Are AMD Drivers Required?

Question

I just bought a graphics card, specifically this one. It's AMD-made.
I've never done much on the hardware side of my PC. I would like to know: Do I really need AMD Catalyst (or whatever) drivers?

Will it work without drivers?
What difference does it make if I do or don't install them?

Thanks,
ItsBobberson

Answer 1

Using the proprietary graphics driver makes a big difference in performance in Linux compared to using the built-in open source graphics driver. In one of your questions you mentioned that you are running Ubuntu. In Ubuntu run the following command from the terminal to identify the recommended proprietary graphics driver to install:

ubuntu-drivers devices  

Then you can install it with the usual sudo apt-get install command. You can also install the recommend proprietary graphics driver automatically with the following command:

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall  

The autoinstall command of ubuntu-drivers installs drivers that are appropriate for automatic installation including their dependencies.