New GPU

I've had the same gpu for 4 years now, and it's about time to get a new one. It's starting to show its age a bit with newer games, and I have to admit I miss being able to put all settings to maximum.

My current gpu is the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, I got a model from MSI. It's been okay, a bit unstable at times but that is apparently common with the 5700 model from AMD. I have a coworker with the same gpu, and he experienced frequent reboots on windows with this model. I had hard crashes randomly now and then, sometime with weeks or even months with no issues, and then suddenly crashes again for a while. But apart from the random stability issues, it's been a pretty good gpu that have handled demanding games well on Linux.

So for my next gpu I went ahead and ordered the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, this time from Sapphire. This one has very good reviews. Sapphire's cooling solution is very well made based on the reviews I have seen, so it looks promising.

https://www.sapphiretech.com/en/consumer/nitro-radeon-rx-7900-xt-vaporx-20g-gddr6

Yes I have seen the same, so I am also curious what that means for their future products. Although, with nvidia moving towards an open source driver as well then maybe we will eventually get nvidia drivers in the kernel just as with amd.

Although from what I understand, the new open source nvidia driver is very minimal, with most stuff being in the closed source firmware.

I've been playing on 2560 x 1440 resolution for the past 4 years. My current gpu has handled it well up until some newer games. I started noticing issues with Talos Principle 2 (amazing puzzle game), and Space Marine 2.

I'll be running on the same resolution with the new gpu.

Been using the new GPU for a week now, and it's really nice upgrade. Since both my old and new gpu are both AMD, I didn't need to do any changes or install new stuff.

Been testing a few newer games and it's a huge difference. I especially noticed the difference in temperature. My old gpu would often reach temperatures of around 80°C, while the new gpu is rarely above 50°C, even when running Space Marine 2 with all settings as high as possible and native 2560x1440 resolution.

My experience with the 5700 was mostly good, except for the random crashes I had. But as I mentioned, they were common for the 5700 cards no matter what OS you were on, and only some specific games would trigger these crashes.

So far the 7900 has not shown any problems. The driver for any newer gpu's from AMD (not older than 10 years or so) is called amdgpu, and is in the Linux kernel. So you don't need to install anything in particular except for the firmware. I don't want to say too much about stability before having had a few more weeks of using this gpu. I'm not expecting any issues, but after my experience with the 5700 I want a bit more time before I feel confident about the stability.

I suppose the main difference from Nvidia is the lack of an equivalent to the Nvidia Settings. There are some unofficial graphical tools, or you could modify files directly in /sys/class/drm/card*

Don't confuse the old radeon driver with the new amdgpu driver. The radeon driver always sucked, but the new amdgpu driver works great. I think AMD got a bad reputation on Linux because of the old driver, but things are entirely different now.

As long as the architecture is either GNC3 or newer, or RNDNA and newer, then it will use the amdgpu driver. Everything made in 2018 or later should be on those architectures.

After next week I will have two weeks off from work, and I'm not going anywhere so I'll spend a lot of time gaming and pushing my gpu fully. I'll post here again after those weeks to let you all know if there have been any issues or not.

I think I have been using my new gpu enough to comment on stability. In particular I have been playing Talos Principle 2 with all graphical settings on ultra, running on 2560x1440 resolution. I have also played Space Marine 2, also all settings on ultra with same resolution. I have had no issues at all, no crashes or freezes or anything. So the problems I had with my older AMD gpu was probably not a general driver issues, but more an issue with that specific gpu.

The amdgpu driver on Linux seems rock solid.

However, there was one minor issue I noticed, but nothing to do with stability. When I connected both my computer monitor (2560x1440@144Hz) and the TV (3840x21600@60Hz) then the computer monitor would black out for a second or so whenever focus switched to the monitor. Apparently, this is a bit of a known issue with this model of gpu and was solved by manually setting dpm to 'high' instead of 'auto'. It's apparently an issue when you use two outputs, one with a high refresh rate, and one with lower refresh rate.

This can be changed by writing 'high' to the file at: /sys/class/drm/card#/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level

I have a coworker with the exact same gpu, but running Windows. Whenever he connects two monitors, one with high refresh rate and the other with lower, he saw a drastic increase in power usage, same increase I get when changing dpm to 'high'. So most likely this is just a general thing with this gpu when two monitors are connected, independent of OS.

I didn't record any videos, but maybe I can do a little Talos Principle 2 video during this week, that game looks amazing.

I forgot about posting screenshots here. I'll start with some Talos Principle 2! I'll get some of Space Marine 2 this weekend.