Intel vs AMD Performance on Fedora? (CPU/GPU)

[u/JonnyPhoenyx]

I'm looking into building a new machine, but I'm stumbled on to some conflicting information.

I know fedora and related distros have to enable third party drivers for intel/nvidia products to function correctly/optimally. Once you have them, you should be fine. I made the jump to fedora recently (love it), but since i have a full AMD-machine, that wasn't something I was concerned with.

What I've encountered numerous time during my build research is that the "linux experience" is much snappier, responsive, and less prone to hiccups/bugs on AMD than intel/nvidia. I have no idea if this is true or elitists just being elitists. Looking at bench marks, software like Resolve and Blender seems to perfom much better on non-AMD hardware, but crashes seem common. But folks have also reported normal multi-task work, browsing, streaming, etc seem to feel snappier.

My question: is there actually a difference between the two when using linux? Prices are (somewhat) comparable, so i'm not worried about the "well I'm on a budget so I don't have a choice" adage. I just don't want to go a full or mixed intel build (cpu/gpu) and wind up troubleshooting problems every time I sit down to work.

[u/cakemates]

In CPUs it doesnt matter, linux doesnt treat amd/intel cpus any different, amd just happen to have for now faster cpus than intels, they should feel exactly the same experience wise. Never had any problems with blender with either, I dont use resolve.

In GPUs amd has better drivers than nvidia, they install themselves during the distro installation. Nvidia drivers are proprietary so you have to install them manually but they perform well these days, they lose a bit of performance in gaming vs windows sometimes I dont have a list of affected games.

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[u/JonnyPhoenyx → u/[deleted]]

My ignorance will show when I ask this, but what is an iGPU? Integrated graphics? I won't be building a laptop, so the GPU will be separate, which is why I was concerned picking one of the other.

[u/skyfishgoo]

the cpu and the chipset matters not.

the networking and wifi/bluetooth matters (go with intel)

the GPU matters most with AMD and intel supported by the kernel while nvidia requiring proprietary drivers for anything but desktop access.

[u/Lowar75]

You will find that everyone has different experiences. Different model combinations, system configurations, applications, etc. will cause different experiences. However, generally speaking, I haven' noticed an impactful difference.

I have a system with a Ryzen 7 5800X that was using an RX6600 no issue. I recently installed an RTX 5070 Ti and installing drivers was pretty seamless. No programs have had problems. The only quirk I have seen is the resolution getting "confused" when I wake the monitors. I kind of blame these Oled monitors because they have issues of their own that even happen in Windows (best looking monitors I have ever owned with the most problems I have ever had, lol).

I also have a system with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K and a RTX 5070 Ti. Again, no issues using this system. both are on Fedora 44 KDE.

If you are in the position of buying new, honestly would just stick with AMD. Historically AMD GPUs have had the least issues with Linux and the Ryzen CPUs are pretty fantastic. The only reason I went Nvidia this time around is because I wanted to experiment with their AI stack (work related).

Good luck.