Linux

Everyone's gonna suggest AMD here because of your requirement of no-proprietary drivers; but unless you're some sort of high-value target to a foreign government, I honestly choose the more pragmatic route of just using the proprietary NVidia driver and going NVidia. Especially if I'm not budget constrained on card.

The fact of the matter is, AMD has just simply fallen behind. NVidia cards are (and have been for like 3 generations now) more performant. There is good reason why they dominate the market right now; they're just simply better.

It really depends on how far you want to take your zealotry on open source; there are parts of the CPU microcode that can see everything you do. Those are proprietary. Your bios is proprietary. You're probably running 100 different proprietary blobs even IF you choose not to use the drivers that NVidia supplies; so why hobble yourself with a slower card that doesn't have CUDA instructions? (often also very good for AI work if you are interested in that at all)

I certainly understand wanting to push that direction for the sake of pushing that direction but - is performance and stability less important than using a proprietary driver?

Both work, just in different ways. I think AMD's value proposition is better on Linux but if you were choosing between a 6700XT and a 4080 (for sake of example) of course the latter is still gonna be faster despite the drivers being a bit weirder to manage

Could be game specific, but there is no ground rendering in final fantasy. https://youtu.be/DxE-4ZxYxDA?si=ziYDWr5VAj7LV7hz

If you're on Linux AMD is clearly superior because NVidia has Linux performance issue compared to Windows so you're ending up paying more for less. However NVidia has the monopole for a reason their product are superior but at what price ? Also if you want to avoid proprietary drivers AMD gets the win too.

I do think AMD is the better option for anyone that spend less than 800-1'000$ on a GPU even for Windows gamers. Personnaly I have made the switch from NVidia to AMD 2 years after ditching Windows for Linux, Never looked back even though Cyberpunk2077 looks amazing on NVidia RTX and some other things.

I have upgraded last year to a RX 7800 XT and have no regrets on spending that money.

if( you need CUDA ){ Use Nvidia (note that OSs officially supported by CUDA often use "old" versions of linux, like Debian 12 (6.1) or Fedora 39 (6.8), I personally use Arch); } else { Use AMD, you will have less problems and it'll probably be easier to setup; }

AMD. Unless you need blender.