raevol wrote:So here's what I did.
I got an RX 480. The AMDGPU drivers are super good now, so I don't need proprietary drivers any more.
This interests me because I've been wanting to build a new PC for a while now (going to have to wait a little longer as taxes just cleaned me out), and one of the things I was considering was whether to get an AMD or NVidia GPU. I upgraded somewhat recently from a Radeon HD 6870 to a GTX 970, as I'd heard that NVidia was the way to go for Linux, but I have to say the drivers where kind of a pain to install.
However, it seems things have changed a lot. AMD's open source drivers seem to work fairly well, but I'm not sure they work well enough. First, consider that an RX 480 would be somewhat equivalent to a GTX 970 or 1060 (
RX 480 vs GTX 970,
RX 480 vs GTX 1060-6GB). Now look at how the RX 480 compares to the 970 and 1060 in
these test run by Phoronix. Looks like it's comparable for some games while for others the AMD cards lag behind. I'm curious how AMD's Vega cards will hold up.
(Also, the Ryzen 7 looks interesting. I'd also heard that AMD CPU's didn't fair as well on Linux as Intel CPU's, but I guess that's changed, too. I'd better consult a few different forums before actually building a new PC, just to make sure I'm all up to date on this sort of thing.)
On a slightly more on-topic note, one thing I read was that AMD cards generally fit better with distros that have a rolling release (like LMDE), while NVidia cards are a little better for distros with a point release (like Ubuntu). I am currently using a rolling release distro (SolydXK) with an NVidia card, go figure. Maybe I should give Ubuntu another whirl.