My last few GPU's were as follows:
390X
RX480
Vega64
Radeon VII
I've had driver issues with all of these cards, off and on. The drivers got noticeably worse with the Radeon VII - which is surprising as it's still a Vega architecture. Twice, driver updates have broken the drivers, and caused black screen crashing issues. Of course it's easy to roll back to the previous stable drivers, but you then lose out on the game ready driver improvements. This has caught me out twice now, and I'm fed up with it.
I'll be getting a 3090 on release (pre-ordering, assuming the Nvidia UK store has no stock) and being done with it. My Asus 6700HQ laptop, with 980M, hasn't crashed a single time in all the years I've had it.
I have no confidence that big Navi will have stable drivers. It could be faster than the 3000 series for all I care, GLHF with the crashes.
I had great experiences with Pitcairn, Antigua, Ellesmere, and Polaris. And I am still having a great experience with a Red Devil Vega56 in one of my systems. But reference Navi/5700XT on launch is the worst experience I have had with any card since the old days. Forget that it was hot and loud, so many things were broken, I sent it back within 48hrs of install. A clean windows install did not resolve the problems. Most of the popular tech tubers install what they need to run a bunch of benchmarks, run them, and that's it. Try using it like it is your daily driver when testing, and get back to me. Most types of video playback and acceleration were nerfed on mine. Some older games were nerfed; Fallout 4 had this weird hitching that all of the fixes I tried, failed to resolve. Then it locked itself to 800MHz and neither Afterburner nor Wattman settings worked on it. Nuked the drivers with DDU, then tried manually doing it, no joy. I was going to do another fresh win install, but decided to cut my losses. No way it was going to sit in a box, waiting for the drivers to get worked out, while my return period expired.
This leads up to the part where it is relevant to the topic: Which is that I agree with you completely. It does not matter how great Big Navi benchmarks on all the sites, if the drivers are nerfed again. That they get the drivers solid for the games everyone tests is great. But what about all those things I mentioned? Video playback in Chrome and VLC. Performance in older titles none of the reviewers any longer use in their test suites. And hopefully the reference 5700XT is something we never see again. As I could not tell you if it could perform properly undervolted because it was so nerfed it would not take the settings, as mentioned. Which until it locked itself to 800MHz, was a very loud one. Reminded me of my old FX 5800 Ultra, and that ain't good! And I hope no one comes at me with the never buy reference, wait for AIBs. Because I was willing to live with the inferior design, since undervolting always made for a great experience with every other AMD blower model I have owned.
I ended up buying a 2060 Super and 2070 Super for both our main gamers, and the difference in user experience has been hugely contrasting. If you stop looking at reviewers benchmark results, and conclusions about bang for buck, and whatever else, and use the cards? Well, let's just say I would buy an Nvidia card on launch right now (If you could buy one ), but not AMD. Heck, one of the tech tubers I watch, is still reporting broken drivers keep coming and going on his Navi cards. I think freesync is the one that keeps giving him the most trouble.
As to AMD and Linux: I have had a surprisingly good experience with the Vega and Manjaro for gaming.
@Hitman928 is dead on for my experience, it was easy to get setup and running, and start playing some of my steam library.
Conclusion: Big Navi better deliver not only in benchmarks, but user experience. Who cares if the bang for buck is better, if a significant portion of us, get the big Oof instead of the big FPS? Frustration over supply and pricing of a card is bad. Nerfed drivers, and a bad reference design are worse.
Sorry for the bit of a diatribe. I just think it is important that readers/buyers know about things reviews either- never mention, experience, downplay/try the PINIC card on.