Installing the Nvidia driver on AMD "image" without rebasing for gaming purposes only
I wanted to buy an AMD GPU in early 2025 (RX 8000 series), but there is a problem while waiting. I need to use my RX 500 GPU, which is good enough for daily drives, but when it comes to gaming & some heavy loaded tasks, it's showing its age. I need to use my RTX 3000 GPU for gaming, but I don't want to rebasing it because 2025 is close and I will lose access to Waydroid (which I use a lot) if I use Nvidia "image.".
So the question is:
Am I able to use my RX 500 series for anything except gaming while using the Nvidia GPU (with proprietary driver) for gaming purposes only without rebasing?
context:
- I'm new to Linux, and the concept of "rebasing" is still too wild for me.
- (picture) It says "primary GPU," so I thought about this question.
Thank you so much before hand for reading it or helping me on this matter. I hope you are always well, and GOD bless you.
Solution:Jump to solution
Nvidia is the odd man out, if you want to use Nvidia cards you must use an Nvidia image with the drivers installed
28 Replies
All images contain the AMD drivers, they are built into the Linux kernel
Solution
Nvidia is the odd man out, if you want to use Nvidia cards you must use an Nvidia image with the drivers installed
You cannot install them yourself, you can rebase between images to remove or add the Nvidia drivers
it says primary gpu and often refers to the gpu used for gaming since we are a gaming centric image.
there is sadly no way to run the gamemode ui and still have the nvidia drivers installed, the 2 are mutually incompatible (thanks nvidia)
The way i use my nvidia gpu is that i run bazzite on my RX6600XT and then i have configured my nvidia GPU for use with my VMs only (this prevents linux from using the card)
and i have a windows VM i send the card to.
* NOTE: this requires a motherboard that supports this and has good IOMMU groups and has enough bandwidth for both gpus to function well. as in you can set both x16 slots to run in x8 x8 pci-e lane config and this feature is locked behind pretty expensive boards, lastly the board might still have bad IOMMU groups where the gpu and its hardware is not in its own groups, if the gpu and its hardware is not isolated by itself you cannot passthrough the gpu to a VM. As you can see this is a complex topic and only recommended if you have at least some technical knowledge in the field. and also this will not really be what youre asking for.
Thanks for the enlightenment 🫡 . I will try to learn rebasing and hoping it's not going to be too hard or break something. 🤞
Oh, it's Ok, I already gaming without gamemode; somehow it's refusing to run, but that problem for another day.
Wow, that's sound quite complicated. I'm quite sure my motherboard is capable of doing that, but I don't think I need Windows VM for now. Also, thanks for the help. I can't imagine both of you @Kyle Gospo @HikariKnight as maintainers answering my question. In the near future, I will make a small channel for people who are very beginners to Linux, especially Windows 10, which is going to be the last Windows for some people. I hope Bazzite has a bright future for all of us.
@HikariKnight Sorry for asking you this, but I do think this is still related to the post, so I am already learning about rebasing, and as far as I know, it's not going to be dangerous to the system or application (like to flatpaks or app like Pinokio that I am installing manually (image 1). especially Bazite already giving the command on the website (image 2) (also why this "Image" called "nvidia-open", is it not using the proprietary driver?)
the question is:
Am I just need to pasting this command ( "rpm-ostree rebase ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-nvidia-open:stable"), reboot & everything supposed to be OK, right? This video makes it seem to be so easy
https://youtu.be/Vs4cneBW5ck
Mike's Tech Tips
YouTube
Rebasing to Bazzite From Fedora Kinoite (or Fedora Silverblue)
In this video we'll be learning how to pin images in Fedora Atomic desktops and we'll be looking at how to rebase to Bazzite from Fedora Kinoite (or Silverblue)
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:26 Fedora Kinoite
01:02 How to pin images in Atomic Desktops
01:47 Rebasing to Bazzite
03:10 Show option between booting Bazzite or Kinoite
03:55 Insta...
yes, that easy
nvidia-open is the open source kernel module, it's still nvidia's driver
and the vast majority of it is still proprietary
this is what nvidia recommends
ooooooh it's the "560 driver" on the news!!! Thanks, @Kyle Gospo. I'm glad that Bazzite makes it easy for people to operate the OS (including Waydroid that can be switched to an AMD GPU)
I successfully installed the "image," but now I can't use my RTX GPU like the way it's used to with NVK. Now even most games running on AMD (on Lutris) refused to run; only one game ran, but with some freezing. & the biggest question to me is that I can't plug my 2 monitors because it's ended up black screen AFTER inputing password, so it's forcing me to plug the monitor to RX 500.
I Can't using GreenWithEnvy, Optmus etc and the command "bazzite-rollback-helper current" giving output similar to the one before rebasing.
Greenwithenvy: x11 only
x11: is dead
optimus: use switcherooctl or use
in the desktop file (shortcut file) for the applications you want to run on the other gpu
my pc can't running 2 monitor the ways it used to. I don't know why sometime AMD one is black screen, sometime Nvidia one who make a problem. here the log
no idea about that since that is a monitor setup i know 0 people use
usually when you have 2 gpus you usually have 1 for your monitors and 1 gpu for processing (ai or VM work or similar) and the 2nd gpu will not be connected to a monitor, at most it will be connected to a dongle where you disable that "monitor"
also that rebase is complaining that there are no alternatives for openrazer yet (they need to make their packages available for fedora 41)
you need to remove everything openrazer before rebasing
rpm-ostree uninstall openrazer-meta razergenieok I will trying it now
@HikariKnight after rebasing finished & shutdown, should i pull out AMD card before booting?
if you are going to keep it out of the system yes
yeah I think I would be using it again when I need Waydroid in the future but not right now. Is it wrong if I just plugging the monitor to the Nvidia & keeping the AMD card on the PC?
we only have wayland
Thanks 🙏 , the openrazer thingy is the culprit; the driver is now successfully installed 🫡 , but my AMD GPU fans speed is 100% since reboot; did you know what the cause ?
LACT or its hot for the card
without LACT its the card firmware controlling the fan
oh ok I will check it now & or re-installing it
only Nvidia card that detected by LACT, maybe there is conflict with other GPU software?
we have exactly 0 other users with 1 amd and 1 nvidia dgpus who doesnt use 1 of the cards for gpu passthrough
lspci -nnk | grep -A3 -P "(VGA compatible|3D) controller"
only thing i can suggest to see if the card is properly detected and loaded by the driverhere the output
lspci -nnk | grep -A3 -P "(VGA compatible|3D) controller"
09:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GA102 [GeForce RTX 3080 12GB] [10de:220a] (rev a1)
Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device [1462:389b]
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia
amd gpu is not detected
so motherboard does not see it
so what should I do now? I just wanted to using it for Waydroid and that it
well if you removed the card you need to shut down your machine and put the card back in
we have nothing in the system to stop the 2nd card from working, thats hardware controlled (motherboard has to support 2 cards)
Oh, ok, I will try to figure it out and fix it. I will ask UBlue only when it looks like it related to you guys. By the way, thanks so much.
np im sorry i cant be of much more help. i would suggest looking in the motherboard manual if it supports 2 gpus (often signified by being able to put the 2 x16 pcie slots in x8 x8 mode