Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Time to switch back to AMD?
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 13:52:19
Message-Id: CAGfcS_mchydmKWdJDx6LFN2qtnm41A3+1ZUdvb6dQomWsf9xWg@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-user] Time to switch back to AMD? by Grant Edwards
1 On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 11:44 PM Grant Edwards
2 <grant.b.edwards@×××××.com> wrote:
3 >
4 > How are the AMD "Wraith Stealth" fans? I've been using the fan that
5 > came with the old Core-i3, and it gets a little annoying when it's
6 > time to compile chromium (or when flying planes/helicopters).
7
8 I have two Ryzen processors with these fans and I find them to be
9 adequate, but I'm not super-sensitive to noise. Ryzen in general is
10 much better heat-wise than previous generations.
11
12 I'm sure it won't compare to something water-cooled with really large
13 fans. For OEM cooling it seems pretty decent.
14
15 > Any issues with Gentoo and Xorg on AMD integrated Vega 8/11 GPUs?
16
17 I have a Gentoo system with the Ryzen 3-2200G and I have no issues
18 with the integrated graphics using a completely vanilla kernel (5.4
19 series right now). I'd probably use at least 4.19 with this CPU - I
20 forget when all the zen/vega changes were integrated but older kernels
21 may lack them.
22
23 I don't use the system for gaming, but I do run X11 on it with
24 KMS/etc. I can't vouch for gaming performance but my understanding is
25 that AMD in-kernel drivers are decent. I'm sure the integrated
26 graphics won't compete with a $500 GPU.
27
28 As long as you're using in-kernel drivers they should basically be
29 supported forever. It is only proprietary drivers that have issues
30 with losing support, and I'm not sure if AMD still has those. I
31 suspect a video adapter from 1997 will work with a recent kernel,
32 assuming you can find a motherboard you can plug it into.
33
34 The only thing I'd bear in mind is that Zen3 is coming soon, so you
35 might benefit from delaying your upgrade. Either way AMD is almost
36 certainly the way to go these days as they seem to be ahead. Maybe
37 for some single-threaded niches Intel still has some areas where
38 they're ahead, but I'm not even sure about that. And if you're
39 running Gentoo you're going to want that multi-thread performance for
40 builds/etc.
41
42 --
43 Rich