I just got hold of an AMD RX7800 XT to replace my current Nvidia RTX3080.
I’m likely overthinking this but from what I understand I should just be able to swap the cards then uninstall the Nvidia drivers correct?
I’m running EndeavourOS which I installed with the option to include the Nvidia drivers by default so dunno if that changes anything? I’ve been daily driving Linux for exactly a year as of this month but I still kinda feel like a newbie sometimes lmao. Thanks in advance!
(Update) I got my AMD card installed and loaded up Wayland with no issues, only thing I had to install was the AMD Vulkan drivers for Steam.
I’ve never done the process myself, but I would probably uninstall the nvidia drivers while the system is still running, install whatever amd packages you need I know there are some vulkan packages that people need that aren’t installed by default, and then power off and swap the cards.
You just got me to remember something about a Vulkan package when I first installed Steam so gonna find the AMD package for that. Thanks!
I’m not familiar with these vulkan packages, what should I look for?
I don’t have an AMD card, so I don’t know, but I recall reading on the endeavourOS forums of people solving their AMD gaming issues by installing the proper vulkan packages. That is to say. You should head to the endeavourOS forums and peruse around there. You will probably find that information very quickly there.
Thanks! I’ve not been having many problems, but if it’s causing a performance loss it would be good to take care of it, I’ll check that out
Even if you install the drivers while the system is running, it is not recommended to remove the card while the system is running.
I never suggested that they remove the card while the system is running. You must have skipped the part in my comment that says
power off and swap the cardsDon’t worry I wasn’t planning on sticking my hands into a powered up PC anyway haha.
In case others are interested on the general compute aspect, e.g inference for self hosted AI, here is something related I found :
- ZLUDA, for CUDA everywhere, https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA/ unfortunately in the process of a major rewrite https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA/discussions/261 due to AMD (somehow?!) not wanting their code being used in there (maybe they did some shady RE on NVIDIA work?)
- AMD ROCm https://github.com/ROCm/ROCm and HIP https://github.com/ROCm/HIP
There isn’t anything you need to know. It’s the opposite actually. You can now forget about graphics drivers entirely if you want. Unless it’s like, a job or hobby or something.
Meh… there are certain use cases where the selection between mesa or either of the AMD drivers does matter.
I just did this with an RX7900TX and everything worked fine and I decided to install my normal updates. And then my PC wouldn’t boot. After hours of “fun”, it turns out that the issue had nothing to do with the GPU swap and all. Tons of fun!
Went from GTX970 to 6800XT.
Just drivers!A while back I swapped out my crusty old GTX 960 for a RX 7600 and honestly, other than removing the old nvidia drivers and installing the Vulkan drivers, I had to do nothing else and I have 0 issues or complaints.
Seems weird to replace a 3080 but hey, whatever floats your goat.
I switched from Nvidia to AMD recently. As long as you have a recent kernel you should be fine. If you’re running an old/stable distro you might have issues with mesa, especially if you need OpenCL or ROCm. For general use and gaming it worked for me with no fuss.
I just replaced my 3070 with a RX 7900XT and it was a very noticeable difference in performance. It doesn’t help that my primary display is 3840x1600 though. The 3070 was never particularly great for that res.
I think the only thing to keep in mind is that Nvidias proprietary drivers work better for Linux whereas for AMD it is the open-source ones.
I have an Nvidia card and the prop. drivers have worked flawlessly for me for years.
I know the open source drivers are closing the gap for Nvidia, and they also seem to be playing ball on that front. But for AMD the open source drivers are definitely the way to go from what I understand.
If no one minds my hyjacking part of this thread.
Id also like some similar advice.
I use blender. Not heavily but have been playing on it for 20plus years.
My GPU is pretty old. 1050ti at the time nvidia was pretty much it for blender.
Im looking for a sub £300 card in the next 3 to 6 months.
Is AMD well supported by blender now. And what cards would folks recomend these days.
PS not a gamer. 0ad is about as close as i get.
Take a look at
From what I can tell NVIDIA still is much better for Blender at least points-wise. No idea if you’d notice it on normal usage …
Yeah looks very much like nvidia is exclusive at the top even at the price I’m looking at.
The RTX4060 looks about right price vs performance. I’ll spend some time looking up how well they play with linux atm. And keep an eye out for a used RTX4070 as well.
I have an AMD Cpu and a 4070 running Kinoite, installed the usual Fedora drivers via rpm-ostree and aside of some weirdness sometimes with sleep mode (I think it can’t go to sleep when Vorta does a backup amd then hamgs the whole system …) and a few crashes in Jellyfin playing HEVC videos it’s super smooth
Do you do AI stuff?
I’ve heard NVidia is better for AI
For gaming, you’ll probably not notice a difference. If anything, you’ll be happy due to not having to wrestle NVidia Linux Drivers :P
In addition there are also often packages to get hardware acceleration of video working, if you care about saving energy / fan noise there.
