Hi all,

I’m in the market for a new big desktop replacement gaming laptop, and looking at the market there are almost exclusively Nvidia powered.

I was wondering about the state of their new open-source driver. Can I run a plain vanilla kernel with only open source / upstream packages and drivers and expect to get a good experience? How is battery life, performance? Does DRI Prime and Vulkan based GPU selection “just work”?

The only alternative new for my market is a device with an Intel Arc A730M, which I currently think is going to be the one I end up buying.

  • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
    52·
    10 months ago

    These cards have been out for years…

    https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpu-drivers/intels-new-gpu-drivers-boost-performance-up-to-750-in-dx11

    If you’re re-writing drivers and getting a 50% boost in performance, your implementation is fucking tragic.

    https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-23.0.2-Released

    This mesa release had a draw bug for intel GPUs that was over 2 years old.

    It’s BAD bad in Intel land. I want them to be good, but they just are not.

    Just get an AMD card and be done with it. Making things unnecessarily complicated is something us engineers do for fun because we enjoy the headaches, not because we’re trying to play Starfield.

    • worldofgeese@lemmy.world
      41·
      10 months ago

      The Intel discrete cards are fantastic value for money. There’s plenty of folks on the internet who can attest to this. Intel’s support story in general (so not just graphics cards) on Linux has been nothing less than sterling. If you’re using any Linux kernel you can expect Intel stuff to just work. It’s been this way for at least a decade.

      • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        This is just wrong. Intel GPU support in MESA has been serviceable at best.

        It’s still getting Arc optimizations… today.

        https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-23.3-rc4-Released

        • mesh shader support by default for Intel ANV

        LOL

        Wasn’t even supported until earlier this year:

        https://news.itsfoss.com/linux-kernel-6-2-release/

        The landscape is bleak. I WANT Arc to be badass. I’d buy one in a heartbeat if it wasn’t such a crapfest.

        • LeFantome@programming.dev
          31·
          10 months ago

          When is the last time you tried Intel hardware and with what software? I ask because your links do not really tell the same story as your post.

          The first link says that Mesa got “more Intel optimizations”. That sounds like a good thing. It basically says the same thing about AMD and NVIDIA. The only GPU “crash” that was addressed was for AMD which is widely regarded as the best option for Linux. I would not read that article and come away with any concerns about Intel.

          The second link says that kernel 6.2 added “full Intel support”. We are now in kernel 6.7. I use a rolling release and how a much newer kernel than 6.2. A brief Google leads me to believe that 6.5 ships with both Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora 39.

          I have not used these cards myself so I do it know but others have said the experience was decent now. The OP does not seem that demanding. If it ok now and actively improving, he may be quite happy. It sounds better than nouveau for sure. Is it really as bad as you say?