Steam Link prefers an Nvidia card over an AMD card when both are discrete GPUs in the same PC. Valve confirmed that selection order after a Linux user found Steam Link starting on an RTX 3070 Ti instead of the Radeon RX 7800 XT driving the display. Valve says there is no setting to choose a GPU and has added the request for a picker to its list of tasks to investigate, according to MIXED.
The user kept the Nvidia card in the PC for NVENC video encoding. In their report, the desktop and Steam window appeared black in the headset. No Man's Sky reached the SteamVR environment but did not render in the headset, while Half-Life: Alyx ran. Those results describe this user's Fedora 44 setup. Valve confirmed the GPU selection rule, not the cause of each game or desktop failure.
The user put a DRI_PRIME device selection in SteamVR's launch options to point it at the Radeon. MIXED describes that as the user's workaround on Linux. Valve has not offered it as a supported Steam Link GPU setting.
