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Unforunately, the drivers of AMD for their consumer products havent kept up with NVIDIA's consumer drivers. For example, when I goto microcenter all of the AMD

Unforunately, the drivers of AMD for their consumer products havent kept up with NVIDIA's consumer drivers. For example, when I goto microcenter all of the AMD consumer GPUS are there and are available to order online. Nvidia GPUs have just recently been in stock.

neogodless 5y ago
If you're talking about the software and stability/performance for gaming, anecdotally I've been using Radeon GPUs for the past two years and they've been awesome. I still agree that Nvidia is ahead with their software ecosystem in general, though. And AMD GPUs being in stock while Nvidia's are out of stock does not prove the quality of drivers. I suspect AMD is just doing better with their supply chain the past few months (and Nvidia has retained an edge on brand preference). On pure rasterization performance, the Radeons are currently a better value, but Geforce GPUs have some feature advantages.
jonkoops 5y ago
Hmmmm... I don't share this experience, the AMD drivers have been rock solid for me. And on Linux there is simply no argumentation, AMD drivers are a million times better than NVIDIA there.
- Symmetry 5y ago
  The AMD vs. NVidia driver situation on Linux is the opposite of what it is on Windows.
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    This is 100% true. I don't know why AMDGPU (the Linux driver) is somehow better than the Windows drivers, but for some reason AMD should focus on Windows driver development (or even a rewrite) since yesterday. Windows NVIDIA drivers may have a bad release every blue moon but for AMD's you need to test out if the update is worthwhile - or just curse when it's a security fix but it crashes on your favourite game.
    - bayindirh 5y ago
      > I don't know why AMDGPU (the Linux driver) is somehow better than the Windows drivers Open source Linux drivers are developed by another team inside AMD. They can't talk with the other driver team either. When you remove the incentive to add game specific hacks, multi platform support and other stuff, and add community support at the back, you get a straightforward and superior driver at the end. Also, the driver wasn't forked or derived from FGLRX or any driver for that matter. It's just written from scratch. I remember OpenSuSE had a dedicated AMDGPU driver team too. This is why.
      - zppln 5y ago
        Out of curiosity, are there any writeups on how the game specific hacks work? Like, how do they detect the game being run and what kind of optimization are they doing?
        mjevans 5y ago
        At least on the AMDGPU side, I've seen mentions on Phoronix of various game (detected based on binary name usually) specific compatibility hacks that force on/off various behaviors and other minor tweaks. Given the size of the "driver" files on Windows these days, my GUESS is that they might ship literal patches that replace portions of the GPU code in some (popular) games. There's also the issue of games developed with explicit support for the architecture of a given GPU (usually Nvidia), where algorithmic approaches bias towards the strengths of one type of product.
        washadjeffmad 5y ago
        Not a full write-up, but here's a recent thread that discusses some cases, like Dead Space 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30435419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30435419
        bayindirh 5y ago
        I don't have any links handy, but this is what I remember as I read these things over the years: - Drivers match the binary name (and CRC32 of said binary sometimes if the name checks out) to trigger game, and game version specific "hacks" or optimizations in the driver. - These can be small bug fixes for Z flicker or performance enhancements like fill dithering or other more advanced hacks. nVidia once "Optimized" 3DMark to errm... render the benchmark more fluidly I may say (They got caught, BTW). - There are more advanced "behavioral changes" which alters internal behavior of the driver to improve game performance (a version of the Crysis engine called something expensive too often, and it had no visual impact, so nVidia's driver ignored most of them intelligently and game ran significantly faster for that, IIRC) or use a more optimal memory copy/access strategy than the game declares. Sometimes nVidia's driver takes its own initiative and does the things as it pleases, again if I recall this correctly. It's not impossible that a driver version uses optimized shaders or other hidden hacks to increase performance of a certain game (or contain optimized routines which work better for a particular game). - Other than that, sometimes drivers allow some games to access more information than an ordinary application to allow higher performance via hacky or dangerous code paths, but they're almost considered as trade secrets. Sometimes game engines abuse the driver behavior too, but it's again "secret sauce" and nobody talks about them in the open much. I remember reading such things for Need For Speed III, Quake III, A Crysis franchise game. Again, Doom III is criticized for being developed too nVidia specific (Carmack openly likes nVidia more IIRC). This information is collated from my readings, past memory, some chats with a close friend who develops a game engine, and some other channels I had access in the past.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    I've used AMD graphics exclusively for my gaming PCs for decades and apart from the occasional game using an Nvidia specific library causing it to crash (e.g. Mirror's Edge), I have *never* encountered stability issues. That being said, I generally don't install their extra utilities like the streaming crap or console. I just stick with the bare drivers downloaded from AMD directly. Similarly I have used Nvidia almost exclusively for work machines and I would say empirically that the drivers are less stable than AMD but not in an appreciable way. They do have unusual bugs that that I do not encounter with AMD. I can consistently cause the DWM to crash in Windows by using the Pen Tool in the Snip & Sketch app. After the latest driver update on a Quadro card, one of my monitors hooked up by an absurd series of dongles will no longer sleep.
- nvarsj 5y ago
  Except, annoyingly, HDMI 2.1 doesn't work on Linux. So, I'm still using an Nvidia card on a mostly Linux desktop. But I wish I didn't - the Linux Nvidia drivers are absolutely horrible.
  - CoastalCoder 5y ago
    Just curious, have you gotten 4k@120Hz to work on the desktop? My impression is that with nVidia's drivers, 4k@120Hz is only possible in Wayland, not X.org. I haven't had a chance to test that theory though.
    - nvarsj 5y ago
      Yep it works on Xorg, with full 4:4:4 chroma. However, the nvidia driver seems to lock my refresh rate to 119.88 because I'm using an OLED TV.
      - CoastalCoder 5y ago
        Nice! Would you mind sharing some more details of your setup? I can't remember the exact roadblocks I hit, but I was using: - Pop!_OS 21.10 - nVidia 3070 - Samsung Q90 via HDMI 2.1 (with correct TV input port, various settings, and a known-good HDMI cable.)
        nvarsj 5y ago
        Sure - I'm using Gnome 40/Xorg, latest 5.10 kernel (on Nixos 21.11), nvidia 3080, LG CX48 4k/120hz screen with a certified ultra high speed HDMI cable.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  Until you try to work on GPGPU. AMD is a complete dog there. While you may argue this is irrelevant for consumer products, industrial know-how is built on students' personal computers.
- neverminder 5y ago
  I bought Radeon RX 5700 XT in 2019, roughly a month after it's release. It didn't work for me with the latest kernel at the time. I was so disappointed, I wanted to give my money to AMD, but had to go with Nvidia instead. So Nvidia's driver, hated as it is, does have advantages.
dunefox 5y ago
I have almost never had problems with AMD drivers.
- emkoemko 5y ago
  on windows their Opengl performance is horrible compared to Nvidia but on Linux their open source drivers are way better.
CoastalCoder 5y ago
I'm guessing that's true for Windows, but I've had the opposite experience on Linux (for graphics, not computation). On Linux, I'm sometimes bitten by the fact that nVidia's closed-source drivers might not work well with a certain kernel version. And IIUC their closed-source nature has also slowed down nVidia-Wayland compatibility. On the other hand, I fear that now that HDMI specs are closed, AMD's open-source drivers might never be capable of 4k@120Hz via HDMI. (IIUC, that is.)
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  > now that HDMI specs are closed I hadn't heard of this, looks like you're right. [0] Surprised not to find any Hacker News thread on the topic. [0] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HDMI-Closed-Spec-Hurts-Open https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HDMI-Clo...
  - CoastalCoder 5y ago
    I'm still fuzzy regarding whether or not USB4's support for Display Port is a way around this problem. My understanding is that DP 2.0 can do 4k@120Hz. But I don't know if it has its own issues with Linux open-source.
dangus 5y ago
This observation could easily be explained by brand loyalty and other market forces. Why did Intel sell more of its objectively inferior 10th and 11th gen chips than AMD Zen 2? Because they have more brand loyalty, partnerships, sales channels, etc. Sales volume != product quality On top of that, it's easy to imagine two different cards from fabricated by two different factories having much different levels of supply constraints. If Tesla runs out of chips but Toyota doesn't, the lack of Teslas can't on its own imply that Toyota is a making an inferior product.
ziml77 5y ago
Their coding for AGESA doesn't seem to be any better. My Ryzen 5000 series CPU was repeatedly faulting when the system was under load until recently I updated to a beta BIOS whose only change was a newer AGESA version. (I actually thought it was my NVIDIA GPU for a while because it only happened when the GPU was being driven hard). Intel CPUs (at stock clock speeds/multipliers) never gave me stability issues.

neogodless 5y ago

If you're talking about the software and stability/performance for gaming, anecdotally I've been using Radeon GPUs for the past two years and they've been awesome. I still agree that Nvidia is ahead with their software ecosystem in general, though. And AMD GPUs being in stock while Nvidia's are out of stock does not prove the quality of drivers. I suspect AMD is just doing better with their supply chain the past few months (and Nvidia has retained an edge on brand preference). On pure rasterization performance, the Radeons are currently a better value, but Geforce GPUs have some feature advantages.

jonkoops 5y ago

Hmmmm... I don't share this experience, the AMD drivers have been rock solid for me. And on Linux there is simply no argumentation, AMD drivers are a million times better than NVIDIA there.

Symmetry 5y ago
The AMD vs. NVidia driver situation on Linux is the opposite of what it is on Windows.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  This is 100% true. I don't know why AMDGPU (the Linux driver) is somehow better than the Windows drivers, but for some reason AMD should focus on Windows driver development (or even a rewrite) since yesterday. Windows NVIDIA drivers may have a bad release every blue moon but for AMD's you need to test out if the update is worthwhile - or just curse when it's a security fix but it crashes on your favourite game.
  - bayindirh 5y ago
    > I don't know why AMDGPU (the Linux driver) is somehow better than the Windows drivers Open source Linux drivers are developed by another team inside AMD. They can't talk with the other driver team either. When you remove the incentive to add game specific hacks, multi platform support and other stuff, and add community support at the back, you get a straightforward and superior driver at the end. Also, the driver wasn't forked or derived from FGLRX or any driver for that matter. It's just written from scratch. I remember OpenSuSE had a dedicated AMDGPU driver team too. This is why.
    - zppln 5y ago
      Out of curiosity, are there any writeups on how the game specific hacks work? Like, how do they detect the game being run and what kind of optimization are they doing?
      - mjevans 5y ago
        At least on the AMDGPU side, I've seen mentions on Phoronix of various game (detected based on binary name usually) specific compatibility hacks that force on/off various behaviors and other minor tweaks. Given the size of the "driver" files on Windows these days, my GUESS is that they might ship literal patches that replace portions of the GPU code in some (popular) games. There's also the issue of games developed with explicit support for the architecture of a given GPU (usually Nvidia), where algorithmic approaches bias towards the strengths of one type of product.
      - washadjeffmad 5y ago
        Not a full write-up, but here's a recent thread that discusses some cases, like Dead Space 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30435419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30435419
      - bayindirh 5y ago
        I don't have any links handy, but this is what I remember as I read these things over the years: - Drivers match the binary name (and CRC32 of said binary sometimes if the name checks out) to trigger game, and game version specific "hacks" or optimizations in the driver. - These can be small bug fixes for Z flicker or performance enhancements like fill dithering or other more advanced hacks. nVidia once "Optimized" 3DMark to errm... render the benchmark more fluidly I may say (They got caught, BTW). - There are more advanced "behavioral changes" which alters internal behavior of the driver to improve game performance (a version of the Crysis engine called something expensive too often, and it had no visual impact, so nVidia's driver ignored most of them intelligently and game ran significantly faster for that, IIRC) or use a more optimal memory copy/access strategy than the game declares. Sometimes nVidia's driver takes its own initiative and does the things as it pleases, again if I recall this correctly. It's not impossible that a driver version uses optimized shaders or other hidden hacks to increase performance of a certain game (or contain optimized routines which work better for a particular game). - Other than that, sometimes drivers allow some games to access more information than an ordinary application to allow higher performance via hacky or dangerous code paths, but they're almost considered as trade secrets. Sometimes game engines abuse the driver behavior too, but it's again "secret sauce" and nobody talks about them in the open much. I remember reading such things for Need For Speed III, Quake III, A Crysis franchise game. Again, Doom III is criticized for being developed too nVidia specific (Carmack openly likes nVidia more IIRC). This information is collated from my readings, past memory, some chats with a close friend who develops a game engine, and some other channels I had access in the past.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  I've used AMD graphics exclusively for my gaming PCs for decades and apart from the occasional game using an Nvidia specific library causing it to crash (e.g. Mirror's Edge), I have *never* encountered stability issues. That being said, I generally don't install their extra utilities like the streaming crap or console. I just stick with the bare drivers downloaded from AMD directly. Similarly I have used Nvidia almost exclusively for work machines and I would say empirically that the drivers are less stable than AMD but not in an appreciable way. They do have unusual bugs that that I do not encounter with AMD. I can consistently cause the DWM to crash in Windows by using the Pen Tool in the Snip & Sketch app. After the latest driver update on a Quadro card, one of my monitors hooked up by an absurd series of dongles will no longer sleep.
nvarsj 5y ago
Except, annoyingly, HDMI 2.1 doesn't work on Linux. So, I'm still using an Nvidia card on a mostly Linux desktop. But I wish I didn't - the Linux Nvidia drivers are absolutely horrible.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  Just curious, have you gotten 4k@120Hz to work on the desktop? My impression is that with nVidia's drivers, 4k@120Hz is only possible in Wayland, not X.org. I haven't had a chance to test that theory though.
  - nvarsj 5y ago
    Yep it works on Xorg, with full 4:4:4 chroma. However, the nvidia driver seems to lock my refresh rate to 119.88 because I'm using an OLED TV.
    - CoastalCoder 5y ago
      Nice! Would you mind sharing some more details of your setup? I can't remember the exact roadblocks I hit, but I was using: - Pop!_OS 21.10 - nVidia 3070 - Samsung Q90 via HDMI 2.1 (with correct TV input port, various settings, and a known-good HDMI cable.)
      - nvarsj 5y ago
        Sure - I'm using Gnome 40/Xorg, latest 5.10 kernel (on Nixos 21.11), nvidia 3080, LG CX48 4k/120hz screen with a certified ultra high speed HDMI cable.
rhn_mk1 5y ago
Until you try to work on GPGPU. AMD is a complete dog there. While you may argue this is irrelevant for consumer products, industrial know-how is built on students' personal computers.
neverminder 5y ago
I bought Radeon RX 5700 XT in 2019, roughly a month after it's release. It didn't work for me with the latest kernel at the time. I was so disappointed, I wanted to give my money to AMD, but had to go with Nvidia instead. So Nvidia's driver, hated as it is, does have advantages.

dunefox 5y ago

I have almost never had problems with AMD drivers.

emkoemko 5y ago
on windows their Opengl performance is horrible compared to Nvidia but on Linux their open source drivers are way better.

CoastalCoder 5y ago

I'm guessing that's true for Windows, but I've had the opposite experience on Linux (for graphics, not computation). On Linux, I'm sometimes bitten by the fact that nVidia's closed-source drivers might not work well with a certain kernel version. And IIUC their closed-source nature has also slowed down nVidia-Wayland compatibility. On the other hand, I fear that now that HDMI specs are closed, AMD's open-source drivers might never be capable of 4k@120Hz via HDMI. (IIUC, that is.)

MaxBarraclough 5y ago
> now that HDMI specs are closed I hadn't heard of this, looks like you're right. [0] Surprised not to find any Hacker News thread on the topic. [0] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HDMI-Closed-Spec-Hurts-Open https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HDMI-Clo...
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  I'm still fuzzy regarding whether or not USB4's support for Display Port is a way around this problem. My understanding is that DP 2.0 can do 4k@120Hz. But I don't know if it has its own issues with Linux open-source.

dangus 5y ago

This observation could easily be explained by brand loyalty and other market forces. Why did Intel sell more of its objectively inferior 10th and 11th gen chips than AMD Zen 2? Because they have more brand loyalty, partnerships, sales channels, etc. Sales volume != product quality On top of that, it's easy to imagine two different cards from fabricated by two different factories having much different levels of supply constraints. If Tesla runs out of chips but Toyota doesn't, the lack of Teslas can't on its own imply that Toyota is a making an inferior product.

ziml77 5y ago

Their coding for AGESA doesn't seem to be any better. My Ryzen 5000 series CPU was repeatedly faulting when the system was under load until recently I updated to a beta BIOS whose only change was a newer AGESA version. (I actually thought it was my NVIDIA GPU for a while because it only happened when the GPU was being driven hard). Intel CPUs (at stock clock speeds/multipliers) never gave me stability issues.