Switching from Nvidia to AMD

RankoKohime · 2015-02-25 12:34:17

If I've missed this in the Wiki somewhere, please link me to that, but it seems not to be a common topic.

I'm currently running a desktop with an Nvidia graphics card with the proprietary drivers, and, having an AMD card laying around, I'd like to put that in and test out the state of the drivers for that platform, both O/S and proprietary, however, the Nvidia driver does some funkiness with the GL libraries, which results in no acceleration on the O/S driver, and the proprietary one not even wanting to start Xorg at all.

What steps would be required to switch back and forth between these different drivers in a consistent way?

ANOKNUSA · 2015-02-25 13:37:07

it seems not to be a common topic

AMD on Linux has always been garbage, and both my personal experience and my observation have been that people go out of their way to get Intel + Nvidia setups to avoid dealing with a company that obviously doesn't care about anything but mass-produced Windows machines. Their products are a classic example of "Good enough" product design---it meets some minimum requirements, so why bother doing any more?

You say you're having trouble starting an X session with the proprietary Nvidia driver. I don't see any threads under your profile indicating you've tried to troubleshoot that. Perhaps you should before changing out the graphics card, because a) I suspect you didn't properly configure your Xorg.conf, and b) AMD sucks. If you have the card just "laying around" that makes me suspect it's old, and if it's more than a few years old it might not work even be an option (you'd have to find an old driver and downgrade to an old Xorg release). If you need a newer card than your current Nvidia card and the AMD one just happens to be there, I'd still skip it. Investing more money in a new Nvidia card would probably be less frustrating in the long run.

zell84 · 2015-02-26 13:07:20

Using the AMD drivers is no longer as hard as it used to be. Vi0L0 does a great job of maintaining the proprietary drivers, which is what I would recommend depending on your setup. The OS drivers don't seem to like to work with DisplayPort and 3D rendering is better on the proprietary stuff. I personally have two R9-2XX series cards which have both worked fine over the past year with these drivers, including working fine with Steam and hashing software. I would recommend completey uninstalling the old Nvidia drivers before following the instructions for installing the AMD Drivers. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMD_Catalyst

#VERY IMPORTANT: Ensure that you add Vi0L0's [xorg11X] repository to your pacman.conf file ABOVE all other repositories, including [core], as xorg 1.17 does not work with the latest Catalyst drivers.

RankoKohime · 2015-02-26 21:54:07

ANOKNUSA wrote:

AMD on Linux has always been garbage, and both my personal experience and my observation have been that people go out of their way to get Intel + Nvidia setups to avoid dealing with a company that obviously doesn't care about anything but mass-produced Windows machines. Their products are a classic example of "Good enough" product design---it meets some minimum requirements, so why bother doing any more?

Yeah, that's basically been what I've heard, and experienced first hand. (First modern rig I built had an AMD APU and the graphics card that I now have)

ANOKNUSA wrote:

You say you're having trouble starting an X session with the proprietary Nvidia driver. I don't see any threads under your profile indicating you've tried to troubleshoot that. Perhaps you should before changing out the graphics card, because a) I suspect you didn't properly configure your Xorg.conf, and b) AMD sucks. If you have the card just "laying around" that makes me suspect it's old, and if it's more than a few years old it might not work even be an option (you'd have to find an old driver and downgrade to an old Xorg release). If you need a newer card than your current Nvidia card and the AMD one just happens to be there, I'd still skip it. Investing more money in a new Nvidia card would probably be less frustrating in the long run.

Actually, no, re-reading my post I see I didn't separate my subjects correctly. I've never tried the Nouveau driver, I've always used the Nvidia proprietary driver, and this gives me basically no headaches, except requiring a re-install after kernel upgrades.

My specific cards are a GTX 750 Ti, and a Radeon HD 7850, which I've had for about 2 years, so it's not terribly old. I'm wanting to do a test of the Omega drivers to see if AMD has made any progress at all since I last used the driver, in 2013, I think?

To clarify: the trouble comes when I try to remove the Nvidia driver and card, and use either the radeon or fglrx drivers with the AMD card. I get no acceleration on the radeon driver, and the fglrx won't even start. Sorry for the confusion.

RankoKohime · 2015-02-26 22:24:13

zell84 wrote:

Using the AMD drivers is no longer as hard as it used to be. Vi0L0 does a great job of maintaining the proprietary drivers, which is what I would recommend depending on your setup. The OS drivers don't seem to like to work with DisplayPort and 3D rendering is better on the proprietary stuff. I personally have two R9-2XX series cards which have both worked fine over the past year with these drivers, including working fine with Steam and hashing software. I would recommend completey uninstalling the old Nvidia drivers before following the instructions for installing the AMD Drivers. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMD_Catalyst
#VERY IMPORTANT: Ensure that you add Vi0L0's [xorg11X] repository to your pacman.conf file ABOVE all other repositories, including [core], as xorg 1.17 does not work with the latest Catalyst drivers.

I must've glossed over this on my last read. I'll try it and see if I can get any results.

Amanda S · 2015-03-03 03:05:25

My R9 270x will arrive tomorrow. I'll test AMD's driver first as it seems to be better and easier to install/configure.

RankoKohime · 2015-03-03 10:22:54

Amarildo wrote:

My R9 270x will arrive tomorrow. I'll test AMD's driver first as it seems to be better and easier to install/configure.

It has to be better than the Nvidia driver in at least the respect of removal. No combination of re-installing packages that I tried managed to completely clean up the Nvidia GL blobs.

Amanda S · 2015-03-03 15:51:35

RankoKohime wrote:

Amarildo wrote:
My R9 270x will arrive tomorrow. I'll test AMD's driver first as it seems to be better and easier to install/configure.
It has to be better than the Nvidia driver in at least the respect of removal. No combination of re-installing packages that I tried managed to completely clean up the Nvidia GL blobs.

Exactly. I removed everything related to NVIDIA, and guess what happened? KDM wouldn't load. So I re-installed everything, good thing I have a big partition for /home so nothing was lost.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-02-25 12:34:17

Switching from Nvidia to AMD

#2 2015-02-25 13:37:07

Re: Switching from Nvidia to AMD

#3 2015-02-26 13:07:20

Re: Switching from Nvidia to AMD

#4 2015-02-26 21:54:07

Re: Switching from Nvidia to AMD

#5 2015-02-26 22:24:13

Re: Switching from Nvidia to AMD

#6 2015-03-03 03:05:25

Re: Switching from Nvidia to AMD

#7 2015-03-03 10:22:54

Re: Switching from Nvidia to AMD

#8 2015-03-03 15:51:35

Re: Switching from Nvidia to AMD

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