GeForce RTX 3060 Ti arrives December 2, hits RTX 2080 SUPER level performance

Quoting: minfaer

Quoting: 3zekielRay tracing is coming, and it is to be expected that it will be ubiquitous real fast now.

But will it come before 2018 aka Wayland in production use? Oh, wait, it's already 2020! Using a 27' 4k screen, I already depend on it in production for fractional scaling.

Quoting: 3zekielAMD cards will become expensive open source paperweights before long

Until they do not offer acceleration in XWayland, NVidias cards are 'expensive closed source' paperweights for Games right NOW for me. Ofc, your situation can be different (so this is not to answer Kimyrielle's original question about there being any use, but rather to comment the fallacies in reply to it).

Even putting OSS ideals aside, what I see is NVidias driver stack more and more failing to enable a modern Linux desktop experience, not for being badly implemented, but for being at odds with the Linux model architecturally. Just look at the EGLStreams mess. If they want to address these problems, this would require NVidia to rewrite large parts of their driver in a way more compatible with Linux's model, and therefore lose the advatages they get from sharing large parts of the codebase with Windows.

They were the best on the market in the early 2010s, but AMD has integrated much better into the Linux ecosystem and is now offering the superior driver situation for general desktop use and Intel always had a good practice for Linux drivers and upstreaming graphics stuff. I'm looking forward to them joining the dGPU market.

For XWayland, Fedora team is working on it so you can use it without having to go through a copr. And yes, I agree Nvidia defo has some rough egdes. Wayland is not very useful for now, but it is coming to be. For the discharge of Nvidia, necessary code is in X11 git, but there is just no release due to Xorg becoming basically abandonware, so to set it up you have to go through copr or whatever the equivalent is on *deb distros to get it working. That being said, you also need to do the same for AMD radv/ACO drivers so ...

On other answer about RT not becoming more and more important, just look at what gamers ask on various streams, and look at how many games now support or make full use of it. For linux, it mostly needs to be enabled in vkd3d/dxvk, where Khronos made the implem fit that special need, so I expect it will come real soon, making it not much of a gimmick. I don't expect Khronos would waste time creating API that way if it was not coming - most likely there is stadia push too. DLSS is another discussion certainly, it's true I should not include it in the comparison yet.

More generally, For RT becoming ubiquitous, now all GPUs which roll out, including that of consoles will most likely be equipped. So the prerequisites are here. And it really improves stuff so...

On the other side, I'm definitely waiting on Intel new card before buying anything. Because Intel driver + potentially good RT perf, now, that would beat Nvidia all the way. Intel igpu, from a desktop/driver perspective is indeed the best in class, never had to tinker, pretty much never had any strange bugs, no kernel version limitation, full support for gpu virtualisation in consumer hw, which is a killer feature for me. Intel is certainly a perfect game on sw support, and are truly the superior option when it comes to Linux workstation (and since my machine need to do both game and work). Just hope their dgpu is good in term of hw too :)

Quoting: KimyrielleIs there still a reason to go for NVidia rather than AMD these days?

It really depends. If you need a stable driver you won't have to uninstall/rebuild manually after each kernel update and you need cuda for some computation (3d rendering for example) Nvidia is sadly the way to go, no matter how pissed I am the whole Wayland deal has not been sorted out.

But if you need something for gaming and everyday Linux desktop AMD can be a nice option.

Quoting: poisondI have no idea how you come to the conclusion that NVidia performs worse for DXVK titles when all evidence points to the opposite.

vkd3d-proton and dxvk are not the same and what I wrote is straight from developers. Phoronix might have tested dxvk in the past, but I haven't seen any tests for dxvk or vkd3d-proton in the regular reports there.

Quoting: PJIt really depends. If you need a stable driver you won't have to uninstall/rebuild manually after each kernel update

That's exactly AMD situation (the driver is part of the kernel). Nvidia on the the other hand requires rebuilding the driver because it's not upstream and uses dkms. So tough luck if they don't support certain kernels like happened recently.


Last edited by Shmerl on 2 December 2020 at 3:36 pm UTC

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: PJIt really depends. If you need a stable driver you won't have to uninstall/rebuild manually after each kernel update

That's exactly AMD situation (the driver is part of the kernel).

Not really, but to I should had been more clear what I mean. If you're creative you probably need good opencl and stable opengl that works well in professional content creation apps (no matter 3d, video production etc). Sadly this means Mesa won't be enough.
Thus when you're on AMD you need to install AMDGPU PRO. And my experience is that as you don't have a repo for amdgpu pro for most distros provided by AMD after each kernel update you end with a blank black screen and you neeed to reinstall the driver.
With Nvidia it is just way simpler - you get the rebuilt driver after a kernel update (or at least should - which worked for me in the last 3 or 4 years) as Nvidia offers repos for the most popular distros.

And to be clear - all I am saying is that it is still not that simple. I'd love to use AMD (because of Wayland for example), but as a creative I'd be shooting myself in the foot (and yeah.... I've tried).

But I totally understand that if you're a typical desktop user and just need good gaming performance and nice desktop AMD can be a good option for you.


Last edited by PJ on 2 December 2020 at 6:12 pm UTC

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: PJIt really depends. If you need a stable driver you won't have to uninstall/rebuild manually after each kernel update

That's exactly AMD situation (the driver is part of the kernel). Nvidia on the the other hand requires rebuilding the driver because it's not upstream and uses dkms. So tough luck if they don't support certain kernels like happened recently.

don't know for other distros, but on Fedora/Centos nvidia is using akmods, so you never have to rebuild anything yourself.
As for the kernel support:
1/ With nvidia you don't need latest kernel usually, unless you absolutely need another feature.
2/ it happened once in I don't know how long that you could not get the new one right ways... And it was mostly because of Licence stuff.
3/ With AMD, the number of time I have to go and use some copr to get latest kernel/mesa for my wife is actually much higher, and I rarely see you guys bragging about that. And no, having to use third party stuff, compiling latest stuff on a workstation OR normal desktop is not ideal/normal at all - it might be smthg you do for fun or use your own modified kernel for fsync as an example, where you know exactly what goes inside though - ... Especially not kernel and graphic stack which I'd rather be stable, so not git or stuff not tested at all by distro. For nvidia, only need to get the detached Xwayland-git package (without any of the rest of X) which as a matter of fact is semi official now.

To be perfectly fair, neither nvidia(mostly with cuda stuff, never for gaming to be fair) nor amd give the hassle free/clean road so far, both have their catch. So far for me, only Intel does give what looks like it, just igpu is not powerful enough (did I say I wait on your dgpu Intel? please do not disappoint me, please).

[quote=PJ][quote=Shmerl]

Quoting: PJAnd to be clear - all I am saying is that it is still not that simple. I'd love to use AMD (because of Wayland for example), but as a creative I'd be shooting myself in the foot (and yeah.... I've tried).

For wayland (well you probably mean Xwayland in fact) on fedora at least: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/XwaylandStandalone and yes, it has code to support Nvidia.


Last edited by 3zekiel on 2 December 2020 at 6:15 pm UTC

I'm talking about gaming. I never needed OpenCL or using AMD-pro.

Also, AMD are working to replace their closed OpenGL with Mesa gradually. OpenCL work is done independently and is progressing well.


Last edited by Shmerl on 2 December 2020 at 6:35 pm UTC

Quoting: 3zekiel1/ With nvidia you don't need latest kernel usually, unless you absolutely need another feature.

It doesn't matter what you need it for (some new hardware or whatever). Nvidia simply doesn't guarantee to work with recent kernels. AMD does. So clearly the situation is reverse. AMD provide drivers for kernels seamlessly. Nvidia provide one you need to build through dkms without guarantee that it will work.


Last edited by Shmerl on 2 December 2020 at 6:38 pm UTC

@3zekiel : yeah, I know... and I've tried. And it sucks big time. IMO there's no sense using Wayland session on Nvidia atm. Also I don't think it is the devs that should bend the knee. It is Nvidia who should adhere to the standard that has been clearly laid out. The only (unrealistic tbh) hope I have is that Wayland switches to Vulkan (which from what I've heard is at least possible since some missing pieces were added).

@Shmerl: yeah, I totally got it. But the question was whether there are any reasons to go with Nvidia - and I've given those :) .