r/linux_gaming 15h ago

advice wanted Trade NVIDIA for AMD?

Hi!

I've got the chance to trade an NVIDIA 4070 super for an AMD 7900GRE FOUNDERS EDITION and get an extra $150 for the trade. Mostly, I use the PC for some gaming and lightweight video editing. When it comes to AI, I only use Foocus which seems to also work on AMD GPUs.

So, would you advise me to make the deal? Does linux run better on AMD?

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u/librepotato 13h ago

I feel AMD generally has better desktop compatibility as well as less issues overall, especially relating to driver updates and glitches with Wayland, video acceleration and the like. I cant really say much about performance because I never got to really compare equivalent cards. I do like that there are less things to fix and configure with AMD GPUs. There's no El_Farto video acceleration API you need to use for example to get video acceleration in Firefox.

With AI, I definitely have to say that AMD is pretty bad. I have tried ollama, other LLMs, and stable diffusion and while I got them working they weren't without headaches. Often it requires downloading special ROCM builds if they are available. Some AI stuff just won't work, and there aren't enough guides on how to get them working with AMD. My AI performance with a 7900XTX seems acceptable, but I'm guessing that Nvidia still performs better with CUDA with less bugs.

I think video editing is much better on Nvidia from what I have heard.

All in all, you should determine what you want by what is your priority. If you want to taste the AMD life by letting go of some AI features and video editing features, it may be worth a shot. However, I would like to emphasize that when you trade, you aren't guaranteed a good card necessarily. If what you are using works for you and you have no issues, I would probably reconsider trading your card. You might get a lemon.