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.
deleted by creator
Yep. When I switched out my Nvidia for AMD it was as plug-and-play as it gets.
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
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.
Only that your newfound time from not having to fuck with video drivers might be enough to solve world peace.
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!
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
Went from GTX970 to 6800XT.
Just drivers!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.
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.
The drivers are infinitely better, and the stutter when creating a ton of windows (ie notification spam from kconnect) is basically gone.
In addition there are also often packages to get hardware acceleration of video working, if you care about saving energy / fan noise there.
Rocm
deleted by creator
Too many driver issues, couldn’t get Wayland working despite new drivers supposedly working with it.
deleted by creator
