Sometime in the not to distant future, I’ll be getting a new (or new-to-me) PC to do a clean install of EndeavourOS for my daily driver (replacing my current 10-year-old MacMini).
Question is whether to concentrate on Nvidia, AMD, or Intel integrated. Judging by the multitude of Nvidia issues I see here and on other forums (as well as Reddit, Mastadon, X), I’m leaning away from Nvidia. Nevertheless, what are your opinions on where I might focus?
Go for either AMD when you want to use graphics-intensive work/games or Intel integrated if you don’t have the need for heavy graphics use.
Nvidia is… for users who love a real endeavour… 
What is the use case? What do you use your machine for?
Lots of image editing/creation, some music creation (LMMS), minor gaming (Steam), general work-flow (documents, email), browsing web, YouTube, EndeavourOS Forum 
.
I have complete AMD equipment on board. Video editing, music editing and stuff like that. I still use gaia a lot. This is a journey through our universe provided by esa
I’m not a games freak. At most Supertuxkart
A perfect choice for my needs.
System:
Host: ryzen Kernel: 6.9.8-arch1-1 arch: x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.1.2 Distro: EndeavourOS
Machine:
Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: B550 AORUS ELITE V2
serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: F17
date: 03/22/2024
CPU:
Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Radeon Graphics bits: 64
type: MT MCP cache: L2: 4 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 724 min/max: 400/4673 cores: 1: 400 2: 2994 3: 400
4: 2995 5: 400 6: 400 7: 400 8: 400 9: 400 10: 400 11: 400 12: 400 13: 400
14: 400 15: 400 16: 400
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD Navi 23 [Radeon RX 6600/6600 XT/6600M] driver: amdgpu
v: kernel
Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.13 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.0
compositor: kwin_wayland driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
unloaded: modesetting,radeon dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu resolution:
1: 1920x1080 2: 1920x1080
API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: radeonsi,swrast
platforms: wayland,x11,surfaceless,device
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: amd mesa v: 24.1.3-arch1.1
renderer: AMD Radeon RX 6600 (radeonsi navi23 LLVM 18.1.8 DRM 3.57
6.9.8-arch1-1)
API: Vulkan v: 1.3.279 drivers: radv surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland
Are you planning to use Xorg or Wayland? I’ve heard the new Nvidia drivers make Wayland work flawlessly but I still see a lot of topics of people having issues with Wayland and Nvidia even with the new drivers.
But this Youtuber says they don’t have any issues with Wayland with Nvidia and that their recommendations worked with other people.
I went from Nvidia to AMD with my last new pc, not because I had issues with Nvidia but because I wanted to just use kernel drivers.
You’re fine with AMD
I would recommend an AMD APU. I have had really good luck with those.
I prefer Wayland, but I’m not married to it.
And this is why you are who you are - loved you for EndevourOS, now I also love you for your humor!
I would highly recommend AMD for everything gaming on Linux.
Both CPU companies work great on linux.
Intel 14xxx series are basically just 13xxx series that they upped power consumption on, I wouldn’t really call it worth it.
13600K is a good chip that punched above it’s weight class in a lot of ways, esp productivity, though AMD x3d chips are generally better for gaming.
Just like the last ~5 years, AMD CPUs win out in power efficiency barring the 13600k which is similar to AMD offerings. Intel closes the gap if you feel like under-volting, which carries stability risk and performance reductions (though sometimes increases)
IIRC AMD integrated graphics are now stronger raster-wise than intel, but intel iGPUs are still better for productivity due to encoding libraries and such. Don’t know much about this.
AMD GPU is way more stable on linux, to the point of being a defacto recommendation.
Nvidia is functional, and has advantages in all the things Nvidia normally does AMD doesn’t (CUDA, DLSS, RT, etc). Definitely more finagling on green GPUs though still. Big steps have been made recently (last 4 months), but the drivers are still a bit behind AMD wrt stability and reliability on linux.
Intel GPUs… they reportedly work well enough, but I know next to nothing about them.
I would also go AMD gpu. Is it going to be a desktop?
@Mox Thanks for the thorough rundown!
@ricklinux Desktop or equivalent. Maybe a mini-pc or small form factor. Possibly a mid-tower.
I’m absolutely loving my mitx build. 15L pc. It’s so small and very powerful still. It’s an nzxt h1 v2. I would recommend against nzxt on Linux though because they use a propriatory fan controller than can be an absolute beast to get working on Linux
I wouldn’t recommend going below 12L unless you’re pretty experienced building computers. Routing everything tightly gets to be a lot
There’s a TON more mitx case options these days then there was even 3 years ago. Real renaissance. If your going to go that route I’d definitely think about doing it soon because I have a feeling the options are going to dry up in 4-5 years when a lot of the small businesses trying for it rn don’t make it far, but I am also surprised to see it keep expanding still so I’m liable to be wrong.
I like vertical monolith like cases, the squarer footprint the better, though long thin console looking things are also cool.
Favorites are NZXT H1 v2 (they have qc issues in the included CPU liquid cooler). Formd T1. Hyte Revolt 3. Phanteks Evolv Shift 2. Silverstone Milo 12. Fractal Ridge. Loque Raw S1 (if the thermals weren’t so terrible)
If you’ve been using a Mac Mini for so long, maybe a modern Intel NUC would be a good option? I’m running a 7th gen i3 and EOS runs perfectly for general every day use - this is a ‘work from home’ device and I chose a low-spec option simply out of curiosity as to how well it would run. A 12th gen or higher i5 or i7 NUC should cover most general use cases.
Otherwise, go full AMD (AM5 cpu and AMD graphics card)_if you have a need for more power.
New to EndeavourOS and KDE/Wayland but liking it so far. After getting the Nvidia driver installed (nouveau was default install) everything has been working fine. I do a lot of video and image editing and it’s fast and no issues so far.
I have a mini pc and a laptop, both with AMD vega apu’s. They have great performance with most games if you go with medium quality and don’t care about 144hz or 4k gaming. They’re just stable. If you go with nvidia, just search the forum for nvidia… Intel I don’t know much about, they have issues, software and hardware.
99% work 1% games here which is Risk World Domination and occasional Minecraft. AMD 6700 with 10G memory and power two 4K monitors with zero issues on Wayland/KDE
I’m in a similar boat in the early stages of shopping around to replace my aging laptop (I got out of the desktop game at the start of the covid pandemic, because working from home made me not want to spend more hours at my desk on top of the 8 hours a day I spent working there 
) and AMD have seemingly given up entirely on the mobile discrete GPU market in the face of nvidia’s dominance in just about every market segment.
Now that I’m seemingly weened off of Windows finally it’s a little disappointing to be almost tied into a sub-optimal hardware choice if I want a descrete GPU with any real kind of horsepower (or to have to pay well over the odds for one of the ever-shrinking pool of AMD powered devices), but it did make me wonder something I’ve not been able to find an answer for - what’s the root cause of the reason that AMD is so much better supported under linux than nvidia?
I don’t mean the obvious-on-it’s-face “the AMD drivers are more stable/better supported/etc” cause, I mean more the “how did it come to be that way” cause, if you get what I mean?
Given nvidia’s already-mentioned dominance of all things GPU, you’d have thought that they’d also have seen the most interest and input from the community and that the situation would be reversed, but somehow in this scenario there’s this strange reversal of fortunes where the minority player has come out ahead.
All that being said, I’m currently running EOS without issue on a laptop with an RTX2060 and the only ‘extra’ step it took was installing envycontrol and setting it to hybrid exactly once when I was doing all my initial setups, so I’ve not had to deal with any of the nightmares I keep reading about yet! Maybe it’s more stable now than people suspect, or I’m just a very lucky boy 
