Distro help for steam gaming

[dkvamme]

Here is what Im contemplating….
I really want to commit to linux. I’ve a little experience in using it, but am no way in any means proficient with it.
One of these 2 pc’s is gonna get a R9-290 upgrade to the graphics and a linux distro.
I currently have 2 pc’s that I use on a regular basis.

PC #1 is
Motherboard/cpu = Gigabyte Z77-dh3 with an Intel i5 3570k
Video = Nvidia Geforce GTX660ti
16 gb GSkill ram
120 GB Kingston Hyper X
750 GB Seagate
1TB Seagate
Windows 8.1

PC #2
Motherboard/cpu = Gigabyte 990fxa-ud3 with Amdfx8350
Video = 2ea XFX DD R9 270 in CrossFire
8 GB G-Skill Sniper ram
240 GB Kingston SSDNow
750 GB Seagate
Windows 7
Plus if I want I could put to use 3 or 4- 2 ½” 250GB drives I have laying around.

I know that the i5 machine should run circles around the AMD machine.. but actually I do not see any real life performance differences.
There is a slight ssd hard drive performance difference, but it is not a deal breaker.

I always seem to have difficulty with video drivers , no matter which distro I try.
I’m now leaning towards OpenSuse distro, and even tried it on pc#2 by throwing in a different hd to test it.
I got it running , installed the steam client but the amd catalyst drivers gave me trouble. Black screen , mouse pointer, nothing else. Ctrl-Alt-F1 to cmd line and tried to follow some instructions to remove and reinstall mdm?
Long story short… got frustrated gave up, plugged back in the ssd with win7.
Can anyone educate me?

 

[Jodell88]

If you want to game using Linux, Nvidia is the brand to have. AMD's performance when it comes to Linux is not in the same league as Nvidia.

Nvidia's 680GTX still outperforms AMD's 290.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-maxwell-18&num=1

 

[Elixer]

It is way too early to use linux as a pure gaming machine.
There are still lots of issues that need to be worked out, and the biggest problem is, there still isn't much support from game devs, so, you should stick with windows for gaming...for now.