Probably Intel/Nvidia, possibly AMD/Nvidia once Ryzen comes out (any day now?).

Ryzen is available for preorder today and will be out March 1st apparently. I just found those videos. AMD seems to have cheaper alternatives to Intel's top processors by now.

Spoiler, click me

View video on youtube.com
View video on youtube.com

I would definitely recommend waiting until March, so you can probably save lots of money with an AMD build compared to an similar Intel build.

The thing that I am most interested in (and cautious about) is AMD graphics. I have been using bumblebee so basically getting the best of Mesa features and stability, and NVIDIA performance for games. But NVIDIA driver in itself is not that great in my book. I experienced stability issues and external screens not working properly on pure NVIDIA machines.

At least with a dedicated AMD graphics card I can run Mesa, xrandr, modesetting, and other open-source goodies. Which I think is awesome. But what about game compatibility and performance? Is it there yet?

Have we heard anything about the motherboard chipsets that'll support these new AMD chips?

Intel chips with Intel chipsets have been a successful recipe for stable systems the last few years. I hope AMD either has strong partners or are releasing their own (well tested) chipsets.

A slew of chipsets was unveiled a while back. I'm sure you can find info no problem.

Looks like AMD/Nvidia is a very viable option come March 2.

Thanks, damarrin. I normally keep up on the news, must have missed it. Apologies!

To save other's the search here's a decent write-up (with pictures!) of the soon to be available motherboards - LINK.

I'm in a very similar situation here. Currently on a AMD/Nvidia build and it's worked well for a while but the components have start to show their age. I was thinking of going Ryzen/Radeon next month but I want a small build. I don't think there are many options for a smaller build to start off with.

Just a warning to those who are getting an X370 mobo dont expect it to work flawlesly on Linux until 4.11 kernel is released! ONLY with kernel 4.11 everything will work ok :P
for example most of the X370 motherboards are using ALC1220 sound cards and that is supported only on 4.11 kernel.
Also Ryzen support added on 4.10 Kernel so you should be fine but it will be fully supported on 4.11 kernel.

As for me I am going AMD Ryzen 1800+, Nvidia 1080Ti (depends of the price) which will be announced in a few hours ^_^

so here are the parts I have chosen

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Boxed
Corsair Dominator Platinum 32GB DDR4 Kit 3000 CL15 (2x16GB)
ASUS CROSSHAIR VI HERO or MSI X370 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM (supports 2x M.2- Linux mdadm RAID 0 SSD960 Pro M.2 , Anyone? :P)
Samsung SSD 960 Pro M.2
Nvidia GTX1080Ti
EVGA SuperNOVA Platinum 850 Watt p2

I would expect that many games don't work properly with an AMD graphic card. At least many games are not official supported.

I think it will take several years for the open AMD driver to run as well as the binary Nvidia driver. Even then older games may not run with it anyway.

I'm wrong? Would be happy, please correct me!

Yeah, I'm currently unhappy about the AMD graphics side on Linux. It is getting there (driver improvements). I just trust more games to work without problems on Nvidia on Linux.

Once AMD drivers are working great, I might consider future AMD cards ( e.g. RX480 ).

On the CPU side, I've been happy to avoid Intel and go with AMD FX processors. I've been buying AMD for many of my computers over the years. (Athlon, Phenom, Phenom II, FX, and even the AMD APU for second pc.)

The new RyZEN - I hope it does very well, and offers a good value alternative to Intel. Ideally showing Intel up with AMD as the new processor kings.

im looking at picking up

Asus Prime X370-Pro AM4 Ryzen
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X AM4
16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200Mhz G-Skill Trident Z RGB
1TB Samsung 960 Evo NVMe M.2 SSD

I will carry over my nvidia gpu for now and I already have a decent psu. I am just holding off until kernel 4.11 is released and maybe for Gentoo to arch-set gcc-6.x

So now that that hardware is taken care of, what OS?

Also, while gedit is a nice, easy to use text editor, I really feel like I should learn my way around Vim, or perhaps Atom? Help?!

jk -- I wanted April Fool's Day to go out with one last comment.

So what are we looking at for a solid build currently? AMD Ryzen processor with an NVIDA GPU?

Im interested in a full AMD system but the more reviews i see for Ryzen on Linux the less convinced i am about it as a dedicated gaming CPU.


Phoronix i7 7700k vs Ryzen 1800x

^^

with price drops for Intel it seems if all you do is game then Intel is still a clear winner. Then again if you watch videos or stream whilst you game or compile etc.. then a 8 core Ryzen seems like a good idea.
Linux titles tend to be more CPU centric so favour intel but with Vulkan & Ryzen optimisations the difference might not be so much in the long run. Then again, Ryzen 2.0 ( or Ryzen+) shouldn't be too long away and that in theory should be giving another 15% per core IPC.

As for AMD GPU it seems that MESA/RadeonSi is beating out AMDGPU-Pro in almost every test now and by a clear margin. Id imagine it is not far behind Nvidia but the desktop experience should be better with AMD being opensource and you get a $200 cheaper monitor option with Freesync over the more expensive G-sync.

Id say Intel CPU + AMD GPU right now is probably still the best bet. Also soon Intel will also be releasing a much more multicore gaming CPU with the next generation and the prices will have to compete with Ryzen.

it seems theres an issue with AMD CPU + AMD GPU, cause those phoronix results are really weird compared to results with Nvidia cards. At least from my testing with [email protected] paired with GTX 1070 the difference is not that huge with i7 7700K, specially in Dirt Rally, Tomb Raider and Hitman seem to be pretty much on par with it. I don't have results saved anywhere sadly, but if someone has the same GPU and can run some test with 7700K i will gladly run some with my Ryzen to compare

it seems theres an issue with AMD CPU + AMD GPU, cause those phoronix results are really weird compared to results with Nvidia cards. At least from my testing with [email protected] paired with GTX 1070 the difference is not that huge with i7 7700K, specially in Dirt Rally, Tomb Raider and Hitman seem to be pretty much on par with it. I don't have results saved anywhere sadly, but if someone has the same GPU and can run some test with 7700K i will gladly run some with my Ryzen to compare

yea, sometimes I get puzzled by Phoronix benchmarks as they don't tally up with the Windows benchmarks for Ryzen ( even taking into consideration the loss in FPS due to the port ). seems to be so much conflicting information online for the new AMD CPU's.

Also it is reported that Ryzen system erformance might depend quite a lot on a RAM clocking (the higher the better), so "memory hyperx ddr4 2133" might not be the best choice for a superfast system.
Would go for at least around 3000...

Just made my build

ryzen 1600 , gigabyte 350ab gaming 3 , just for now Kingston 8gb 2400mhz ddr4.

Kernel 4.11 had an IRQ problem "irqpoll" didn't fixed it, it made it worse. kernel 4.12 seems ok.

What really surprises me is how silent it is, the system will downclock the fans and make all really silent.
The cooler is massive and it's a lot more colder than vishera.

Previously Dirt Rally 45fps, with Ryzen 75fps.

That's a great gain :D

I'm starting to think of getting a new ryg, for both performance and ditch Intel/Nvidia but with my decision skills that could happen somewhere next year lol. Happy to see content people with Ryzen and AMD GPUs.

It's been a rough start (April) but I'm quite happy with my Ryzen-build. Now I'm waiting for RX Vega to replace my aging 7970GE.

If you go for Ryzen, ASRock X370 Taichi is a really good motherboard.