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>AMD has better open source drivers than Nvidia. Yes, but Nvidia has working proprietary drivers that put anything AMD to shame on Linux. The difference is so

by rockdoe 11y ago

>AMD has better open source drivers than Nvidia. Yes, but Nvidia has working proprietary drivers that put anything AMD to shame on Linux. The difference is so big its outright ludicrous, and it gets worse the higher end the card. I have no idea where the "ridiculously unstable" comes from, must be Ubuntu bugs. Or were you talking about AMD's proprietary driver, fglrx? I agree that's garbage. >At the top The top is the GTX980 Ti, for which AMD has no answer. Also if you say "competitive at price point" this means totally disregarding power consumption, of course, where again AMD is so far behind its ludicrous.

onli 11y ago
If one let it count there still is the R9 295X2, which beats the GTX 980 Ti. Edit: Source http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1437?vs=1496 http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1437?vs=1496, because this got downvoted (??)
- dogma1138 11y ago
  295x2 is a dual GPU card that requires a nuclear reactor to power. It will beat the 980ti in games that will gain 50% when using 2-way crossfire. Considering the usually disadvantages of using crossfire/SLI it's really not worth it.
  - onli 11y ago
    Yeah I know, the card uses a lot of energy, and the potential crossfire issues are not nice. Still, it is an answer to the 980 Ti (or rather, the 980 Ti was an answer to the 295X2).
    - dogma1138 11y ago
      980ti wasn't an answer to 295x2, more like the nail in the coffin, it came out couple of weeks before the Fury at a lower price and at about 1000 times more availability and just pulled the rug under AMD's feet. NVIDIA was smart enough not to get into the fight with dual GPU cards it's a loose loose situation.
      - girvo 11y ago
        > NVIDIA was smart enough not to get into the fight with dual GPU cards it's a loose loose situation Uhhh... well, look, I don't know much about video cards these days, but that's not quite true: http://www.t3.com/news/nvidia-is-about-to-launch-a-new-monster-dual-gpu-graphics-card http://www.t3.com/news/nvidia-is-about-to-launch-a-new-monst...
        dogma1138 11y ago
        It is quite very true, that dual GPU card if it ever comes out will be a replacement for the TitanZ a niche card not a flag ship. NVIDIA leaned not to repeat that misstake from the 690 which was and be all accounts would be the last time they release a flagship consumer GTX line dual GPU card. When you have a flagship card that can lose in benchmarks to cards 1/4th it's price because SLI/Xfire fails, and when you can't enable all the bells and whistles like Adaptive VSync (GSync/ASync), Temporal AA, DSR, and any other new "tech" that you boast about for 6 months before release because of SLI/Xfire you are going to fail and fail badly. AMD had to release the X2 cards because they could not compete against the GTX780/780ti and the 980 was around the corner, by the time the 295x2 actually was available in the market at any decent amounts the 980 was already out, and while the 295x2 beat it in certain cases it was too little too late, especially considering that the 295x2 couldn't fit in many cases (same issue that the 690 had) needed a 350$ power supply to run which most people don't have (same as the 690), and produced enough hit to start fusion (not that far from the 690). So no NVIDIA isn't fighting in the dual GPU arena anymore, they aren't releasing flagships, and they are smart enough to wait for the very end of their refresh cycle to release a "look how much money I got to spend on the latest Titan" card that will never be produced in any large amounts, will not be needed to beat the competition as far as single card performance goes.
        girvo 11y ago
        Everywhere I can find is calling the new dual-GPU card Nvidia's "flagship", though. Call it a "niche card" as much as you like, but you're moving the goalposts here.
vliedel 11y ago
On several laptops already, I got a blank screen at boot, after some updates. Looking for fixes usually gave me "purge nvidia-*". The way i see it these days is that you just have to be lucky.
- lqdc13 11y ago
  Solution that works for me is to add the ppa from this page: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa Everything else requires having to turn off lightdm service or having to ssh to the machine to reinstall the drivers when something goes wrong.
fulafel 11y ago
NVidia proprietary drivers are slightly less terrible than AMD's but basically unusable on laptops. Desktop is a far smaller niche. There is nobody that is getting these bugs fixed in distros in a timely fashion, because NVidia doesn't care about laptops and distros don't care about proprietary drivers. See eg this 2+ year old unfixed bug in Ubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/xorg-server/+bug/1220426 https://bugs.launchpad.net/xorg-server/+bug/1220426 (hundreds of comments and subscriptions) AMD open source drivers are on the other hand are pretty stable and work quite well for things like WebGL, light gaming etc.
- rockdoe 11y ago
  Good point about laptops, I didn't consider the Optimus mess. That said, when we're talking about gaming cards I'm not sure that desktop is a niche compared to laptops.
- tyfon 11y ago
  I have a laptop with optimus and it works like a charm even in steam using primusrun. For non gaming stuff it is using the intel gpu. All I had to do was install 2-3 packages in arch linux and that was that. I haven't had any crashes in linux due to nvidia in many years either so I'd say that the proprietary drivers they have are stellar. I'm a big open source advocator, however I will use what works and for me nvidia is light years ahead of amd when it comes to linux, sad as it is.
- Scramblejams 11y ago
  Funny, Nvidia's binary drivers have given me the only consistently good experience I've had on Linux laptops. AMD's binary drivers have been absolutely atrocious and the open source drivers (until recent years?) didn't have enough features and enough power savings to sway me.
  - creshal 11y ago
    Compared to AMD's drivers, Nvidia's are good. Compared to Intel's, both are so horrible it doesn't really matter.
Zagitta 11y ago
Can't say I expected to see Nvidia fanboys on HN but the R9 Fury X exists and beats 980ti at >1080p resolutions in games not gimped by Nvidia Gameworks: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-review http://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-... At the same price point using only slightly more power and having nice and quite closed loop water cooling.
- taspeotis 11y ago
  > the R9 Fury X exists and beats 980ti at >1080p resolutions in games not gimped by Nvidia Gameworks I skim-read for comments regarding the R9 Fury X vs. 980 Ti and in particular comments about >1080p and had to go through seven benchmarks before arriving at an admittedly mixed ray of sunshine for AMD. Quotes from the article: > (Battlefield 4) The R9 Fury X does not take the lead at any resolution, and in fact this is one of the worse games for the card. At 4K AMD trails by 8-10%, and at 1440p that’s 16% > (Crysis 3) Once again the card trails the GTX 980 Ti, but not by quite as much as we saw in Battlefield 4. In this case the gap is 6-7% at 4K, and 12% at 1440p > (Shadow of Mordor) These framerates aren’t bad – the R9 Fury X is always over 30fps – but even accounting for the higher variability of minimum framerates, they’re trailing the GTX 980 Ti by 13-15% with Ultra quality settings > (Civilization: Beyond Earth) ...can’t keep this advantage at 1440p, where they go back to trailing the GTX 980 Ti in minimum framerates by 7%. > (Dragon Age: Inquisition) The card trails the GTX 980 Ti at all times, by anywhere between 13% and 18%. At this point AMD is straddling the line between the GTX 980 and GTX 980 Ti, and at 1440p they fall closer to the GTX 980. > (The Talos Principle) ...AMD’s performance once again regresses at 1440p. It’s enough to retain the lead, if just barely, and tie the GTX Titan X > (Far Cry 4) Overall what we find is that the R9 Fury X has a 9% lead at 4K Ultra, and a 4% lead at 1440p Ultra, making this one of the only games where AMD takes the lead at 1440p. However something interesting happens if we run at 4K with lower quality settings, and that lead evaporates very quickly, shifting to an NVIDIA lead by roughly the same amount. The article concludes: > At 2560x1440 the card loses its status as a viable alternative. AMD’s performance deficit is over 10% at this point... I didn't look up whether those games use Gameworks or not but if six-point-five out of seven games play better on NVIDIA than AMD well ... who is going to look at AMD cards for gaming?

by rockdoe 11y ago

onli 11y ago

If one let it count there still is the R9 295X2, which beats the GTX 980 Ti. Edit: Source http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1437?vs=1496 http://anandtech.com/bench/product/1437?vs=1496, because this got downvoted (??)

dogma1138 11y ago
295x2 is a dual GPU card that requires a nuclear reactor to power. It will beat the 980ti in games that will gain 50% when using 2-way crossfire. Considering the usually disadvantages of using crossfire/SLI it's really not worth it.
- onli 11y ago
  Yeah I know, the card uses a lot of energy, and the potential crossfire issues are not nice. Still, it is an answer to the 980 Ti (or rather, the 980 Ti was an answer to the 295X2).
  - dogma1138 11y ago
    980ti wasn't an answer to 295x2, more like the nail in the coffin, it came out couple of weeks before the Fury at a lower price and at about 1000 times more availability and just pulled the rug under AMD's feet. NVIDIA was smart enough not to get into the fight with dual GPU cards it's a loose loose situation.
    - girvo 11y ago
      > NVIDIA was smart enough not to get into the fight with dual GPU cards it's a loose loose situation Uhhh... well, look, I don't know much about video cards these days, but that's not quite true: http://www.t3.com/news/nvidia-is-about-to-launch-a-new-monster-dual-gpu-graphics-card http://www.t3.com/news/nvidia-is-about-to-launch-a-new-monst...
      - dogma1138 11y ago
        It is quite very true, that dual GPU card if it ever comes out will be a replacement for the TitanZ a niche card not a flag ship. NVIDIA leaned not to repeat that misstake from the 690 which was and be all accounts would be the last time they release a flagship consumer GTX line dual GPU card. When you have a flagship card that can lose in benchmarks to cards 1/4th it's price because SLI/Xfire fails, and when you can't enable all the bells and whistles like Adaptive VSync (GSync/ASync), Temporal AA, DSR, and any other new "tech" that you boast about for 6 months before release because of SLI/Xfire you are going to fail and fail badly. AMD had to release the X2 cards because they could not compete against the GTX780/780ti and the 980 was around the corner, by the time the 295x2 actually was available in the market at any decent amounts the 980 was already out, and while the 295x2 beat it in certain cases it was too little too late, especially considering that the 295x2 couldn't fit in many cases (same issue that the 690 had) needed a 350$ power supply to run which most people don't have (same as the 690), and produced enough hit to start fusion (not that far from the 690). So no NVIDIA isn't fighting in the dual GPU arena anymore, they aren't releasing flagships, and they are smart enough to wait for the very end of their refresh cycle to release a "look how much money I got to spend on the latest Titan" card that will never be produced in any large amounts, will not be needed to beat the competition as far as single card performance goes.
        girvo 11y ago
        Everywhere I can find is calling the new dual-GPU card Nvidia's "flagship", though. Call it a "niche card" as much as you like, but you're moving the goalposts here.

vliedel 11y ago

On several laptops already, I got a blank screen at boot, after some updates. Looking for fixes usually gave me "purge nvidia-*". The way i see it these days is that you just have to be lucky.

lqdc13 11y ago
Solution that works for me is to add the ppa from this page: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa Everything else requires having to turn off lightdm service or having to ssh to the machine to reinstall the drivers when something goes wrong.

fulafel 11y ago

NVidia proprietary drivers are slightly less terrible than AMD's but basically unusable on laptops. Desktop is a far smaller niche. There is nobody that is getting these bugs fixed in distros in a timely fashion, because NVidia doesn't care about laptops and distros don't care about proprietary drivers. See eg this 2+ year old unfixed bug in Ubuntu: https://bugs.launchpad.net/xorg-server/+bug/1220426 https://bugs.launchpad.net/xorg-server/+bug/1220426 (hundreds of comments and subscriptions) AMD open source drivers are on the other hand are pretty stable and work quite well for things like WebGL, light gaming etc.

rockdoe 11y ago
Good point about laptops, I didn't consider the Optimus mess. That said, when we're talking about gaming cards I'm not sure that desktop is a niche compared to laptops.
tyfon 11y ago
I have a laptop with optimus and it works like a charm even in steam using primusrun. For non gaming stuff it is using the intel gpu. All I had to do was install 2-3 packages in arch linux and that was that. I haven't had any crashes in linux due to nvidia in many years either so I'd say that the proprietary drivers they have are stellar. I'm a big open source advocator, however I will use what works and for me nvidia is light years ahead of amd when it comes to linux, sad as it is.
Scramblejams 11y ago
Funny, Nvidia's binary drivers have given me the only consistently good experience I've had on Linux laptops. AMD's binary drivers have been absolutely atrocious and the open source drivers (until recent years?) didn't have enough features and enough power savings to sway me.
- creshal 11y ago
  Compared to AMD's drivers, Nvidia's are good. Compared to Intel's, both are so horrible it doesn't really matter.

Zagitta 11y ago

Can't say I expected to see Nvidia fanboys on HN but the R9 Fury X exists and beats 980ti at >1080p resolutions in games not gimped by Nvidia Gameworks: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-review http://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-... At the same price point using only slightly more power and having nice and quite closed loop water cooling.

taspeotis 11y ago
> the R9 Fury X exists and beats 980ti at >1080p resolutions in games not gimped by Nvidia Gameworks I skim-read for comments regarding the R9 Fury X vs. 980 Ti and in particular comments about >1080p and had to go through seven benchmarks before arriving at an admittedly mixed ray of sunshine for AMD. Quotes from the article: > (Battlefield 4) The R9 Fury X does not take the lead at any resolution, and in fact this is one of the worse games for the card. At 4K AMD trails by 8-10%, and at 1440p that’s 16% > (Crysis 3) Once again the card trails the GTX 980 Ti, but not by quite as much as we saw in Battlefield 4. In this case the gap is 6-7% at 4K, and 12% at 1440p > (Shadow of Mordor) These framerates aren’t bad – the R9 Fury X is always over 30fps – but even accounting for the higher variability of minimum framerates, they’re trailing the GTX 980 Ti by 13-15% with Ultra quality settings > (Civilization: Beyond Earth) ...can’t keep this advantage at 1440p, where they go back to trailing the GTX 980 Ti in minimum framerates by 7%. > (Dragon Age: Inquisition) The card trails the GTX 980 Ti at all times, by anywhere between 13% and 18%. At this point AMD is straddling the line between the GTX 980 and GTX 980 Ti, and at 1440p they fall closer to the GTX 980. > (The Talos Principle) ...AMD’s performance once again regresses at 1440p. It’s enough to retain the lead, if just barely, and tie the GTX Titan X > (Far Cry 4) Overall what we find is that the R9 Fury X has a 9% lead at 4K Ultra, and a 4% lead at 1440p Ultra, making this one of the only games where AMD takes the lead at 1440p. However something interesting happens if we run at 4K with lower quality settings, and that lead evaporates very quickly, shifting to an NVIDIA lead by roughly the same amount. The article concludes: > At 2560x1440 the card loses its status as a viable alternative. AMD’s performance deficit is over 10% at this point... I didn't look up whether those games use Gameworks or not but if six-point-five out of seven games play better on NVIDIA than AMD well ... who is going to look at AMD cards for gaming?