Hey all,
In the market for a GPU, would like to use Bazzite, mostly a Steam user with some SteamVR (rare), and have run into nvidia issues with Bazzite and a 3070 previously.
With the recent news on nVidia’s beta drivers and Plasma’s sync support in beta, I’m newly on the fence about switching to AMD given nvidia having a better performance to cost ratio, the power usage (big one for a compact living room system), and the fact that they have the potential for HDMI2.1 support which AMD doesn’t have a solution to yet.
What are community thoughts? I’ll probably hold out for some reports on the new drivers regardless, but wanted to check in with the hive mind.
Thanks!
Deck uses AMD
Right. So if Nvidia would even have a chance at being dominant in that market if handhelds are starting to use Linux, they’d better start caring.
It’s a relatively small niche. NVIDIA won’t beat AMD at the embedded space because they just don’t have a CPU, so they can’t make something like the Deck has.
If we do see NVIDIA in the handheld space, it’ll be either a full SOC that only goes GeForce now, or they’ll team up with Intel for a prosumer device, which will probably run Windows.
The Linux market is growing, but it’s also quite small. NVIDIA mostly cares about AI these days, so they’re far more interested in the data center and probably won’t dedicate many resources to anything else, other than Windows gaming, which is a biggest.
It would be nice, but Linux gamers still have options. AMD is tried and true, and Intel has a good track record for Linux support, so either of those would be good options. Unfortunately, this means you’re better off in the bottom too middle of the market, as top of market is still dominated by NVIDIA.
I don’t know what you base everything you said on but it was a lot of text so it’s probably right. I feel like I’m out of my depth here. 😌👍
I’m just saying there aren’t that many Linux users and Linux handhelds (e.g. Steam Deck) use AMD APUs, so NVIDIA probably doesn’t care all that much. That’s really it.
If we want NVIDIA to care more, Linux needs more people using it. A lot more. And they need to be using it on desktop or laptop hardware.
Plus Nvidia already makes the soc for the Nintendo switch which is significantly more successful than the steam deck.
Sure, but that hardware is incapable of running PC games because it runs ARM, not x86. So if it’s going into a handheld, it will either be a locked down console like Nintendo, or run something with a compat layer like Windows (unlikely because it’ll leave a lot of performance on the table until games port).
So the Switch existing has no impact on Nvidia courting Linux users.