, 2013)

mastermunj said:


> Dual boot is other option I am thinking of, but Windows will then only be for Gaming.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



You can use Windows as main OS and run Linux in a VM.


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## sam_738844 (Dec 27, 2013)

mastermunj said:


> Dual boot is other option I am thinking of, but Windows will then only be for Gaming.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Research works in any data integration and ETL have nothing to do with underlying OS, it can be done with windows too and in better ways. You must have some GRID level semi-automated architecture implemented in Client-server mapped customer support interactions, transactions, and information coming from packaged applications like ERP and CRM online to speedup script level processing thus using the flavor of UNIX in its full glory, otherwise linux is just another OS for unstructured and semi-structured data, its the DB that matters, as we know windows has the most robust DB/OLAP bridges in the history of DB


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## mastermunj (Dec 27, 2013)

harshilsharma63 said:


> You can use Windows as main OS and run Linux in a VM.



I am actually planning to keep Linux as my main OS.



sam_738844 said:


> Research works in any data integration and ETL have nothing to do with underlying OS, it can be done with windows too and in better ways. You must have some GRID level semi-automated architecture implemented in Client-server mapped customer support interactions, transactions, and information coming from packaged applications like ERP and CRM online to speedup script level processing thus using the flavor of UNIX in its full glory, otherwise linux is just another OS for unstructured and semi-structured data, its the DB that matters, as we know windows has the most robust DB/OLAP bridges in the history of DB



That my friend was too much to read in one go. It's just about moving to Linux. Just trying to know if gaming will be decent there or not, since I am not much into gaming anyways.


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## hellknight (Dec 27, 2013)

ico said:


> Want to use open source driver fit for everything except gaming? Use AMD. It is okay for gaming these days. 60-70% of Catalyst in most cases. Catalyst only works well with Ubuntu. Not with other distributions imo.
> 
> nVidia only for their proprietary driver which is better than Catalyst everywhere. So, if gaming is concerned - nVidia should be the choice. nVidia's open source driver nouveau sucks in comparison to AMD open source driver though.



+1 to that. Go with NVIDIA if you want to install official drivers from NVIDIA (closed source). They'll give you much, much better performance & will work well with 99% of Linux distros. If you are going with AMD & their closed source drivers, then stick with Ubuntu & its derivatives. Also, GNOME 3 has/had issues with AMD drivers. 

IMO, it is better to go with NVIDIA. I've been using NVIDIA GTX 260 graphics card since last 4 years and never had any issues with it. Tried it on multiple distros such as Arch Linux (bleeding edge), Ubuntu (mainstream) & Debain & CentOS. All played perfectly with NVIDIA.


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## anirbandd (Dec 27, 2013)

mastermunj said:


> Dual boot is other option I am thinking of, but Windows will then only be for Gaming.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



i dont know for sure, i havent gamed on linux, but i can guarantee it wont be as good as on windows. 

dual boot is the way to go. 

which tools are you planning to use??


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## chris (Dec 28, 2013)

Gaming on Linux improving a lot. See SteamBox by steam, it use Linux. Currently they support NVIDIA . Shortly AMD support will come. Currenly they only support NVIDIA as AMD GPU have performance issue with Linux, but they are working on it.

Get a GPU recommended by SteamOS, then you are safe. Steam guys say games runs better on Linux than Windows. I tried to switch to Ubuntu, that failed because of AMD GPU, it can't run games properly on Linux. When i upgrade GPU i may go for AMD only as it have low power consumption, but i will wait and make sure it work perfectly with SteamOS.

Here is some GPU benchmarks on SteamOS/Linux

[Phoronix] The First NVIDIA GeForce Benchmarks On The SteamOS Beta

[Phoronix] AMD Catalyst Graphics Do Work On SteamOS

[Phoronix] Open-Source AMD Radeon Graphics Had A Wonderful 2013


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## mastermunj (Dec 28, 2013)

hellknight said:


> +1 to that. Go with NVIDIA if you want to install official drivers from NVIDIA (closed source). They'll give you much, much better performance & will work well with 99% of Linux distros. If you are going with AMD & their closed source drivers, then stick with Ubuntu & its derivatives. Also, GNOME 3 has/had issues with AMD drivers.
> 
> IMO, it is better to go with NVIDIA. I've been using NVIDIA GTX 260 graphics card since last 4 years and never had any issues with it. Tried it on multiple distros such as Arch Linux (bleeding edge), Ubuntu (mainstream) & Debain & CentOS. All played perfectly with NVIDIA.



Thank you buddy, I think NVidia could be good option here.



anirbandd said:


> i dont know for sure, i havent gamed on linux, but i can guarantee it wont be as good as on windows.
> 
> dual boot is the way to go.
> 
> which tools are you planning to use??



Mainly I will be using all programming software only. Some movies and casual games.



chris said:


> Gaming on Linux improving a lot. See SteamBox by steam, it use Linux. Currently they support NVIDIA . Shortly AMD support will come. Currenly they only support NVIDIA as AMD GPU have performance issue with Linux, but they are working on it.
> 
> Get a GPU recommended by SteamOS, then you are safe. Steam guys say games runs better on Linux than Windows. I tried to switch to Ubuntu, that failed because of AMD GPU, it can't run games properly on Linux. When i upgrade GPU i may go for AMD only as it have low power consumption, but i will wait and make sure it work perfectly with SteamOS.
> 
> ...



That is a lot of thing to read. I'll go through it over this weekend to get more insight. Thank you.


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## nikufellow (Dec 28, 2013)

I've tried catalyst with ubuntu and it works fine. Same should apply for other distros like xubuntu? mint based of ubuntu i guess


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