I’m running CachyOS, and having an Nvidia card, I’m using their Nvidia-specific kernel. I know this 3060 won’t last forever, and I’m planning to upgrade to an AMD card for a better overall experience.
Is there anything I should be aware of regarding the kernel or other compatibility when switching brands? Can I simply plug in the new one and run pacman -Syu?
Sidenote: I will plan around my PSU’s output, so no need to advise regarding physical compatibility.
This. As far as general 3D work, nope, just install the card and the drivers and off you go.
But if you want to do any compute stuff on the gpu you’re in for a rough time. Like 95% of that software is targeted to Nvidia. There is a bit of work going on to adapt cuda stuff to AMD (rocm and hip like you mentioned), but most developers don’t support it. Last time I tried (about a year ago), I was able to get about a quarter of the software I tried half working.