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I still don't really understand the context around the Apple fight and it's a huge bummer, since Apple hardware with Nvidia GPUs would be the best combination.

I still don't really understand the context around the Apple fight and it's a huge bummer, since Apple hardware with Nvidia GPUs would be the best combination. When I used Linux the closed source Nvidia drivers were better than anything else and easily available, the complaints around them seemed mostly to be ideological? The price complaints seemed mostly about 'value' since the performance was still better than the competition in absolute terms.

formerly_proven 6y ago
> The price complaints seemed mostly about 'value' since the performance was still better than the competition in absolute terms. Just because company A makes the fastest card does not imply that company A makes the faster card at every price point.
- fossuser 6y ago
  True, but in Nvidia's case I think they did? Well - they charged more at each price point because they were faster. At some prices I think it wasn't enough to justify the extra cost from a price to performance ratio, but that doesn't seem like a reason to think they're bad. It's possible I'm a little out of date on this, I only keep up to date on the hardware when it's relevant for me to do a new build.
  - Certhas 6y ago
    > Well - they charged more at each price point... Are you joking? How is it the same price point when they are charging more?
    - Macha 6y ago
      If vendor A's cards are $180, $280 and $380 and vendor B's cards are $150, $250 and $350, it's common practice to group them into three price points of $150-199, $250-299 and $350-399 so that each card gets compared to its nearest in price.
      - Certhas 6y ago
        The prices are way closer together than that, because both companies sell way more than 3 cards. There are three variants of 2080 priced differently and two of the 2070 and 2060 each. That's seven price points above 300$ alone without looking at the lower segment (2 of those cards are EOL but still available a bit cheaper at some vendors). nVidia and AMD have always had enough cards that are at the same MSRP. E.g. the bottom of this page: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14618/the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-rx-5700-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/14618/the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-... At the lower price point nVidias line up is similarly crowded: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15206/the-amd-radeon-rx-5500-xt-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/15206/the-amd-radeon-rx-5500-... Either way, there would be no reason to group the 350$ and the 400$ card but not the 300$ and the 350$ card. BTW, AMD definitely didn't always have a price/performance advantage, e.g. the nice scatter plots here from ten years ago (that I randomly found): https://techreport.com/review/19342/gpu-value-in-the-directx-11-age/8/ https://techreport.com/review/19342/gpu-value-in-the-directx...
Macha 6y ago
Nvidia had some GPUs that ran hot and had a above average failure rate so apple were unhappy because it made a couple of models of macs look bad. They also had enough revenue of their own that they didn't care enough to invent some SKUs so people couldn't compare macs to PC laptops. The big issue with Nvidia GPUs in Linux these days is with Wayland. There are some graphics APIs that are the current way to create contexts, manage GPU resources etc but Nvidia went their own way which would require compositors to have driver specific code. Many smaller compositors (such as the most popular tiling one for Wayland) don't want to write or support one implementation for Intel/AMD and one for Nvidia so they either don't support Nvidia or require snarky sounding cli options to enable Nvidia at the cost of support.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Interesting - makes sense, thanks for the context. I'd suspect part of the reason Nvidia went their own way is because their way is better? Is that the case - or is it more about just keeping things proprietary? Probably both? If I had to guess, some mixture of ability to improve things faster with tighter integration at the expense of an open standard (pretty much what has generally happened across the industry in most domains). Though this often leads to faster iteration and better products (at least in the short term, probably not long term).
  - baobrain 6y ago
    I'd take a look at this post from a few years ago about why SwayWM does not support nvidia gpus using proprietary drivers (nouveau works). https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html
    - fossuser 6y ago
      "When people complain to me about the lack of Nvidia support in Sway, I get really pissed off. It is not my fucking problem to support Nvidia, it’s Nvidia’s fucking problem to support me." I'd suggest his users asking for Nvidia support are evidence of this being wrong. That aside though, it seems like Nvidia's proprietary driver doesn't have support for some kernal APIs and the other vendors (AMD, Intel) do? I wonder why I've always had better experience with basic OS usage using the Nvidia proprietary driver over AMD in Linux. Maybe I just didn't use any applications relying on these APIs. Nouveau has never been good though. Not really a surprise given the tone of that blog post that Nvidia doesn't want to collaborate with OSS community. Don't people rely on Nvidia for deep learning workflows? I thought that stuff ran on Linux? Maybe this is just about different dev priorities for what the driver supports?

formerly_proven 6y ago

> The price complaints seemed mostly about 'value' since the performance was still better than the competition in absolute terms. Just because company A makes the fastest card does not imply that company A makes the faster card at every price point.

fossuser 6y ago
True, but in Nvidia's case I think they did? Well - they charged more at each price point because they were faster. At some prices I think it wasn't enough to justify the extra cost from a price to performance ratio, but that doesn't seem like a reason to think they're bad. It's possible I'm a little out of date on this, I only keep up to date on the hardware when it's relevant for me to do a new build.
- Certhas 6y ago
  > Well - they charged more at each price point... Are you joking? How is it the same price point when they are charging more?
  - Macha 6y ago
    If vendor A's cards are $180, $280 and $380 and vendor B's cards are $150, $250 and $350, it's common practice to group them into three price points of $150-199, $250-299 and $350-399 so that each card gets compared to its nearest in price.
    - Certhas 6y ago
      The prices are way closer together than that, because both companies sell way more than 3 cards. There are three variants of 2080 priced differently and two of the 2070 and 2060 each. That's seven price points above 300$ alone without looking at the lower segment (2 of those cards are EOL but still available a bit cheaper at some vendors). nVidia and AMD have always had enough cards that are at the same MSRP. E.g. the bottom of this page: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14618/the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-rx-5700-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/14618/the-amd-radeon-rx-5700-... At the lower price point nVidias line up is similarly crowded: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15206/the-amd-radeon-rx-5500-xt-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/15206/the-amd-radeon-rx-5500-... Either way, there would be no reason to group the 350$ and the 400$ card but not the 300$ and the 350$ card. BTW, AMD definitely didn't always have a price/performance advantage, e.g. the nice scatter plots here from ten years ago (that I randomly found): https://techreport.com/review/19342/gpu-value-in-the-directx-11-age/8/ https://techreport.com/review/19342/gpu-value-in-the-directx...

Macha 6y ago

Nvidia had some GPUs that ran hot and had a above average failure rate so apple were unhappy because it made a couple of models of macs look bad. They also had enough revenue of their own that they didn't care enough to invent some SKUs so people couldn't compare macs to PC laptops. The big issue with Nvidia GPUs in Linux these days is with Wayland. There are some graphics APIs that are the current way to create contexts, manage GPU resources etc but Nvidia went their own way which would require compositors to have driver specific code. Many smaller compositors (such as the most popular tiling one for Wayland) don't want to write or support one implementation for Intel/AMD and one for Nvidia so they either don't support Nvidia or require snarky sounding cli options to enable Nvidia at the cost of support.

fossuser 6y ago
Interesting - makes sense, thanks for the context. I'd suspect part of the reason Nvidia went their own way is because their way is better? Is that the case - or is it more about just keeping things proprietary? Probably both? If I had to guess, some mixture of ability to improve things faster with tighter integration at the expense of an open standard (pretty much what has generally happened across the industry in most domains). Though this often leads to faster iteration and better products (at least in the short term, probably not long term).
- baobrain 6y ago
  I'd take a look at this post from a few years ago about why SwayWM does not support nvidia gpus using proprietary drivers (nouveau works). https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html
  - fossuser 6y ago
    "When people complain to me about the lack of Nvidia support in Sway, I get really pissed off. It is not my fucking problem to support Nvidia, it’s Nvidia’s fucking problem to support me." I'd suggest his users asking for Nvidia support are evidence of this being wrong. That aside though, it seems like Nvidia's proprietary driver doesn't have support for some kernal APIs and the other vendors (AMD, Intel) do? I wonder why I've always had better experience with basic OS usage using the Nvidia proprietary driver over AMD in Linux. Maybe I just didn't use any applications relying on these APIs. Nouveau has never been good though. Not really a surprise given the tone of that blog post that Nvidia doesn't want to collaborate with OSS community. Don't people rely on Nvidia for deep learning workflows? I thought that stuff ran on Linux? Maybe this is just about different dev priorities for what the driver supports?