I’ve already made a post about this, I made the switch from an Nvidia GPU to an AMD one and I was wondering if I needed to install anything extra. I’ve heard the drivers are included inside the kernel but how do I ensure that it’s installed?

  • The AMD driver is built into the kernel, so it just works (or it doesn’t, and you have no output or everything is super slow). If your display works and isn’t laggy as hell, it works.

    You should uninstall the Nvidia drivers for better stability and to make updates a bit faster.

    There are some helper packages you could want, depending on your distro. Installing the AMD Vulkan libraries, if they aren’t installed out of the box, is important for games. If you open a modern game and it’s slow as hell, that’s likely why.

    For hardware accelerated video decoding/encoding, you’ll want the right VAAPI/VDPAU drivers. Which ones you need depends on your exact GPU and I don’t know which ones are installed by Pop_OS already.

    I don’t think there are many GUI tools to debug VAAPI or Vulkan, but vainfo and vkinfo should dump a load of information about either. If you see stuff like “software rendering” or “llvm pipe” in the info they dump, that means the relevant AMD driver probably hasn’t loaded right. If that happens, you may need to install additional packages to get everything running optimally.

    • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Installing the AMD Vulkan libraries, if they aren’t installed out of the box

      They said they were on Pop_OS, I’m 99% sure they’re preinstalled

    • zingo@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      You should uninstall the Nvidia drivers for better stability and to make updates a bit faster.

      Is that all?

      Coming from Windows, where you should either nuke the install or use DDU in safe mode when changing vendors, for smooth sailing to paradise.

      • On Linux the drivers are built into the kernel. Nvidia is one of the outliers for having drivers you need to install in the first place.

        Additional tools like VAAPI/VDPAU may need a package or two, but the basic graphics acceleration should just work.

        • zingo@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Yeah I figured.

          I’m running a nvidia card on my main rig which runs Linux.

          I’m in the thought process of acquiring an AMD Card, so my question was more of a doubt when uninstalling the nvidia drivers so nothing (dependencies etc) is left on the system. Maybe you don’t have to baby Linux as windows need. I’m new here by the way ;)

          Thus my reflection about Windows, where’s uninstalling the drivers, don’t get rid of all the junk unless you jump through hoops that I mentioned above. Otherwise you might get bit by conflicts.

      • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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        1 year ago

        That’s very strange. There are plenty of reasons for a GPU to be glitching like that, but I wouldn’t expect it to happen on an empty screen.

        I’d start by checking the cables, the display, and verifying that the GPU is seated right and has all the right power connectors hooked up. Then, I’d look into the system logs (usually an application called “logs”, or sudo dmesg if you prefer the command line) to check if the driver prints any warnings or errors on boot. If that doesn’t provide a clue, I’d check another OS (either a Linux install USB or a Windows install) to confirm whether or not it’s got something to do with your particular setup.

        I don’t know what kernel version Pop_OS! Is on, but it’s worth trying a kernel update. Kernel 6.1 and up received a whole bunch of AMD GPU improvements, so updating the kernel may help.

        Lastly, some GPU manufacturers also publish BIOS updates for the GPU itself. If there’s an update available for yours, it’s worth reading the change log and seeing if it mentions glitches like these.

        • Yoru@lemmy.mlOP
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          1 year ago

          It seems my comment didn’t send but I plugged the HDMI cable to another port on the monitor and it got rid of the big glitches, however a small portion of them still remains. My GPU seems to be connected correctly as well and these glitches are not present in Windows. I’m updating the OS as we speak I’ll see if anything changes

          • If switching to a different monitor helps, I have to wonder if it could be the cable. I can imagine something weird like the Linux driver trying its hardest to send a full quality signal to the monitor, while Windows detects that the signal isn’t great and switches to lower-quality compressed video (modern display standards have compression built in which can mask this issue for a while…)

            If the updates don’t help and you don’t have another cable lying around to test with, I’d start checking out the logs.

            • Yoru@lemmy.mlOP
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              1 year ago

              the thing you said makes sense because the rips can’t be seen in an obs recording