Need advice on driver compatibility for new build, Nvidia vs AMD
 

The most recent post I found re Nvidia vs AMD support was from 2012, so hopefully this sparks some decent discussion as to the state of the thing at this time.

I'm building a new rig for myself, which will be for gaming and other general powerusering (editing/rendering/number crunching). I've so far "settled" on the parts here: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/mspeleoto/saved/3HST

I've chosen the motherboard as I know it works well with Debian Wheezy, as it's what I have on my server (source: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Wake_On_LAN/en - the EX40) but that leaves me in a weird position that it only supports Crossfire and not SLI. I've read that Nvidia drivers are much better for linux than the AMD equivalents at the moment, but Nvidia lock out all the GPGPU functionality in their consumer cards.

So - does anybody have experience or references to how well/badly/not at all the following two GFX cards drivers work under linux at the moment?

Nvidia GTX760
AMD r9 280x / Radeon HD 7970

Thanks in advance

I wouldnt use a MSI Z87-G43 GAMING for 2 x high end video cards (typical MSI!)

http://www.msi.com/product/mb/Z87-G4...#specification

The 2nd (physical) PCIe x16 slot is only PCIe 2.0 x4.

PCIe 2.0 = 500MB/sec per lane.
PCIe 3.0 = 1GB/sec per lane.

PCIe 2.0 x4 = 2GB/sec bandwidth.
PCIe 3.0 x16 = 16GB/sec bandwidth.

PCIe 2.0 x4 is going to cripple any fast video card.

AFAIK cuda and other GPGPU methods work with the nVidia ' consumer' cards.

Crossfire and SLI both work with linux, but arent worth the trouble IMO.

Excellent catch there, I might have to reconsider the motherboard then. Thanks, you might have just saved my blood pressure when it comes to buying another card down the road.

Still hoping for some insight into the current linux drivers for these two cards, as I can't find anything that recent in my searches.