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Here is the linux distro I'm planning on going for, and what I'll be doing with it, hopefully it will give more information on what is right for me:
--I'll be going for crunchbang++, a close debian fork with just some changes to the front-end. It uses just a window manager (openbox) with a few tweaks.
--I'll be installing a low latency kernel, most probably liquorix, so in this case I'll probably be at the latest kernel version, even if I'll be on debian.
--I'll be generally using the computer for multimedia purposes, so I'll be web browsing, watching movies, playing games (both old, sometimes very old, and sometimes new, though generally not very new, sometimes), recording videos, may or may not do streaming, and may or may not do machine learning stuff (have done it before).
--Might host servers for games, e.g. minecraft server, terraria server, etc...
--I won't be using gsync or freesync, I also won't be using a multi monitor setup.
--I'm not going to use DLSS, though I will probably use FSR.
--I'll be on a 4k 120hz display that supports 10-bit colour.
--Not going to be using ray tracing.
--I will be doing some overclocking/tuning, so I'm not sure how good the tools are for nvidia or AMD, but I would like to basically pick a set voltage, and freeze the core clock (and memory clock) at a specific mhz, even on idle.
So which one? Nvidia or AMD?
I'm also curious about whether intel or AMD? I currently have a ryzen 3600 and have had intel 4th gen before that, stick with AMD cpu or try out intel for linux?
Last edited by deama on 1 November 2021 at 7:36 am UTC
Or Amd.
Or Intel.
It's all good, really.
You can always run into problems, the probability is roughly equal for each of them.
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Some don't realize this right away, but it's a stark contrast with blob support culture where bug reports aren't public. You won't feel any motivation contributing to the latter.
And bugs can happen anywhere, no matter what GPU you get.
For CPUs, I think AMD are just better today. Intel are trying to catch up so far.
Have fun using Linux!
Last edited by Shmerl on 1 November 2021 at 3:32 am UTC
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Intel and AMD otoh have their drivers in-tree, so that cant happen.
Seeing your plans in general, do you have experience with linux? If not, it is quite ambitious to go for a niche distro and install a custom kernel - especially since you didn't mention any work that profits from low-latency like audio recording, and the use for gaming is questionable.
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Judging by your display, you need most high end GPUs if you want to benefit from that refresh rate and 4K. So for AMD you can get RX 6800 XT or 6900 XT.
Personally I like Sapphire, they have very good and quiet cooling design in their models.
Does your monitor support adaptive sync?
Last edited by Shmerl on 1 November 2021 at 6:22 pm UTC
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If you're intent on a more niche distro and custom kernel, I'm inclined to go with AMD. Chances are it'll be more robust should something odd happen.
For the record I have Nvidia. It works just fine too, but my configuration is very "standard"
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Same here, but as others said, if you want to play around with the kernel, AMD might be the better choice.
AMD used (IMHO) to be way worse some years ago. It improved hugely. If it is a bit ahead or behind, I can't say, but I was shocked that Valve recommended the first version for HL Alyx (VR) for AMD only. And for some (many?) it's a matter of purity: You'd use a closed source binary for Nvidia and an open source driver for AMD. The latter for sure is "linuxier".
Yeah I've used linux before, tried moving to it as my main OS back in later 2018, but didn't go well at all, I tried both ubuntu and kubuntu, my experience in general with linux has been fairly unstable, so I want to go with an actually stable distro this time, with an emphasis for performance (window manager). I use linux for work so I got some experience under my belt.
I actually did some latency measurements back in 2019 or 2020 out of curiosity and found out that liquorix gave me less latency, I had a total latency of 40ms, and without liquorix it was 44ms. This is also with the compositor off, with the compositor on it was 48ms. A bit better than on windows 7/8.1, on windows the lowest I can get it to is 44ms.
That was with KDE plasma DE though, I'll have to re-measure when I try crunchbang++, I'm probably going to do even more tweaking as I'm currently compiling notes/configurations on what settings/packages etc... I want to use.
Still having a hard time deciding between nvidia/amd, I think I'll try AMD as it'll be my first try with them and I've heard some interesting points from a few people how amd is better for latency because they have more raw performance vs nvidia and a bit less "bloat" in the GPU itself, we'll see.
In the meantime I'm working on EMI as it relates to computer performance/stability, so far it has been going well, will be doing a final test to confirm in a week.
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strophelyst). Heck, I even switched to Mesa before it catched up performance-wise because fglrx was so PITA on Debian/sid xD