At last I am ready to start replacing my ancient hardware on my main computer. It will have to be done in stages because of budget considerations. Right now I have a AMD FX 4300, Gigabyte 78lmt-usb3 motherboard (AM3+), and a Nvidia 550ti. This hardware still works and will eventually be used to upgrade even older hardware in my house server.
I will likely start with the graphics card since they have dropped in price recently, before another bitcoin craze hits. I wont be buying new, thats not in the budget. But I am looking at Rx 480 and Rx 570 4gb and 8gb cards. My needs are on the simple side playing a lot of old games and Hearthstone that the 550ti currently handles ok. I plan on using the card on my existing motherboard that is pcie 2.0 until I replace it in a few months. Likely with an AM4 and ryzen 3000 or 5000 cpu. I know it wont give its full performance with the AM3+, but its likely better than the 550ti gives.
I want to move away from the Nvidia cards and closed source drivers. I am just wondering how people who have AMD video cards like them and any problems they have had before I buy one since its been forever since I have had one back in the ATI days.
that’s the problem, nevertheless if nvidia or amd but to use these modern generation of cards the mainboard should support pci-gen4.
the next actual problem is if a card is avaiable at the dealer. it’s still a bad time to buy hardware. not for sale and if the prices are straight through the roof.
I will be buying on the used market, and the 480 and 570 are plentiful. They are likely mining cards so I will have to do some maintenance to them like repaste them. Prices are still a little high, but are coming down into my range. The 480 and 570 are pcie 3.0 cards, and what I understand its backwards compatible to pcie 2.0 which the current motherboard is.
My main concern is how the drivers are on updates
My experience - drivers are open and never broke anything (vega 56).
You can see here how often they are released:
https://mesa3d.org/
those cards are well supported, they are no problem.
Hi Jim,
I will be doing the same at the end of the year. Since Steam on Linux has come such a long way, Win10 will hopefully be my last Windows at home also Wondows is just getting too invasive for my taste.
I suggest you watch AMD vs Nvidia - Which Is Better for Linux Gaming - YouTube. That video covers performance, andvantages and problems of each AMD and Nvidia. And AMD doesn’t look bad at all.
Thanks for the video link. I knew there were pro’s and con’s with either company, and had worked out my use case. I will never be able to buy new hardware on my income, so things like ray tracing were not in the equation. I am only upgrading my hardware because the nvidia 390 driver is the last one to support my card, its on borrowed time with Manjaro, and the open source nvidia driver has issues with my current games. Besides I got a lot of use out of it and will still get use out of it in my home server.
The AMD cards I’m looking at will last a long time for my use case and the open source driver will never have the issue of being dropped from the repos since its in the kernel. But the video did point out one thing, video ram. Its likely best to get the 8gb cards instead of the 4gb cards to give them the longest usable life.
Yea I currently have GTX 1060 and I am starting to have that same problem. BTW if you really intend to use your PC for gaming a lot, go for ryzen 5600x, it is the best price/performance ration and it is even cheaper than ryzen 3000 and go for B550 board.
And if you like to invest more time and make an informed decision, then check our belowed tech jesus https://www.youtube.com/c/GamersNexus/videos, he covers everything from budget to high end parts.
I have no issue with AMD RDNA (5000 series) two years ago until now.
But there were some small bugs in the past that were fixed by the latest mesa update and Linux Kernel update.
Hi!
I bought a RX 470, second handed, about a year ago (or two, can’t remember). I use it in my ancient LGA775 motherboard (PCI 2.0), with a Core 2 Quad Q9650 running at 3.6Ghz (or 3.4, can’t remember). Couldn’t be happier with the card’s performance.