Last time I tried an Nvidia GPU was around June 2025 and it was an RTX 3080 on Arch Linux.
I used the nvidia-dkms package and followed the Arch Wiki to get the proprietary drivers working and didn’t have too many problems there.
I use my PC mainly for gaming and browsing the web, so can’t comment on any productivity apps.
In terms of gaming, I think nearly all of the proprietary Nvidia technologies work on Linux, like DLSS, Reflex etc., albeit only on proprietary drivers.
Performance in games appear to be roughly on par with Windows, with an exception of DirectX 12 games where you will definitely notice a performance degradation.
There is a quirk with Flatpak apps, where you must have the same driver version as your system, otherwise apps won’t utilise them and default to either software rendering (ex. llvmpipe) or Nouveau.
Another quirk I had was with Wayland, where games were always Vsynced if I had VRR enabled on my monitor. On top of that it felt like Plasma handled compositing better when using Adaptive Sync on an AMD GPU than Nvidia. You’ve mentioned you’re using X11 so I think that shouldn’t be an issue for you.
Considering all of this, personally I’d still stick with AMD, mainly due to better Wayland experience and no performance degradation in DirectX 12 games. But again, that’s just my preference.
Last time I tried an Nvidia GPU was around June 2025 and it was an RTX 3080 on Arch Linux.
I used the nvidia-dkms package and followed the Arch Wiki to get the proprietary drivers working and didn’t have too many problems there.
I use my PC mainly for gaming and browsing the web, so can’t comment on any productivity apps.
In terms of gaming, I think nearly all of the proprietary Nvidia technologies work on Linux, like DLSS, Reflex etc., albeit only on proprietary drivers.
Performance in games appear to be roughly on par with Windows, with an exception of DirectX 12 games where you will definitely notice a performance degradation.
There is a quirk with Flatpak apps, where you must have the same driver version as your system, otherwise apps won’t utilise them and default to either software rendering (ex. llvmpipe) or Nouveau.
Another quirk I had was with Wayland, where games were always Vsynced if I had VRR enabled on my monitor. On top of that it felt like Plasma handled compositing better when using Adaptive Sync on an AMD GPU than Nvidia. You’ve mentioned you’re using X11 so I think that shouldn’t be an issue for you.
Considering all of this, personally I’d still stick with AMD, mainly due to better Wayland experience and no performance degradation in DirectX 12 games. But again, that’s just my preference.