well…

AMD, easily. Its literally plug and play. You can even pick some second hand options for cheap that are still solid for gaming such as the vega 56/64 and the RX 5700XT (which is I use). Intel isn’t bad so long as you’re not playing the newest stuff, my Arc a750 is solid in games like Fallout 4 and Elden Ring. Starfield is complete mess on it. Another thing with Intel is you’ll need a distro with a 6+ kernel to get the most out of it.

I had a gtx1060 when I started using linux, then upgraded to 2060 then again to 2080, they all worked fine without any major problem (except that file system checking at boot sometimes and wayland). Last year I upgraded to RX6800 and man everything just works, no more filesystem checks at boot, Wayland is mu way to go now.

If I have a nvidia card now I would just use, but if I’m buying a new/used gpu it will definitely be AMD.

For gaming and desktop use, I’ve had a flawless experience using AMD cards and a decent time with NVIDIA. The only reason I’m with NVIDIA now is for the AI capabilities (don’t bother trying to run stuff using AMD’s ROCm - it’s near impossible to install).

Definitely AMD. The drivers are actually open source, much better with less bugs and there are no problems known to me. I currently have had a GTX 1070 for the last 5 years, until I’ve enough money for an AMD card. My setups, especially Wayland based, are riddled with bugs not present on my (Intel based) laptop - which means the only explanation is the NVidia card. The (admittedly: testing on Arch) drivers have broken two times in a year, not making the system unusable but definitely preventing gaming.
On top of that, the 4090 may be 25% better than the 7900 XTX - but it’s also 50+% more expensive than the 7900 XTX, which is a pattern which can be seen for every generation and version of GPUs by Nvidia/AMD. Nvidia’s equivalents to AMD’s cards are generally 25-50% more expensive, with worse performance but better Raytracing and of course DLSS support - oh wait, DLSS 1 and 2 are only for RTX 20 and up, while DLSS 4 is only for 40 Series GPUs. Which means no matter how good it looks, FSR will be the only alternative for almost all players, even those using NVidia cards like me.

Something different: Intel’s Arc GPUs would maybe be worth a shot. According to a PC World article, the A770 beats the 3060 even in it’s own habitat - Raytracing. It’s cheap and gets better with every driver update. It also seems like the Arc GPUs are compatible with Linux fine, though I’d suggest you look up the compatibility with the games you want to play.

I bought a Rx 5700xt for 190€ in Germany this was 4 month’s ago

I have an NVIDIA 1060 and it is such a pain in the ass to deal with. The number of random problems I’ve had with it has put me off from ever buying a computer with NVIDIA hardware ever again. Save yourself the constant walking on eggshells and get AMD.

Pick one that fits your bills! Usually, AMD ones have more VRAM for the same price compared to Nvidia… I use Nvidia here (Asus tuf rtx3080 with 12GB VRAM), but I’d use an AMD one without problems too, if I had one…

Just avoid Intel Arc right now!!!

PS: if you need CUDA, you’ll have to use Nvidia

AMD is generally better

If I were buying a card right now I’d get either the 6700XT or the 6800XT because they’re both at crazy good value for the money right now, especially if you can get one used or refurbished from a reputable seller with a return policy.

This sums up my feelings on Nvidia.

I am on AMD, as I had too many problems with Nvidia over the years (e.g. driver borked after upgrade and stuck on console). That said, AMD driver ain’t of great quality these days either. Playing around with StableDiffusion and running out of VRAM will crash the driver and require a reboot. Some Xorg/kernel/driver versions crash frequently. One of my monitors does not work when connected over HDMI in Linux (flickering image), but works fine in Windows.

AMD is also quite a bit more challenging with AI stuff in general, as everything is using Nvidia’s CUDA. The situation is however improving. On the positive side, AMD cards have more VRAM than equally priced Nvidia cards, which is far more important than raw performance in AI workloads (not having VRAM means you just can’t do some things).

So not exactly smooth sailing, but AMD mostly works ok. For plain gaming via Proton I didn’t have any issues.

Not Nvidia, they do not play well with Linux. I’ve had all sorts of weird problems that I’ve traced back to driver errors caused by Nvidia, both proprietary and open source.

I have used an GTX 3070 with no issues for the past 3.5 years, before that I used an AMD Vega 64 with no issues. I think if I were buying a new card and could stomach the prices I’d lean towards a Radeon 7900 XTX.

“Better” is relative to your own use case. If you’re a casual user, who maybe play some games on Linux, and don’t really care about getting those games to work with Nvidia’s version of ray tracing upscaling stuff, getting an AMD card is no brainer because it’s cheaper and works out of the box too, and many games are starting to support ray tracing and upscaling on AMD card as well.

But, if you absolutely need to have access to CUDA, RTX and DLSS, then you’ll have to get an Nvidia card and deal with consequences of using their drivers (buggy on Wayland, etc).