Been using AMD gpus for years due to their superb Linux support. Would like to play around with AI image generation completely offline so a Nvidia gpu is kinda must. Besides that I do some gaming as well.
Currently I have AMD RX 6750 XT and am considering replacing it with a RTX 5060 TI with 16 GB vram. How well does Nvidia gpus work in modern Linux systems. I’m running Tumbleweed with KDE plasma on X11.
Other hardware is Ryzen 7 7700X and an Asrock B650 PG Lightning motherboard.
Edit: Been using InvokeAI so far but cpu only is super slow.
Last time I tried an Nvidia GPU was around June 2025 and it was an RTX 3080 on Arch Linux.
I used the nvidia-dkms package and followed the Arch Wiki to get the proprietary drivers working and didn’t have too many problems there.
I use my PC mainly for gaming and browsing the web, so can’t comment on any productivity apps.
In terms of gaming, I think nearly all of the proprietary Nvidia technologies work on Linux, like DLSS, Reflex etc., albeit only on proprietary drivers.
Performance in games appear to be roughly on par with Windows, with an exception of DirectX 12 games where you will definitely notice a performance degradation.
There is a quirk with Flatpak apps, where you must have the same driver version as your system, otherwise apps won’t utilise them and default to either software rendering (ex. llvmpipe) or Nouveau.
Another quirk I had was with Wayland, where games were always Vsynced if I had VRR enabled on my monitor. On top of that it felt like Plasma handled compositing better when using Adaptive Sync on an AMD GPU than Nvidia. You’ve mentioned you’re using X11 so I think that shouldn’t be an issue for you.
Considering all of this, personally I’d still stick with AMD, mainly due to better Wayland experience and no performance degradation in DirectX 12 games. But again, that’s just my preference.
Thanks for the insights. Gaming performance is not a huge deal. The most demanding games in my library are probably Oblivion remaster, Metro Exodus enhanced edition, Hitman WoA and BG3.