Upgrading card from Nvidia to AMD - tips?

Condorman · Post by **Condorman** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 12:06 pm

Hi all.

Decided to finally (finally!) upgrade my graphics card. I've been running a wonderful Asus EN9800GT for what must be 7 years now, and it's never let me down. But, I'm seeing it struggle these days with some of my Steam purchases, and the time has come to move it out.

After some research, I decided on the Sapphire Radeon R7 250X (here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00I ... d_i=468294). There's a bigger brother for like £25 more (R7 260X), but I don't do a great deal of heavy modern gaming. The one I've chosen fits the bill.

I run Linux Mint as my main OS, and have never done a straight card swap from one vendor to another. Is there anything I need to be mindful of before sticking it in? Do I have to remove the Nvidia driver first, then install the Catalyst one? Can I just plug it in and make adjustments later? I honestly wouldn't have a clue, so if anyone here has any handy tips or things I need to know before embarking please post up your advice.

Many thanks Mint fans!

Pjotr · Post by **Pjotr** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 12:13 pm

Are you sure? In Linux, as a rule Nvidia video cards are *always* preferable over ATI / AMD video cards....

Reason: Nvidia produces fine Linux drivers, while ATI / AMD doesn't invest enough in the quality of its Linux drivers.

Condorman · Post by **Condorman** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 1:22 pm

Pjotr wrote:Are you sure?

I was until I read your post.

What's the problem with them? We've been using Radeon drivers on a Samsung laptop with Ubuntu 14.04 installed and they've been fine. Did a bit of research as I say regarding Ubuntu and the card, and nothing too bad seemed to be turning up. A couple of bugs and issues here and there but nothing I couldn't replicate searching for the Nvidia equivalent.

I'd also read that the open source AMD drivers were really coming into their stride now, which really boosted my choice. Have I made a mistake guys?

niowluka · Post by **niowluka** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 2:02 pm

R7 250X should at least boot with radeon. You can then install catalyst using Driver Manager, if radeon does not work right (it worked almost perfectly with my R7 260X). Worst case scenario you can boot to text mode, and install fglrx using command line, i.e.

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install fglrx

I don't think you have to remove nvidia driver, or you can do that later, it won't conflict with your new card. I don't see any major issue, I have been using AMD's graphics for many years myself. Personally I think all this 'NVIDIA has better drivers than AMD' thing is an urban myth

Condorman · Post by **Condorman** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 4:09 pm

niowluka wrote:R7 250X should at least boot with radeon. You can then install catalyst using Driver Manager, if radeon does not work right (it worked almost perfectly with my R7 260X). Worst case scenario you can boot to text mode, and install fglrx using command line, i.e.
Code: Select all
sudo apt-get install fglrx
I don't think you have to remove nvidia driver, or you can do that later, it won't conflict with your new card. I don't see any major issue, I have been using AMD's graphics for many years myself. Personally I think all this 'NVIDIA has better drivers than AMD' thing is an urban myth

I think there may be some truth to that, but I am concerned now that I'm going to see little to no benefit from the upgrade.

Thanks for your response however. Hopefully it won't be too difficult to get it up and running then!

What sort of games are you playing on your card niowluka, and what have your experiences been on the desktop with effects etc? I was looking at the 260X but decided I didn't quite need that level of power (I'm not a power PC gamer). If any other users too have similar cards I would love to read your experiences.

niowluka · Post by **niowluka** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 4:38 pm

Condorman wrote:What sort of games are you playing on your card niowluka

(Very rarely) Limbo and Distance (feel free to laugh and ridicule me, I'm too old to be bothered about that). I don't really play games on Linux... because it's... Linux.

I can't really advise on benefits of the upgrade. It is a newer, faster card, so it's definitely an upgrade, although I wouldn't say a huge one. R7 250X is not exactly a high end card, whereas it seems your current one was 7 years ago. How much of a difference it makes will also depend on the rest of your setup: MoBo, CPU, RAM. etc.

I'm perfectly happy with my R7 260X 2G card, desktop runs fine (it never feels sluggish) and those 2 games play fine.

Condorman · Post by **Condorman** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 5:35 pm

niowluka wrote:
Condorman wrote:What sort of games are you playing on your card niowluka
(Very rarely) Limbo and Distance (feel free to laugh and ridicule me, I'm too old to be bothered about that). I don't really play games on Linux... because it's... Linux.

I can't really advise on benefits of the upgrade. It is a newer, faster card, so it's definitely an upgrade, although I wouldn't say a huge one. R7 250X is not exactly a high end card, whereas it seems your current one was 7 years ago. How much of a difference it makes will also depend on the rest of your setup: MoBo, CPU, RAM. etc.

I'm perfectly happy with my R7 260X 2G card, desktop runs fine (it never feels sluggish) and those 2 games play fine.

I wouldn't laugh at all at those games. I'm very much the same. Just one or two titles on Steam, Wine and emulation. Largely the 9800GT is fine, desktop performance is excellent, but I'm noticing now that emulators like Dolphin and PCSX2 run poorly on my system. Left4Dead 2 for example is a slideshow on Steam. I think the rest of it is okayish - I have AMD X4 945 3.0Ghz, 4Gb RAM, OCZ 550W PSU. Certainly it'll do for the next couple of years.

I'm not expecting an absolutely massive difference to the 9800GT. I'm not daft - it's only a £65 card! But the reviews have looked really positive (OK Windows based but still). I am hoping to see some improvement though RE the above. As I mentioned too I was really hoping to run the open source driver if it is capable enough. Much better in the long run I hope.

niowluka · Post by **niowluka** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 5:56 pm

Condorman wrote:I have AMD X4 945 3.0Ghz, 4Gb RAM, OCZ 550W PSU

Sounds OK to me. It's not mind-blowing, but then it doesn't have to be on Linux.

Condorman wrote:emulators like Dolphin and PCSX2 run poorly on my system

I would say the card will have even less impact on the emulation than it will on the desktop.

Condorman · Post by **Condorman** » Thu Feb 26, 2015 12:11 pm

Sorry for late reply. Sleep then work.

I would say the card will have even less impact on the emulation than it will on the desktop.

LOL! Then never mind.

I'm still happy to get the card and try it out. At the end of the day, it only really needs to be s stopgap for maybe a year or two until I decide to build a new PC. I'll post up my (mis)adventures here with it. Maybe they'll prove useful to someone else looking at the card themselves.

Thanks again for your replies guys.

Condorman · Post by **Condorman** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 9:44 am

Well lots of fun trying to get the AMD driver running, but I managed to do it. Had to use a couple of guides as I think I didn't follow the steps properly before starting. My fault; but then there were still issues with the driver installation. No matter, I had lots of this with the Nvidia driver too. Ended up using the guides linked below, and still had to manually add a menu option for the Catalyst Control Centre.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/AMD

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2236406

http://askubuntu.com/questions/445954/u ... the-driver

However, it's all working now, and I've had the chance to run the free version of Unigine Heaven. I'm not a graphics expert, but it does at least give me the chance to see the differences between the old card and the new. I ran the test on the old card a day before installing the new one. I just ran on high settings, then low. I could do more but I felt that those would be a fair enough representation of the thing.

Nvidia 9800GT on High:

Code: Select all

FPS:	
8.6
Score:	
216
Min FPS:	
4.5
Max FPS:	
30.3
System
Platform:	
Linux 3.13.0-46-generic x86_64
CPU model:	
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor (3015MHz) x4
GPU model:	
GeForce 9800 GT PCI Express 331.113 (512MB) x1
Settings
Render:	
OpenGL
Mode:	
1440x900 fullscreen
Preset	
Custom
Quality	
High
Tessellation:	Disabled

Nvidia 9800GT on Low:

Code: Select all

FPS:	
23.8
Score:	
598
Min FPS:	
12.7
Max FPS:	
53.2
System
Platform:	
Linux 3.13.0-46-generic x86_64
CPU model:	
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor (3013MHz) x4
GPU model:	
GeForce 9800 GT PCI Express 331.113 (512MB) x1
Settings
Render:	
OpenGL
Mode:	
1440x900 fullscreen
Preset	
Custom
Quality	
Low
Tessellation:	Disabled

R7 250X on High:

Code: Select all

FPS:	
23.4
Score:	
590
Min FPS:	
6.9
Max FPS:	
50.9
System
Platform:	
Linux 3.13.0-46-generic x86_64
CPU model:	
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor (3013MHz) x4
GPU model:	
AMD Radeon R7 200 Series (1024MB) x1
Settings
Render:	
OpenGL
Mode:	
1440x900 fullscreen
Preset	
Custom
Quality	
High
Tessellation:	Disabled

R7 250X on Low:

Code: Select all

FPS:	
37.9
Score:	
954
Min FPS:	
8.5
Max FPS:	
87.1
System
Platform:	
Linux 3.13.0-46-generic x86_64
CPU model:	
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 945 Processor (3013MHz) x4
GPU model:	
AMD Radeon R7 200 Series (1024MB) x1
Settings
Render:	
OpenGL
Mode:	
1440x900 fullscreen
Preset	
Custom
Quality	
Low
Tessellation:	Disabled

To me I could visibly see the difference. Even on low the Nvidia card struggled to perform, while on the AMD it was at least smooth. On lower settings it was so much nicer.

However, oddly Left 4 Dead 2 on Steam still runs really poorly! It's the same issue - choppy, stuttery, laggy, unplayable. I've tried all the options (as I did before on the old card), and it makes little difference. I'm surprised really. Had read this game ran well on Linux.

The emulators are a mixed bag. Suddenly the PS2 emulator is running quite well with the OpenGL backend (had to use software renderer before), but Dolphin still struggles (I sort of expected this anyway as their site explains this). Hopefully Steam will offer some good reasons to put money down so I can give it a decent whirl. Otherwise I'm happy to get it working and pleased to see it isn't worse!

crust · Post by **crust** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 12:30 pm

Golden rule: Nvidia driven cards are accelerators, while ATI/AMD are complete graphics cards, this has to do with the lack of intergrated graphics on AMD CPU's, while Nvidia is more designed for use with Intel CPU's, so rendering with a Nvidia will always be sluggish when you use an AMD and ATI will be better. Having said that an ATI can work perfectly with Intel chips, but Nvidia will not work as well when paired to an AMD chipset.

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