5 ms·

The problem is AMD (and Intel) require a lot of moving pieces to come together to make a fully stable system, while nVidia is more of a complete packaged soluti

by Asooka 9y ago

The problem is AMD (and Intel) require a lot of moving pieces to come together to make a fully stable system, while nVidia is more of a complete packaged solution. For me, I tried AMD (neé ATI) once in 2003 and the experience was so bad, I just completely swore them off. I have literally never had nVidia's drivers crash and kill my X session, or hard-lock the kernel, which were frequent problems with both ATI's closed-source drivers and Intel's open-source drivers. I don't see myself ever buying anything other than nVidia ever again.

sammoth 9y ago
Why would you base that decision solely on your experience 14 years ago? The driver is completely different now.
jhasse 9y ago
> 2003 You had a problem with ATI's closed-source driver 14 years ago. AMD's open-source driver now is a COMPLETELY different story.
- distances 9y ago
  > You had a problem with ATI's closed-source driver 14 years ago. AMD's open-source driver now is a COMPLETELY different story. Indeed. In 2003 no-one would have based their expectations on what happened in 1989. 14 years is an eternity in this field.
- Asooka 9y ago
  Yes, and it was bad enough that I decided to never ever buy from that company again. For the record, I did have the displeasure of using an AMD GPU in 2010, because that's what my employer at the time purchased, and it was only slightly more stable. I am absolutely convinced that nobody except nVidia can produce stable, working video drivers. The last 14 years haven't produced a counter-example.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    You're personifying companies way too much.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    Also do you also refuse to use RPM based distros due to dependency hell? Also GOOD NEWS ATI is dead, it wasn't AMD that manufactured the Card or the Drivers! It was a company called ATI based in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies AMD bought them 2006 and killed ATI brand 3 years later. Also I bet you only a handful of people actually still work on the technology.
  - Zardoz84 9y ago
    I had a bad experience with an ATI card many years ago with a Ubuntu box. And line you, I said that I would never buy an ATI GPU. Actually my computer have a RX580 and work like a dream (On windows and Linux)
bryanlarsen 9y ago
My experience in 2017 is the complete opposite. The nVidia binary driver is the only thing I experience that causes me significant pain, including system lockups. Unfortunately we use CUDA, but as soon as ROCm matures, I'm going to be strongly advocating a switch away from nVidia. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15877262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15877262
StudentStuff 9y ago
Huh? Intel drivers have been fine for at least the past decade, when I was much younger I remember toting around a laptop with an A4 APU running the libre drivers just fine too.
baldfat 9y ago
> 2003 Read the offical documentation on Linux with SUSE and NVIDIA. http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-4363.html http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-4363.htm... Linux in 2003 is a totally different beast today. Tell me you got your wifi working or NVIDIA with a working desktop out of the box. I would sit in the terminal and have to install proprietary drivers just to see Gnome or KDE. I would have to sit by the Ethernet port for a while till I got wifi working. Read this forum post I can post hundreds of these because I read them all trying to get my card to work. I had to edit my X11 configs by hand till around 2008??? https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/157517-How-to-install-openGL-under-Linux-Debian https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/1575...

by Asooka 9y ago

sammoth 9y ago

Why would you base that decision solely on your experience 14 years ago? The driver is completely different now.

jhasse 9y ago

> 2003 You had a problem with ATI's closed-source driver 14 years ago. AMD's open-source driver now is a COMPLETELY different story.

distances 9y ago
> You had a problem with ATI's closed-source driver 14 years ago. AMD's open-source driver now is a COMPLETELY different story. Indeed. In 2003 no-one would have based their expectations on what happened in 1989. 14 years is an eternity in this field.
Asooka 9y ago
Yes, and it was bad enough that I decided to never ever buy from that company again. For the record, I did have the displeasure of using an AMD GPU in 2010, because that's what my employer at the time purchased, and it was only slightly more stable. I am absolutely convinced that nobody except nVidia can produce stable, working video drivers. The last 14 years haven't produced a counter-example.
- jhasse 9y ago
  You're personifying companies way too much.
- baldfat 9y ago
  Also do you also refuse to use RPM based distros due to dependency hell? Also GOOD NEWS ATI is dead, it wasn't AMD that manufactured the Card or the Drivers! It was a company called ATI based in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Technologies AMD bought them 2006 and killed ATI brand 3 years later. Also I bet you only a handful of people actually still work on the technology.
- Zardoz84 9y ago
  I had a bad experience with an ATI card many years ago with a Ubuntu box. And line you, I said that I would never buy an ATI GPU. Actually my computer have a RX580 and work like a dream (On windows and Linux)

bryanlarsen 9y ago

My experience in 2017 is the complete opposite. The nVidia binary driver is the only thing I experience that causes me significant pain, including system lockups. Unfortunately we use CUDA, but as soon as ROCm matures, I'm going to be strongly advocating a switch away from nVidia. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15877262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15877262

StudentStuff 9y ago

Huh? Intel drivers have been fine for at least the past decade, when I was much younger I remember toting around a laptop with an A4 APU running the libre drivers just fine too.

baldfat 9y ago

> 2003 Read the offical documentation on Linux with SUSE and NVIDIA. http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-4363.html http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_1.0-4363.htm... Linux in 2003 is a totally different beast today. Tell me you got your wifi working or NVIDIA with a working desktop out of the box. I would sit in the terminal and have to install proprietary drivers just to see Gnome or KDE. I would have to sit by the Ethernet port for a while till I got wifi working. Read this forum post I can post hundreds of these because I read them all trying to get my card to work. I had to edit my X11 configs by hand till around 2008??? https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/157517-How-to-install-openGL-under-Linux-Debian https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/1575...