I have this question. I see people, with some frequency, sugar coating the Nvidia GPU marriage with Linux. I get that if you already have a Nvidia GPU or you need CUDA or work with AI and want to use Linux that is possible. Nevertheless, this still a very questionable relationship.
Shouldn’t we be raising awareness about in case one plan to game titles that uses DX12? I mean 15% to 30% performance loss using Nvidia compared to Windows, over 5% to 15% and some times same performance or better using AMD isn’t something to be alerting others?
I know we wanna get more people on Linux, and NVIDIA’s getting better, but don’t we need some real talk about this? Or is there some secret plan to scare people away from Linux that I missed?
Am I misinformed? Is there some strong reason to buy a Nvidia GPU if your focus is gaming in Linux?
That’s not quite true. AMD cards just get clocked higher from the factory. So when a 9070xt beats a 5070 by an average of 17%, you can easily cap the power limit to match the performance. That’s with more VRAM which of course increases the power requirements
The prices don’t quite match up, though since it’s between the 5070 and the ti (although in the US it’s often more expensive for some reason)
The problem is that AMD is selling the chips to OEMs for a price that’s too high to enable to sell at MSRP while giving a discount for small batches of MSRP models. It becomes a lottery where the quickest people can get $600 models refreshing ever rarer restocks.
One of the reasons is… tariffs, but I’m not sure how Nvidia got the prices down on its models
While measuring power efficiency is not an easy task, I doubt that AMD is better. Here is an older article https://www.tomshardware.com/news/geforce-rtx-4070-vs-radeon-rx-6950-xt-which-gpu-is-better But you are right, things seem changing https://gamersnexus.net/gpus/incredibly-efficient-amd-rx-9070-gpu-review-benchmarks-vs-9070-xt-rtx-5070 Hopefully AMD improves on efficiency in future.
The 9070xt is a very fine exception for efficiency really. I was able to cap mine at 230watt with a minor underclock and it barely lost 5% perf compared to stock.
Even base models were clocked way too high, probably to help it ensure vfm victory over NVIDIA midrange in the market when reviewers were looking at it.
That’s great.