Nvidia drivers versus AMD drivers on Wayland

Easy Rhino · Saturday at 9:05 PM

For a while now I keep reading anecdotes about Nvidia proprietary drivers not being good on Wayland. However I cannot find any benchmarks making that case? Does anyone have any direct experience using both AMD and Nvidia drivers on Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu distros? I have an AMD 6750 XT card that runs perfectly fine when gaming on a 4K monitor scaled down to 1440p. Benchmarks on Windows show another card I have (RTX 4060 Ti) running very similiary performance but nearly half the wattage. I wonder if that is the case on Wayland...

bruhmoment01 · Saturday at 9:33 PM

I’ve experienced NVIDIA’s proprietary and AMDGPU on Wayland.

Running an AMD 7840U with its 780M IGP (RDNA 3), opening a terminal in Fedora 41 crashes my entire Gnome session.

Running an NVIDIA RTX A5000 on Debian 12, Wine/Proton applications flicker and stutter so badly as to be unusable.

In both cases logging into an X11 session fixed the issue, so I’d say both drivers (or perhaps Wayland itself?) are in about the same state :roll:

Shihab · Saturday at 10:08 PM

Wish I could've bothered, but I can't rationalize benchmarking what isn't even viable for basic, daily use. Nvidia on wayland was always a broken mess to me. Graphical glitches, applications refusing to launch outright, crashes everywhere, can't even wake to a functional gui from suspension, etc, etc.

Solaris17 · Saturday at 10:18 PM

bruhmoment01 said:
I’ve experienced NVIDIA’s proprietary and AMDGPU on Wayland.

Running an AMD 7840U with its 780M IGP (RDNA 3), opening a terminal in Fedora 41 crashes my entire Gnome session.

Running an NVIDIA RTX A5000 on Debian 12, Wine/Proton applications flicker and stutter so badly as to be unusable.

In both cases logging into an X11 session fixed the issue, so I’d say both drivers (or perhaps Wayland itself?) are in about the same state

Shihab said:
Wish I could've bothered, but I can't rationalize benchmarking what isn't even viable for basic, daily use. Nvidia on wayland was always a broken mess to me. Graphical glitches, applications refusing to launch outright, crashes everywhere, can't even wake to a functional gui from suspension, etc, etc.

How recent was this? I experienced the same but thay was the end of last summer. In all cases I just went back to x11, but afterwards I saw post after post on phoronix in regards to nvidia fixing and otherwise working on Wayland.

Timbaloo · Saturday at 10:30 PM

Nvidia got their sh*t together recently (don't recall when exactly, about 3-4 months ago?) and started implementing/fixing Wayland support, so there should be less issues now (IF you're running latest drivers, free or non-free). So basically what Solaris said.

Not an expert on this since my Linux machine is using amdgpu driver. No problems on Wayland whatsoever.

Shihab · Saturday at 10:33 PM

Solaris17 said:
How recent was this? I experienced the same but thay was the end of last summer. In all cases I just went back to x11, but afterwards I saw post after post on phoronix in regards to nvidia fixing and otherwise working on Wayland.

I don't recall exactly when (and not near my desktop to check). My last test was several months after driver version 560 was released (after Cannonical got around to release it for 24.04). So, 3~4 months ago or so?

I recall the chatter about the improvements too. One of the reasons I was encouraged to try it again.

Easy Rhino · Saturday at 10:46 PM

Solaris17 said:
How recent was this? I experienced the same but thay was the end of last summer. In all cases I just went back to x11, but afterwards I saw post after post on phoronix in regards to nvidia fixing and otherwise working on Wayland.

Timbaloo said:
Nvidia got their sh*t together recently (don't recall when exactly, about 3-4 months ago?) and started implementing/fixing Wayland support, so there should be less issues now (IF you're running latest drivers, free or non-free). So basically what Solaris said.

Not an expert on this since my Linux machine is using amdgpu driver. No problems on Wayland whatsoever.

This has been what I have been hearing about. That Nvidia has made a concerted effort to develop proper linux drivers and that has lead to improved performance with Wayland. My 6750 XT works great on Wayland but I am tempted to switch over to the RTX 4060 Ti and get the same performance but with half the wattage. If I have the energy perhaps I will run some tests in the future...

Solaris17 · Saturday at 10:48 PM

Easy Rhino said:
This has been what I have been hearing about. That Nvidia has made a concerted effort to develop proper linux drivers and that has lead to improved performance with Wayland. My 6750 XT works great on Wayland but I am tempted to switch over to the RTX 4060 Ti and get the same performance but with half the wattage. If I have the energy perhaps I will run some tests in the future...

I know they stole the head nuveuo (sp?) maintainer. He now works for Nvidia after his breakthrough on GSP communication with 4series and up (or was it 3?). He now pushes patches for NVIDIA’s official branch drivers. That’s around the time I started reading about all the Wayland fixes.

_roman_ · Saturday at 11:45 PM

I had to remove the wayland called useflag from my gentoo installation from 2006 with a radeon 7800XT.
I do not know why anymore. I think I did not even get a picture on certain apps at all. It was a few weeks ago.
I'm on ~amd64 = that's basically the newest stuff which exists. I'm on openrc - not systemd.

I remember because It stole a bit of time. More than usual. (I'm well aware of post #1 asked for the binary distros with systemd)

MCJAxolotl7 · Saturday at 11:51 PM

Daily user, works great.

igormp · 2025-01-05T01:32:24+0000

Fwiw, Nvidia also has open source drivers (not nouveau, the actual kernel modules that work with CUDA and whatnot), I've been using those for the past months without any issues, although I'm still on Xorg instead of Wayland.

unwind-protect · 2025-01-05T13:59:18+0000

I don't run it myself but my understanding is that NVidia's Wayland implementation works fine even on FreeBSD.

AusWolf · 2025-01-05T14:04:27+0000

I can't comment on Nvidia (yet), but I have zero issues with my 6750 XT on Bazzite (based on Fedora 41) with KDE (I think it's running Wayland, but I'm not that Linux-savvy).

I'm planning to install Linux on my HTPCs that have Nvidia GPUs at some point - just haven't got around to it, yet.

Timbaloo · 2025-01-05T17:56:57+0000

AusWolf said:
I can't comment on Nvidia (yet), but I have zero issues with my 6750 XT on Bazzite (based on Fedora 41) with KDE (I think it's running Wayland, but I'm not that Linux-savvy).

You can check here on Plasma 6:

GerKNG · 2025-01-05T18:01:55+0000

from my own experience:
since Wayland is compatible with NVidias Drivers (560.xx) it's better and performs better than the MESA AMD GPU drivers.

AusWolf · 2025-01-05T20:19:40+0000

Timbaloo said:
You can check here on Plasma 6:
View attachment 378470

Ah, yes, thanks.

I can confirm, I'm running Wayland.

GerKNG said:
from my own experience:
since Wayland is compatible with NVidias Drivers (560.xx) it's better and performs better than the MESA AMD GPU drivers.

How so?

System Name	Desktop
Processor	i5 13600KF
Motherboard	AsRock B760M Steel Legend Wifi
Cooling	Noctua NH-U9S
Memory	4x 16 Gb Gskill S5 DDR5 @6000
Video Card(s)	Gigabyte Gaming OC 6750 XT 12GB
Storage	WD_BLACK 4TB SN850x
Display(s)	Gigabye M32U
Case	Corsair Carbide 400C
Audio Device(s)	On Board
Power Supply	EVGA Supernova 650 P2
Mouse	MX Master 3s
Keyboard	Logitech G915 Wireless Clicky
Software	Fedora KDE Spin

System Name	HP Z6 G4
Processor	2X Xeon Gold 6268CL
Motherboard	HP 81C6
Memory	2048GB Optane DCPMM + 512GB ECC DDR4 2666
Video Card(s)	NVIDIA RTX A5000 + AMD W6600
Storage	2X Optane 905P 960GB + 2X Seagate MACH.2 2X18 18TB
Display(s)	Dell G3223Q
Audio Device(s)	M-Audio Profire 610
Power Supply	1000W
Mouse	Razer Naga
Keyboard	Keychron Q4
Software	Debian 12

System Name	192.168.1.1~192.168.1.100
Processor	AMD Ryzen5 5600G.
Motherboard	Gigabyte B550m DS3H.
Cooling	AMD Wraith Stealth.
Memory	16GB Crucial DDR4.
Video Card(s)	Gigabyte GTX 1080 OC (Underclocked, underpowered).
Storage	Samsung 980 NVME 500GB && Assortment of SSDs.
Display(s)	ViewSonic VA2406-MH 75Hz
Case	Bitfenix Nova Midi
Audio Device(s)	On-Board.
Power Supply	SeaSonic CORE GM-650.
Mouse	Logitech G300s
Keyboard	Kingston HyperX Alloy FPS.
VR HMD	A pair of OP spectacles.
Software	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
Benchmark Scores	Me no know English. What bench mean? Bench like one sit on?

System Name	RogueOne
Processor	Xeon W9-3495x
Motherboard	ASUS w790E Sage SE
Cooling	SilverStone XE360-4677
Memory	128gb Gskill Zeta R5 DDR5 RDIMMs
Video Card(s)	MSI SUPRIM Liquid X 4090
Storage	1x 2TB WD SN850X \| 2x 8TB GAMMIX S70
Display(s)	49" Philips Evnia OLED (49M2C8900)
Case	Thermaltake Core P3 Pro Snow
Audio Device(s)	Moondrop S8's on schitt Gunnr
Power Supply	Seasonic Prime TX-1600
Mouse	Razer Viper mini signature edition (mercury white)
Keyboard	Monsgeek M3 Lavender, Moondrop Luna lights
VR HMD	Quest 3
Software	Windows 11 Pro Workstation
Benchmark Scores	I dont have time for that.

System Name	192.168.1.1~192.168.1.100
Processor	AMD Ryzen5 5600G.
Motherboard	Gigabyte B550m DS3H.
Cooling	AMD Wraith Stealth.
Memory	16GB Crucial DDR4.
Video Card(s)	Gigabyte GTX 1080 OC (Underclocked, underpowered).
Storage	Samsung 980 NVME 500GB && Assortment of SSDs.
Display(s)	ViewSonic VA2406-MH 75Hz
Case	Bitfenix Nova Midi
Audio Device(s)	On-Board.
Power Supply	SeaSonic CORE GM-650.
Mouse	Logitech G300s
Keyboard	Kingston HyperX Alloy FPS.
VR HMD	A pair of OP spectacles.
Software	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
Benchmark Scores	Me no know English. What bench mean? Bench like one sit on?

Nvidia drivers versus AMD drivers on Wayland

Easy Rhino

Linux Advocate

bruhmoment01

Shihab

Solaris17

Super Dainty Moderator

Timbaloo

Shihab

Easy Rhino

Linux Advocate

Solaris17

Super Dainty Moderator

_roman_

MCJAxolotl7

igormp

unwind-protect

AusWolf

Timbaloo

GerKNG

AusWolf

System Name	Alienware Aurora R13
Processor	i9-12900kf
Motherboard	Alienware 0C92D0
Cooling	Alienware CPU water block AIO thing
Memory	32gbs of DDR5-4400 (slow, I know)
Video Card(s)	Dell/Alienware RTX 3080ti
Storage	NVMe KIOXIA KXG70ZNV1T02 1024GB
Display(s)	ViewSonic VA2456-MHD (yes totally underspec)
Case	Alienware Aurora R13
Audio Device(s)	Soundcore Life Q20
Power Supply	Dell-Something-Or-Other 1000? watt
Mouse	Logitech M325S
Keyboard	Logitech K540
VR HMD	None
Software	Ubuntu Linux 24.10

Processor	5950x
Motherboard	B550 ProArt
Cooling	Fuma 2
Memory	4x32GB 3200MHz Corsair LPX
Video Card(s)	2x RTX 3090
Display(s)	LG 42" C2 4k OLED
Power Supply	XPG Core Reactor 850W
Software	I use Arch btw

System Name	Nebulon B
Processor	AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Motherboard	MSi PRO B650M-A WiFi
Cooling	be quiet! Dark Rock 4
Memory	2x 24 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5-4800
Video Card(s)	AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT 12 GB
Storage	2 TB Corsair MP600 GS, 2 TB Corsair MP600 R2
Display(s)	Dell S3422DWG, 7" Waveshare touchscreen
Case	Kolink Citadel Mesh black
Audio Device(s)	Logitech Z333 2.1 speakers, AKG Y50 headphones
Power Supply	Seasonic Prime GX-750
Mouse	Logitech MX Master 2S
Keyboard	Logitech G413 SE
Software	Bazzite (Fedora Linux) KDE Plasma

Processor	AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
Motherboard	ASRock B650E Steel Legend Wifi
Cooling	Arctic Liquid Freezer III 280
Memory	2x16GB Corsair Vengeance RGB 6000 CL30 (A-Die)
Video Card(s)	RTX 4090 Gaming X Trio
Storage	1TB Samsung 990 PRO, 4TB Corsair MP600 PRO XT, 1TB WD SN850X, 4x4TB Crucial MX500
Display(s)	Alienware AW2725DF, LG 27GR93U, LG 27GN950-B
Case	Streacom BC1 V2 Black
Audio Device(s)	Bose Companion Series 2 III, Sennheiser GSP600 and HD599 SE - Creative Soundblaster X4
Power Supply	bequiet! Dark Power Pro 12 1500w Titanium
Mouse	Razer Deathadder V3
Keyboard	Razer Black Widow V3 TKL
VR HMD	Oculus Rift S
Software	~2000 Video Games