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Replaced nVidia with AMD, now what...
stretch611 Aug 4, 2018
Hey all, my gaming laptop just died (damn, only after 18 months...) So, I replaced it with this... http://www.microcenter.com/product/481879/rog-strix-gl702zc-wb74-173-gaming-laptop-computer---black

I was tired of all the Bumblebee/Prime crap on linux that basically meant you left the high performing GPU on all the time and ignored the Intel graphics chips. Plus there have been many recent comments about how AMD is acting much nicer to the linux community in driver support, so I switched to a Ryzen 7 CPU w/ Radeon RX580 (4GB GDDR5)

I installed Linux Mint 19 (based on Ubuntu 18.04) on the new laptop. Oddly, when I click on the Driver Manager in the control center, it does not give me any option to install proprietary drivers. (not even amd-microcode) Also, lshw only identifies the hardware as a RX 480 series instead of the RX 580.

  *-display
                description: VGA compatible controller
                product: Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480]
                vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
                version: c1
                width: 64 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
                configuration: driver=amdgpu latency=0
                resources: irq:65 memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f0000000-f01fffff ioport:f000(size=256) memory:fe900000-fe93ffff memory:fe940000-fe95ffff

The question I have is, is it best to go and download the latest proprietary drivers from AMD's website? (I am assuming yes, and quite strongly.) However, I have heard that open source drivers for AMD GPUs is pretty good so I am not positive I should mess around.
hodasemi Aug 4, 2018
I would recommend to stick with open source drivers for AMD. I'm using a RX 470 myself and tell you that I'm quite happy about them. Projects like DXVK don't even support proprietary AMD drivers. If you look at phoronix benchmarks you can see that the opensource driver outperforms the proprietary one.
tuubi Aug 4, 2018
You might want to look into pulling updated drivers from a PPA. Padoka Stable seems like a safe and popular option, but for more bleeding edge versions of mesa, llvm and the drivers you might want to try Padoka Unstable or Oibaf.
Samsai Aug 4, 2018
An RX580 is practically just an RX480 with boosted clocks, that's why it's showing up as a RX480. So don't worry, you didn't get ripped off. As for drivers, for basically any kind of gaming you do not want to install the proprietary drivers since they are more likely to give you worse performance and potentially even crashes. If you need the proprietary OpenCL for workstation use you can install it as a separate component without switching completely to the proprietary driver stack.

Tuubi's recommendations for PPAs are a good idea though, since you will want the latest stable version of Mesa (the open source OpenGL and Vulkan implementation) for games to run with the least amount of glitches and the most amount of performance. You might also want to look into updating your kernel, but for an RX580 that is not that necessary.
stretch611 Aug 4, 2018
Thank you all.

I will avoid the proprietary drivers completely and add the stable PPA as suggested by tuubi and confirmed by Samsai. (I knew there was a reason to wait and ask here first :D )
Julius Aug 4, 2018
Ukuu makes it easy to update the kernel on Ubuntu/Mint.

See: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/ukuu-easy-way-to-install-mainline-kernel-ubuntu

Not scrictly needed and might mess up your system ;)
mt7479 Aug 5, 2018
I'm always thinking about getting something like this myself. What battery life do you get normal use / gaming ?
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