George Shuklin writes:
I'm driving into 'new pc struggles', and the thing to think hard about is GPU.What GPU is good for Linux? I've tired of Nvidia blobbing, (even it's packaged really well now), so the next (and last thing is AMD). How well is it working with open source drivers? Just enough for desktop, or good for normal 3D?If you recently upgraded/bought GPU, what was your issues if any?
My experience with nVidia is that it works well with the proprietary graphics drivers. It is the way of least hassle towards a fully-functional GPU on linux if one needs more than an IGP's performance.
I also have two AMD GPUs (Radeon RX570 and Radeon Pro W5500) with the following experience:
The RX570 works out of the box for 3D accelleration with the open source driver + non-free firmware blobs. The W5500 does not work out of the box. A newer kerneland firmware is needed -- I am using 5.8.0-0.bpo.2-amd64. Even then, on Debian 10, it does not do any 3D accelleration or video decoding yet. It does support at least three screens in that configuration already (no fourth one to test here :) ) and 2D performance is decent enough for working (scrolling works etc.)
I can get to run the 3D capabilities of the W5500 using the open source driver + firmware blobs with a newer Mesa version. I successfully tested version 20.2 (from Debian sid) for that purpose and it performs well.
There does not seem to be a backported Mesa for Debian stable (and it does not seem exactly trivial to do one myself, although I have not tried yet).
Some time ago, I tried to get to run the computing accelleration (i.e. OpenCL) for the AMD Radeon RX570. I got it to work in the end with a strange mix of the proprietary driver and the free implementation installed at the same time. I remember it was a "nightmare". It did run stable, though. I have not tested OpenCL for the W5500 yet.
Summary: Older AMD cards work with Debian stable, newer ones only with newer Debian (tested with Debian sid).
HTH Linux-Fan öö
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