Question Should I sell and switch to rx6800xt or just tweak workaround?

[willis9829]

I decided to upgrade from RX6650xt to rtx 3080. I own AMD R7 5700x and 32GB DDR4 3600Mhz. I run my games on Linux (Nobara Project, Fedora 37 distro optimized for gaming) (huge Linux nerd I know, but got PS5 for windows only titles like Destiny 2). I only have 600W PSU (Corsair platinum rating)

I installed nvidia 530 drivers and CUDA libraries to access the card using nvidia-smi. Limited TDP to 280W down from 320W.

The games play smooth but one downside I noticed is Steam in Big Picture mode has really laggy animations with its UI (in desktop mode it’s fine).

Also Forza Horizon before lunch warns it can’t recognize drivers version but it launches just fine and recognizes its nvidia card offering me DLSS settings.

I noticed graphics look better and my older titles play at full 4K 120Hz .

But I miss the convenience of big picture mode since I use this PC in my living room with 65” tv and could just navigate using controller. This makes me even rethink of going back to AMD especially since it’s just plug and play with open source drivers.
I don’t want to install Windows.

Is DLSS overrated or useful? None of my games exceed 8.5GB VRAM.

At some point I thought it was overkill and could just get by 6700 or 6700xt but my card was like only $420 with shipping before tax and predict with my usage of PS5 and library of games on both PC and PS5 I won’t need upgrade for next 5 years or more.

 

[willis9829]

Ps. If any knows if there is a “legacy” big picture mode in Steam that would work for me, that would help

 

[BFG-9000]

Nobody can fix that except nVidia in their proprietary drivers, given their open-source Nouveau driver sucks and Valve's NVK driver is clearly not ready for prime-time.

The Mesa drivers for AMD are way less of a hassle in Linux, plus you don't even have to uninstall them completely to a terminal window in order to update Nobara like you do with nVidia. That's a PITA

 

[willis9829]

Nobody can fix that except nVidia in their proprietary drivers, given their open-source Nouveau driver sucks and Valve's NVK driver is clearly not ready for prime-time.

The Mesa drivers for AMD are way less of a hassle in Linux, plus you don't even have to uninstall them completely to a terminal window in order to update Nobara like you do with nVidia. That's a PITA

I installed nvidia drivers from rpm fusion repository to avoid having to manually update them when it’s time for new update.

I maintain Ubunty AM/ML workstations for living and every one of them use Nvidia drivers with CUDA. I see various issue with nvidia especially when installing straight from nvidia instead from apt repo packages.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I would say to get the RX 6800 XT if only for the extra 6GB of VRAM. I personally own an RX 6800 XT and I couldn't imagine choosing an RTX 3080 over it.

Honestly, I don't know why you chose the 10GB RTX 3080 over the 16GB RX 6800 XT in the first place but I'm pretty sure that you could sell that RTX 3080 to some noob for the same price (or more) as a new RX 6800 XT. I would do that before, inevitably, 10GB becomes not enough VRAM for 1440p and the value of the RTX 3080 begins to plummet.

 

[willis9829]

I would say to get the RX 6800 XT if only for the extra 6GB of VRAM. I personally own an RX 6800 XT and I couldn't imagine choosing an RTX 3080 over it.

Honestly, I don't know why you chose the 10GB RTX 3080 over the 16GB RX 6800 XT in the first place but I'm pretty sure that you could sell that RTX 3080 to some noob for the same price (or more) as a new RX 6800 XT. I would do that before, inevitably, 10GB becomes not enough VRAM for 1440p and the value of the RTX 3080 begins to plummet.

They were for about same price range on used market on eBay and at the week I looked mine was bidding for less than used rx6800 xt which for about few tens more could obtained as new XFX version from Amazon.
If I didn’t own PS5, and gamed mostly on PC I would have probably went already with 6900xt or 7900xt and >850W PSU.

Also I use plexmedia server and both Intel and nvidia seem to be better supported for HW accelerated transcoding than AMD gpus especially on Linux. Though for single stream it probably makes not much difference.

I considered Intel ARC A770 but most likely in similar price range new RX 6700XT outperforms it.