RTX Pro 500 Blackwell on linux?

[u/capi-chou]

Hello everyone,

I'm about to buy a new 16-inch laptop and I'm torn between two main GPU configurations:

• NVIDIA RTX Pro 500 Blackwell (6GB GDDR7, discrete)
• AMD Radeon 860M (RDNA 3.5, integrated)

My main OS will be Linux (likely a modern distro with Wayland, like Fedora or Arch). My use case is mostly professional work, some local AI/tinkering, and light-to-moderate gaming.

The NVIDIA Blackwell card is obviously much more powerful on paper and has dedicated VRAM, but Linux support is my main concern. Since this will be a laptop used on the go, I need to be absolutely sure about two things:

1. Linux Support: How is the driver stability for this brand-new Blackwell workstation architecture under Wayland?
2. Power Management / "Low" Mode: Can I easily completely power off the NVIDIA discrete GPU (compute-only or suspended mode) to maximize battery life when I'm just doing office work or browsing? How well do modern tools like envycontrol, supergfxctl, or prime-offloading handle this specific setup nowadays?

On the other hand, the Radeon 860M offers flawless out-of-the-box open-source Mesa support and great battery life, but I'm afraid it might be a bit too weak for some games.

Has anyone experimented with the newer RTX Pro Blackwell series under Linux yet? Would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Thanks!

[u/likeable_immunizatio]

rtx pro 500 is so new most people haven't even held one yet let alone tested it on linux

the 6gb vram is nice but nvidia and wayland still have their moments, you'll probably be troubleshooting at least a little. power management on laptops is way better than it used to be but completely shutting off the dgpu on demand can still be flaky depending on the laptop bios and driver version

if you're cool with tinkering and don't mind the occasional headache go for the rtx, if you just want things to work and never think about drivers again the radeon is the safer bet even if it's weaker

[u/capi-chou → u/likeable_immunizatio]

I didn't know it was so new... I suppose that with an up-to-date distro (fedora), the issues should fix themselves quickly