I just got hold of an AMD RX7800 XT to replace my current Nvidia RTX3080.
I’m likely overthinking this but from what I understand I should just be able to swap the cards then uninstall the Nvidia drivers correct?
I’m running EndeavourOS which I installed with the option to include the Nvidia drivers by default so dunno if that changes anything? I’ve been daily driving Linux for exactly a year as of this month but I still kinda feel like a newbie sometimes lmao. Thanks in advance!
(Update) I got my AMD card installed and loaded up Wayland with no issues, only thing I had to install was the AMD Vulkan drivers for Steam.
Short answer is that you don’t have to do anything.
Slightly longer answer is that you can remove all existing nvidia packages, with any boot parameters they may have required, call it a day.
Yep. When I switched out my Nvidia for AMD it was as plug-and-play as it gets.
Also, install the generic or AMD specific packages now. Eg. vulkan-radeon or amdvlk instead of nvidia-utils (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Vulkan)
I’ve never done the process myself, but I would probably uninstall the nvidia drivers while the system is still running, install whatever amd packages you need I know there are some vulkan packages that people need that aren’t installed by default, and then power off and swap the cards.
You just got me to remember something about a Vulkan package when I first installed Steam so gonna find the AMD package for that. Thanks!
You shouldn’t need to install anything for the amd gpu
Most distros have a vk package that steam depends on that varies based on hardware, there is a system different package for amd than Nvidia or Intel.
Oh right. Do you have a distro specific example of this?
Here’s what you need for Arch, for more context: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU
Isn’t this the kernel driver included by default?
The wiki tells you what you need on arch, and what you need it for. Those packages also don’t seem to have kernel-specific or dkms versions, so seems like they’re not kernel modules.
Mind you, the setup is clearly not monolithic, with different components for different purposes, including alternative options. On top of that, each distro will make different choices - Arch provides the components as packages and puts the responsibility of installing the right ones on you. Some features might be built into kernel drivers, like working video output, but Vulkan support clearly wants a dedicated driver.
I’ve encountered the issue on arch and fedora, don’t have the package name off the top of my head but both package managers ask you to pick a package to fulfill the dependency.
I see, appreciate the info. I’ll have a poke around on fedora later today
I’m not familiar with these vulkan packages, what should I look for?
I don’t have an AMD card, so I don’t know, but I recall reading on the endeavourOS forums of people solving their AMD gaming issues by installing the proper vulkan packages. That is to say. You should head to the endeavourOS forums and peruse around there. You will probably find that information very quickly there.
Thanks! I’ve not been having many problems, but if it’s causing a performance loss it would be good to take care of it, I’ll check that out
Even if you install the drivers while the system is running, it is not recommended to remove the card while the system is running.
I never suggested that they remove the card while the system is running. You must have skipped the part in my comment that says
power off and swap the cardsDon’t worry I wasn’t planning on sticking my hands into a powered up PC anyway haha.
There isn’t anything you need to know. It’s the opposite actually. You can now forget about graphics drivers entirely if you want. Unless it’s like, a job or hobby or something.
Meh… there are certain use cases where the selection between mesa or either of the AMD drivers does matter.
In case others are interested on the general compute aspect, e.g inference for self hosted AI, here is something related I found :
- ZLUDA, for CUDA everywhere, https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA/ unfortunately in the process of a major rewrite https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA/discussions/261 due to AMD (somehow?!) not wanting their code being used in there (maybe they did some shady RE on NVIDIA work?)
- AMD ROCm https://github.com/ROCm/ROCm and HIP https://github.com/ROCm/HIP
Only that your newfound time from not having to fuck with video drivers might be enough to solve world peace.
Went from GTX970 to 6800XT.
Just drivers!I just did this with an RX7900TX and everything worked fine and I decided to install my normal updates. And then my PC wouldn’t boot. After hours of “fun”, it turns out that the issue had nothing to do with the GPU swap and all. Tons of fun!
Seems weird to replace a 3080 but hey, whatever floats your goat.
I switched from Nvidia to AMD recently. As long as you have a recent kernel you should be fine. If you’re running an old/stable distro you might have issues with mesa, especially if you need OpenCL or ROCm. For general use and gaming it worked for me with no fuss.
I just replaced my 3070 with a RX 7900XT and it was a very noticeable difference in performance. It doesn’t help that my primary display is 3840x1600 though. The 3070 was never particularly great for that res.
A while back I swapped out my crusty old GTX 960 for a RX 7600 and honestly, other than removing the old nvidia drivers and installing the Vulkan drivers, I had to do nothing else and I have 0 issues or complaints.
I recently did this switch to the same card and it sounds like it was as painless for you as it was for me.
An issue I had later on was that I still had some Nvidia packeges installed I didn’t know about after removing them with apt. I had to fully search with dpkg to find them. They ended up being the root cause of a seemingly unrelated issue I was having trying to run a game through steam. So yeah make sure to fully purge the Nvidia drivers.
If no one minds my hyjacking part of this thread.
Id also like some similar advice.
I use blender. Not heavily but have been playing on it for 20plus years.
My GPU is pretty old. 1050ti at the time nvidia was pretty much it for blender.
Im looking for a sub £300 card in the next 3 to 6 months.
Is AMD well supported by blender now. And what cards would folks recomend these days.
PS not a gamer. 0ad is about as close as i get.
Take a look at
From what I can tell NVIDIA still is much better for Blender at least points-wise. No idea if you’d notice it on normal usage …
Yeah looks very much like nvidia is exclusive at the top even at the price I’m looking at.
The RTX4060 looks about right price vs performance. I’ll spend some time looking up how well they play with linux atm. And keep an eye out for a used RTX4070 as well.
I have an AMD Cpu and a 4070 running Kinoite, installed the usual Fedora drivers via rpm-ostree and aside of some weirdness sometimes with sleep mode (I think it can’t go to sleep when Vorta does a backup amd then hamgs the whole system …) and a few crashes in Jellyfin playing HEVC videos it’s super smooth
I think the only thing to keep in mind is that Nvidias proprietary drivers work better for Linux whereas for AMD it is the open-source ones.
I have an Nvidia card and the prop. drivers have worked flawlessly for me for years.
I know the open source drivers are closing the gap for Nvidia, and they also seem to be playing ball on that front. But for AMD the open source drivers are definitely the way to go from what I understand.
The drivers are infinitely better, and the stutter when creating a ton of windows (ie notification spam from kconnect) is basically gone.
What are you doing with the 3080?
Selling it to try make some money back.
I built this PC before I even thought about switching to Linux.
I have a Aoris 3070 ti and it has been problematic with Arch KDE Plasma. I never had issues with Pop and Gnome. So I’ve been thinking about getting an AMD card too, but I bought this 3070 ti at the height of the GPU shortage and spent $1000 for the stupid thing. Idk what to do with it, because I’ll definitely never get anywhere close to that kind of money for the thing.
Yeah I wasn’t expecting to make most of the money back, But if I can get a bit then it’s still money towards something I will use.
Do you do AI stuff?
I’ve heard NVidia is better for AI
For gaming, you’ll probably not notice a difference. If anything, you’ll be happy due to not having to wrestle NVidia Linux Drivers :P
