Ouch.
For the record, I’ve been running darktable on Windows and AMD graphics cards for the last 4 years. I first used a Radeon 580 and now a 6700XT. I’d be lying if I said I’d had no driver issues, but for the most part, it’s been fine. When I have had issues, it’s never been completely clear whether the problem is with the AMD driver, darktable or an issue with Windows. At various times, a Windows update has solved things, other times an AMD driver update has solved things, and sometimes a new release of darktable.
There’s been nothing that has ruined my experience and made me want to switch graphics cards.
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This is sweet music to my ears. No pressure, but if you ever do get vkdt working on Windows, I’ll be first in line to try it out and do any testing you might want.
I have played with Linux in the past, but I need Windows for my job and I don’t have enough time or money to set up a separate Linux workstation in the near future. So I’m Windows for the foreseeable…
Good luck with your efforts!
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I just thought I should give a quick update in return for all the help I got here.
I ended up getting the discounted Corsair machine I mentioned near the top of this thread and am (mostly) very happy with it.
Physical build is excellent, all aluminium. I’m running the stock Win11 for the time being, and darktable and openCL work perfectly - and speedily.
Only real issue was a weird wifi thing where it intermittently wouldn’t recognize my home network. I tried a bunch of stuff with no consistent result, before getting in touch with Corsair support, who seemed pretty good. They asked (among other things) if I could try disabling IPv6 in Windows - which I did - and so far, so good.
I’m no networking whiz…
This laptop seems to have a slightly shaky reputation online, as to things like driver issues, but apart from the thing above, so far so good.
Screen is decent - 99% sRGB which is good enough for me. Profiled it with a Spyder and DisplayCal, which revealed that it was already close out of the box.
Thanks for the reassurance as to the AMD hardware. 
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Hi, thanks for pointing me here, what model from Corsair did you get?
I’m familiar with Corsair power supplies and memory but not laptops…
It’s the a1600, which comes in a few flavours. I think mine is the most basic model. Specs are… 16" WQXGA 240Hz IPS Laptop, Ryzen 7 6800HS, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Radeon RX 6800M, Windows 11 Home
It would have been well and truly out of my budget but it was on something like a 40% discount at the Black Friday sales at a local (sort of) retailer.
Only thing I might add to my brief report above is that is only has 1 USB3 port, the rest are USB-C, and no HDMI port.
I’ve solved both in one go with a USB-C hub, but it does add a tiny bit more clutter - YMMV.
Soon I wanna build a new rig, all AMD, both cpu (Ryzen 5 7600) as well the gpu (RX 7800xt - 16gb) and… without Windows or Mac OS installed. As distro, I would like to install Fedora or Nobara. My questions are:
- is Fedora / Nobara suitable for Darktable ?
- how well performs Darktable on Fedora ?
- is Fedora able to use modern AMD hardware at its fullest ?
- if Linux/Fedora has compatibility issues with newer hardware ?
- if Linux/Fedora has issues with AMD chipsets ?
I am not sure if hardware compatibility is better on older or newer machines running Linux. From my experience, Linux is not that hardware dependant or resource hungry compared to commercial products.
As a Mac user, dealing with hardware and suitable Linux OS’s is basically new land for me. Although I got a good picture what pc to build, I do appreciate any good advice to get a nice linux system up and able to use my new hardware.
I run fedora KDE on ryzen 5600g. I have Nvidia 12gb 3060 and use the rpm fusion drivers. Dt runs fast and without a problem on fedora. I think Hanno uses fedora too.
I don’t know about the AMD GPU card. IGPU doesn’t work for me. You don’t need a 16gb GPU card. 6 gb is more than enough.
Sounds good!
You got a nice cpu and gpu, so I think Fedora will be a nice choice for me too
Previously I’ve been using a bunch of distros, before settling with Zorin. Linux was a great experience for me but only temporary
yes, 16gb are indeed a lot for a gpu, but I mentioned Nobara as well because I like to play modern games, when there is time.
A RX 6600 XT gpu would be a bargain right now but I thought hey, let’s spend a little bit more on a good gpu, to avoid gpu upgrades in future.
My current machine is from 2008 and latest versions of Darktable put my cpu under 100% load during raw development in darkroom mode. Also I have to wait around 10-15 seconds for photos to display with a long history stack. Of course, older machines are slower but all those seconds waiting stacks and consumes a lot of time.