For Linux I would recommend AMD or Intel GPUs. They are less hassle getting up and running.
I'm currently running an Intel Arc A770 and its been running great. Was a lot more affordable than recent AMD or Nvidia cards.
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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I have personally seen more support for AMD GPUs during my research into Linux compatibility. I would love to hear your take on the Intel side. In your experience, how would you rate your Intel GPU experience with Linux gaming?
Getting it up and running was as simple as swapping my AMD RX580 for the Intel Arc A770. The drivers are open source and built into the kernel and Mesa. It picked up and started working without issues.
Its ran every game I have smoothly at max settings. I haven't had to turn down the graphics settings on a game yet. Though to be fair, the most graphic intensive game I play is No Man's Sky.
Only issue I encountered was when I first got it I had to tell No Man's Sky to use the Xe Vulkan support, instead of trying to use the old Intel HD version. Since then I've reinstalled No Man's Sky a few times. Newer updates properly detect the Vulkan support.
I was impressed enough with its performance that I bought a second to upgrade my wife's computer. She has been using that system to do modeling in Blender and hasn't had any issues with it that I've heard of.
I have been quite happy with the Intel Arc card. If they are still making them when I do my next upgrade I will likely get another.
Have the A750, bought it for a combination of experimenting and the incredible vaapi encoding support.
It's a monster overall, works great with ollama too, only thing I couldn't get working was the actual graphics for wayland somehow, but that also wasn't my priority.
Thanks for sharing! I personally had only heard of AMD so far for Linux gaming, so I appreciate the information.
I went for an AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT when I built my machine and I dearly regret not aiming for 16GB memory on my GPU. Even when playing at 1080p I've had games fill my GPU memory and then crawl to a halt for a short while until enough memory has been freed.
AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT is supposed to be released in the middle of May and will come in both 8GB and 16GB flavours. I'd aim for the one with 16GB even if the estimated price point is $330-$380 according to the sites I've checked.
6650XT gang. Been a good card for me so far. The only game I've had crawling to a halt so far is the Oblivion remaster (refunded after realizing it ran like dogshit, not just on my system, but on any system). Was the best option at the time (late 2024) for my money and I needed an upgrade badly. I might upgrade to the 9060 XT for raytracing though since it's dogass on the 6650XT. That is my only regret so far.
It's the Oblivion remaster that prompted this search for me. I just assumed my 1060 was way underpowered. It's not really loading textures for me until I wait several seconds, fps issues, etc. But you're saying it might be shit even with a good GPU?
Well, it certainly runs better than that on a 6650XT. I'm mainly referring to the highly variable FPS and hitching seen even on a 4090/5090. In the tutorial I had 60fps on High with FSR enabled. But in the open world it was up and down from 30 to 60 and dropping to 5 every few minutes. Apparently someone's made a mod to fix that and it's a fairly common thing with UE5 games. I refunded before I learned about that mod but I'm honestly just gonna play the original instead.
As for your 1060... Well, it is way underpowered. That's what I upgraded from. It's largely outdated for modern titles in general.
Seems some tweaking helps the game run smoother
https://www.reddit.com/r/oblivion/comments/1k5ppb4/oblivion_remastered_performance_guide_i_went_from/
I would try to go for a used 6800XT, I snatched one at 320€ some months ago, it should be easy to find now for 300€. If you want performance for your money, and you use Linux, that would be my way to go.
linux
Don't buy Nvidia. It'll be a pain in the ass, especially if you use something like Debian testing where kernel is updated quite frequently.
AMD would be a good choice.
Nvidia is barely an inconvenience anymore. I run Bazzite on an old laptop with a GTX 960M, and it's flawless.
That said, I agree that AMD is the current best choice.
These latest drivers had been annoying tf outta me though. Random screen glitches while using 3080 for weeks.
It depends on the use. AMD for gaming, sure. For machine learning I would go with nvidia again. I run it on arch, which updates very often.
€300
I doubt that OP talks about machine learning. And still, Nvidia's driver is an additional source of problems.
you can run local models with 16GB VRAM, but I'm not sure most models will run at all on an AMD card
When catching up with hardware performance for Linux gaming, I always browse phoronix, try to find a few comparisons from different years to see how the card looked like in comparison to other options. There might be some sleepers now no-one remembers about, that you magically have an option to buy. Think which game in the comparisons might have similar requirements to what you want to play and see how the card/cpu did on the settings you find agreeable/non-agreeable/perfect
Don't go into its forum, though. There be dragons
Maybe recently it started to change with NVIDIA opening their drivers but for years we've been second class citizens for them. Personally I say "fuck NVIDIA"
If you decide to go AMD, definitely explore the landscape of fan controllers. I use corectl but maybe you would prefer something else (this is Arch wiki, but should be fine for other distros too)
Intel B580, hands down is the best bang for your bucks.
Check the performance per dollar charts here: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/gainward-geforce-rtx-5060-ti-8-gb/35.html and pick a GPU that's not from NVIDIA. Or this https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-9070-xt-nitro/36.html. AMD 6800, 6800 XT, 7700 XT, but you can also wait for 9060 and 9060 XT.
On Linux? I was under the impression that their driver isn't quite up to par with AMD or Nvidia specifically on Linux.
Force the new xe driver (if it's not already the default) and it's better, but you'll want to run bleeding edge mesa and kernels for the best experience.
Yep, cause AMD and Intel GPU drivers are in the kernel itself, to update the drivers you gotta update the kernel.
Which you can, admittedly, do on any distro.. but with gaming distros (with AMD or Intel GPUs) you at least get them in your system update as soon as they are available without having to constantly check and manually update.
Which is why I try to steer people towards gaming focused distros when they want to game on linux. Just one of the many things gaming distros do to make less headache.
if you are on nvidia you might not want to be on a rapidly updating kernel distro, since their drivers are..special.
Hey nice!
AMD is generally less trouble on Linux, but if you've been happy with your 1060 on Linux, then it doesn't matter a ton. AMD tends to have a bit more bang for your buck in terms of raster performance (i.e. don't expect raytracing and whatnot to work well on mid-tier AMD), which is fine for most things.
Look up perf differences for those cards in games you care about, and all else being equal, pick the one with more RAM. The 7600XT has 16GB, so that's what I'd default to.
I'm on a 6650XT and it's great. My SO is on a 6700XT. Maybe one of those is a better deal in your area?
I don't have much to add to your search, but I'm in the exact same situation almost down to the card and also looking for an upgrade. The only advice I have so far is to go for team Red, AMD seems to be so, so much better to use on Linux than Nvidia.