5 ms·

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 t

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.
  - Symmetry 5y ago
    In addition to what other people have said, there's a lot of shared code between the various open source Linux drivers making things easier for everybody. Not just at the driver but I think stuff like Mesa[1] would be part of the driver on Windows? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics)
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Just speculation but it might be because AMD does focus a ton on the HPC GPU market which is huge cash cow for them so you drivers are likely to be taken care of.
- 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.

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.
- Symmetry 5y ago
  In addition to what other people have said, there's a lot of shared code between the various open source Linux drivers making things easier for everybody. Not just at the driver but I think stuff like Mesa[1] would be part of the driver on Windows? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(computer_graphics)
- dnautics 5y ago
  Just speculation but it might be because AMD does focus a ton on the HPC GPU market which is huge cash cow for them so you drivers are likely to be taken care of.
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.