7 ms·

I am not a gamer and don't why AMD GPUs aren't good enough. It's weird since both Xbox and PlayStation are using AMD GPUs. I guess there games that you can onl

I am not a gamer and don't why AMD GPUs aren't good enough. It's weird since both Xbox and PlayStation are using AMD GPUs. I guess there games that you can only play on PC with Nvidia graphics. That begs the question why someone create a game and ignore large console market.

PoshBreeze 1y ago
Nvidia is the high end, AMD is the mid segment and Intel is the low end. In reality I am playing 4K on HellDivers with 50-60FPS on a 6800XT. Traditionally the NVIDIA drivers have been more stable on Windows than the AMD drivers. I choose an AMD card because I wanted a hassle free experience on Linux (well as much as you can).
ErrorNoBrain 1y ago
ive used an amd card for a couple years its been great. flawless in fact.
- sfn42 1y ago
  Same. Bought a 6950xt for like $800ish or something like that a few years ago and it's been perfect. Runs any game I want to play on ultra 1440p with good fps. No issues. Maybe there's a difference for the people who buy the absolute top end cards but I don't. I look for best value and when I looked into it amd looked better to me. Also got an amd CPU which has aso been great.
senko 1y ago
> AMD GPUs aren't good enough. Software. AMD has traditionally been really bad at their drivers. (They also missed the AI train and are trying to catch up). I use Linux and have learned not to touch AMD GPUs (and to a lesser extent CPUs due to chipset quality/support) a long time ago. Even if they are better now, (I feel) Intel integrated (if no special GPU perf needed) or NVidia are less risky choices.
- rewgs 1y ago
  > I use Linux and have learned not to touch AMD GPUs (and to a lesser extent CPUs due to chipset quality/support) a long time ago. Even if they are better now, (I feel) Intel integrated (if no special GPU perf needed) or NVidia are less risky choices. Err, what? While you're right about Intel integrated GPUs being a safe choice, AMD has long since been the GPU of choice for Linux -- it just works. Whereas Nvidia on Linux has been flaky for as long as I can remember.
  - michaelmrose 1y ago
    They have never been flaky on the x11 desktop
  - senko 1y ago
    Had major problems with xinerama, suspend/resume, vsync, probably a bunch of other stuff. That said, I've been avoiding AMD in general for so long the ecosystem might have really improved in the meantime, as there was no incentive for me to try and switch. Recently I've been dabbling in AI where AMD GPUs (well, sw ecosystem, really) are lagging behind. Just wasn't worth the hassle. NVidia hw, once I set it up (which may be a bit involved), has been pretty stable for me.
    - tankenmate 1y ago
      I run llama.cpp using Vulkan and AMD CPUs, no need to install any drivers (or management software for that matter, nor any need to taint the kernel meaning if I have an issue it's easy to get support). For example the other day when a Mesa update had an issue I had a fix in less than 36 hours (without any support contract or fees) and `apt-mark hold` did a perfect job until there was a fix. Performance for me is within a couple of % points, and with under-volting I get better joules per token.
    - homebrewer 1y ago
      > I've been avoiding AMD in general I have no opinion on GPUs (I don't play anything released later than about 2008), but Intel CPUs have had more problems over the last five years than AMD, including disabling the already limited support for AVX-512 after release and simply burning themselves to the ground to get an easy win in initial benchmarks. I fear your perception of their products is seriously out of date.
datagram 1y ago
AMD cards are fine from a raw performance perspective, but Nvidia has built themselves a moat of software/hardware features like ray-tracing, video encoding, CUDA, DLSS, etc where AMD's equivalents have simply not been as good. With their current generation of cards AMD has caught up on all of those things except CUDA, and Intel is in a similar spot now that they've had time to improve their drivers, so it's pretty easy now to buy a non-Nvidia card without feeling like you're giving anything up.
- SSLy 1y ago
  AMD RT is still slower than Nvidia's.
- jezze 1y ago
  I have no experience of using it so I might be wrong but AMD has ROCm which has something called HIP that should be comparable to CUDA. I think it also has a way to automatically translate CUDA calls into HIP as well so it should work without the need to modify your code.
  - StochasticLi 1y ago
    it's mostly about AI training at this point. the software for this only supports CUDA well.
  - tankenmate 1y ago
    `I think it also has a way to automatically translate CUDA calls` I suspect the thing you're referring to is ZLUDA[0], it allows you to run CUDA code on a range of non NVidia hardware (for some value of "run"). [0] https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA
    - smallmancontrov 1y ago
      For an extremely flexible value of "run" that you would be extremely unwise to allow anywhere near a project whose success you have a stake in.
npteljes 1y ago
What I experienced is that AI is a nightmare on AMD in Linux. There is a myriad of custom things that one needs to do, and even that just breaks after a while. Happened so much on my current setup (6600 XT) that I don't bother with local AI anymore, because the time investment is just not worth it. It's not that I can't live like this, I still have the same card, but if I were looking to do anything AI locally with a new card, for sure it wouldn't be an AMD one.
- eden-u4 1y ago
  I don't have much experience with ROCm for large trainings, but NVIDIA is still shit with driver+cuda version+other things. The only simplification is due to ubuntu and other distros that already do the heavy lift by installing all required components, without much configuration.
  - npteljes 1y ago
    Oh I'm sure. The thing is that with AMD I have the same luxury, and the wretched thing still doesn't work, or has regressions.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    On Ubuntu, in my experience, installing the .deb version of the CUDA toolkit pretty much "just works".
- phronimos 1y ago
  Are you referring to AI training, prediction/inference, or both? Could you give some examples for what had to be done and why? Thanks in advance.
  - npteljes 1y ago
    Sure! I'm referring to setting up a1111's stable diffusion webui, and setting up Open WebUI. Wrt/ a1, it worked at one point (a year ago) after 2-3 hours of tinkering, then regressed to not working at all, not even from fresh installs on new, different Linuxes. I tried the main branch and the AMD specific fork as well. Wrt/ Open WebUI, it works, but the thing uses my CPU.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
AMD GPU's are fine, but nvidia's marketing (overt and covert / word-of-mouth) is better. "RTX On" is a meme where people get convinced the graphics are over 9000x "better"; it's a meaningless marketing expression but a naive generation of fairly new PC gamers are eating it up. And... they don't need to. Most of the most played video games on PC are all years old [0]. They're online multiplayer games that are optimized for average spec computers (and mobile) to capture as big a chunk of the potential market as possible. It's flexing for clout, nothing else to it. And yet, I can't say it's anything new, people have been bragging, boasting and comparing their graphics cards for decades. [0] https://activeplayer.io/top-15-most-popular-pc-games-of-2022/ https://activeplayer.io/top-15-most-popular-pc-games-of-2022...
- keyringlight 1y ago
  One thing I wonder about is whether PC gaming is splitting into two distinct tiers, high end for those with thousands to spend on their rig and studios who are pathfinders (id, Remedy, 4A, etc) in graphics, then the wider market for cheaper/older systems and studios going for broad appeal. I know the market isn't going to be neatly divided and more of a blurry ugly continuum. The past few years (2018 with the introduction of RT and upscaling reconstruction seems as good a milestone as any) feel like a transition period we're not out of yet, similar to the tail end of the DX9/Playstation3/Xbox360 era when some studios were moving to 64bit and DX11 as optional modes, almost like PC was their prototyping platform for when they made completed the jump with PS4/Xbox one and more mature PC implementations. It wouldn't surprise me if it takes more years and titles built targeting the next generation consoles before it's all settled.
  - phatfish 1y ago
    Once the "path tracing" that the current top end Nvidia cards can pull off reaches mainstream it will settle down. The PS6 isn't going to be doing path tracing because the hardware for that is being decided now. I'd guess PS7 time frame. It will take console level hardware pricing to bring the gaming GPU prices down. I understand the reason for moving to real time ray-tracing. It is much easier for development, and apparently the data for baked/pre-rendered lighting in these big open worlds was getting out of hand. Especially with multiple time-of-day passes. But, it is only the "path tracing" that top end Nvidia GPUs can do that matches baked lighting detail. The standard ray-tracing in the latest Doom for instance has a very limited number of entities that actually emit light in a scene. I guess there is the main global illumination source, but many of the extra lighting details in the scene don't emit light. This is a step backward compared to baked lighting. Even shots from the plasma weapon don't cast any light into the scene with the standard ray-tracing, which Quake 3 was doing.
wredcoll 1y ago
A significant part of the vocal "gamers" is about being "the best" which translates into gpu benchmarking. You don't get headlines and hype by being an affordable way to play games at a decent frame rate, you achieve it by setting New Fps Records.
AngryData 1y ago
I am a gamer, and I don't understand why everyone flocks to Nvidia either unless they are buying the newest flagship card. Maybe just because "the best card" is from Nvidia so many assume Nvidia must be the best for everyone? For multiple generations ive gotten better card for my dollar at any "mid-tier" gaming level with AMD, and have had zero complaints.
Bratmon 1y ago
AMD GPUs are 5 years behind Nvidia. But that logically means that if you thought Nvidia graphics looked fine in 2020, you'll think AMD graphics look fine now.

PoshBreeze 1y ago

Nvidia is the high end, AMD is the mid segment and Intel is the low end. In reality I am playing 4K on HellDivers with 50-60FPS on a 6800XT. Traditionally the NVIDIA drivers have been more stable on Windows than the AMD drivers. I choose an AMD card because I wanted a hassle free experience on Linux (well as much as you can).

ErrorNoBrain 1y ago

ive used an amd card for a couple years its been great. flawless in fact.

sfn42 1y ago
Same. Bought a 6950xt for like $800ish or something like that a few years ago and it's been perfect. Runs any game I want to play on ultra 1440p with good fps. No issues. Maybe there's a difference for the people who buy the absolute top end cards but I don't. I look for best value and when I looked into it amd looked better to me. Also got an amd CPU which has aso been great.

senko 1y ago

> AMD GPUs aren't good enough. Software. AMD has traditionally been really bad at their drivers. (They also missed the AI train and are trying to catch up). I use Linux and have learned not to touch AMD GPUs (and to a lesser extent CPUs due to chipset quality/support) a long time ago. Even if they are better now, (I feel) Intel integrated (if no special GPU perf needed) or NVidia are less risky choices.

rewgs 1y ago
> I use Linux and have learned not to touch AMD GPUs (and to a lesser extent CPUs due to chipset quality/support) a long time ago. Even if they are better now, (I feel) Intel integrated (if no special GPU perf needed) or NVidia are less risky choices. Err, what? While you're right about Intel integrated GPUs being a safe choice, AMD has long since been the GPU of choice for Linux -- it just works. Whereas Nvidia on Linux has been flaky for as long as I can remember.
- michaelmrose 1y ago
  They have never been flaky on the x11 desktop
- senko 1y ago
  Had major problems with xinerama, suspend/resume, vsync, probably a bunch of other stuff. That said, I've been avoiding AMD in general for so long the ecosystem might have really improved in the meantime, as there was no incentive for me to try and switch. Recently I've been dabbling in AI where AMD GPUs (well, sw ecosystem, really) are lagging behind. Just wasn't worth the hassle. NVidia hw, once I set it up (which may be a bit involved), has been pretty stable for me.
  - tankenmate 1y ago
    I run llama.cpp using Vulkan and AMD CPUs, no need to install any drivers (or management software for that matter, nor any need to taint the kernel meaning if I have an issue it's easy to get support). For example the other day when a Mesa update had an issue I had a fix in less than 36 hours (without any support contract or fees) and `apt-mark hold` did a perfect job until there was a fix. Performance for me is within a couple of % points, and with under-volting I get better joules per token.
  - homebrewer 1y ago
    > I've been avoiding AMD in general I have no opinion on GPUs (I don't play anything released later than about 2008), but Intel CPUs have had more problems over the last five years than AMD, including disabling the already limited support for AVX-512 after release and simply burning themselves to the ground to get an easy win in initial benchmarks. I fear your perception of their products is seriously out of date.

datagram 1y ago

AMD cards are fine from a raw performance perspective, but Nvidia has built themselves a moat of software/hardware features like ray-tracing, video encoding, CUDA, DLSS, etc where AMD's equivalents have simply not been as good. With their current generation of cards AMD has caught up on all of those things except CUDA, and Intel is in a similar spot now that they've had time to improve their drivers, so it's pretty easy now to buy a non-Nvidia card without feeling like you're giving anything up.

SSLy 1y ago
AMD RT is still slower than Nvidia's.
jezze 1y ago
I have no experience of using it so I might be wrong but AMD has ROCm which has something called HIP that should be comparable to CUDA. I think it also has a way to automatically translate CUDA calls into HIP as well so it should work without the need to modify your code.
- StochasticLi 1y ago
  it's mostly about AI training at this point. the software for this only supports CUDA well.
- tankenmate 1y ago
  `I think it also has a way to automatically translate CUDA calls` I suspect the thing you're referring to is ZLUDA[0], it allows you to run CUDA code on a range of non NVidia hardware (for some value of "run"). [0] https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA
  - smallmancontrov 1y ago
    For an extremely flexible value of "run" that you would be extremely unwise to allow anywhere near a project whose success you have a stake in.

npteljes 1y ago

What I experienced is that AI is a nightmare on AMD in Linux. There is a myriad of custom things that one needs to do, and even that just breaks after a while. Happened so much on my current setup (6600 XT) that I don't bother with local AI anymore, because the time investment is just not worth it. It's not that I can't live like this, I still have the same card, but if I were looking to do anything AI locally with a new card, for sure it wouldn't be an AMD one.

eden-u4 1y ago
I don't have much experience with ROCm for large trainings, but NVIDIA is still shit with driver+cuda version+other things. The only simplification is due to ubuntu and other distros that already do the heavy lift by installing all required components, without much configuration.
- npteljes 1y ago
  Oh I'm sure. The thing is that with AMD I have the same luxury, and the wretched thing still doesn't work, or has regressions.
- int_19h 1y ago
  On Ubuntu, in my experience, installing the .deb version of the CUDA toolkit pretty much "just works".
phronimos 1y ago
Are you referring to AI training, prediction/inference, or both? Could you give some examples for what had to be done and why? Thanks in advance.
- npteljes 1y ago
  Sure! I'm referring to setting up a1111's stable diffusion webui, and setting up Open WebUI. Wrt/ a1, it worked at one point (a year ago) after 2-3 hours of tinkering, then regressed to not working at all, not even from fresh installs on new, different Linuxes. I tried the main branch and the AMD specific fork as well. Wrt/ Open WebUI, it works, but the thing uses my CPU.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago

AMD GPU's are fine, but nvidia's marketing (overt and covert / word-of-mouth) is better. "RTX On" is a meme where people get convinced the graphics are over 9000x "better"; it's a meaningless marketing expression but a naive generation of fairly new PC gamers are eating it up. And... they don't need to. Most of the most played video games on PC are all years old [0]. They're online multiplayer games that are optimized for average spec computers (and mobile) to capture as big a chunk of the potential market as possible. It's flexing for clout, nothing else to it. And yet, I can't say it's anything new, people have been bragging, boasting and comparing their graphics cards for decades. [0] https://activeplayer.io/top-15-most-popular-pc-games-of-2022/ https://activeplayer.io/top-15-most-popular-pc-games-of-2022...

keyringlight 1y ago
One thing I wonder about is whether PC gaming is splitting into two distinct tiers, high end for those with thousands to spend on their rig and studios who are pathfinders (id, Remedy, 4A, etc) in graphics, then the wider market for cheaper/older systems and studios going for broad appeal. I know the market isn't going to be neatly divided and more of a blurry ugly continuum. The past few years (2018 with the introduction of RT and upscaling reconstruction seems as good a milestone as any) feel like a transition period we're not out of yet, similar to the tail end of the DX9/Playstation3/Xbox360 era when some studios were moving to 64bit and DX11 as optional modes, almost like PC was their prototyping platform for when they made completed the jump with PS4/Xbox one and more mature PC implementations. It wouldn't surprise me if it takes more years and titles built targeting the next generation consoles before it's all settled.
- phatfish 1y ago
  Once the "path tracing" that the current top end Nvidia cards can pull off reaches mainstream it will settle down. The PS6 isn't going to be doing path tracing because the hardware for that is being decided now. I'd guess PS7 time frame. It will take console level hardware pricing to bring the gaming GPU prices down. I understand the reason for moving to real time ray-tracing. It is much easier for development, and apparently the data for baked/pre-rendered lighting in these big open worlds was getting out of hand. Especially with multiple time-of-day passes. But, it is only the "path tracing" that top end Nvidia GPUs can do that matches baked lighting detail. The standard ray-tracing in the latest Doom for instance has a very limited number of entities that actually emit light in a scene. I guess there is the main global illumination source, but many of the extra lighting details in the scene don't emit light. This is a step backward compared to baked lighting. Even shots from the plasma weapon don't cast any light into the scene with the standard ray-tracing, which Quake 3 was doing.

wredcoll 1y ago

A significant part of the vocal "gamers" is about being "the best" which translates into gpu benchmarking. You don't get headlines and hype by being an affordable way to play games at a decent frame rate, you achieve it by setting New Fps Records.

AngryData 1y ago

I am a gamer, and I don't understand why everyone flocks to Nvidia either unless they are buying the newest flagship card. Maybe just because "the best card" is from Nvidia so many assume Nvidia must be the best for everyone? For multiple generations ive gotten better card for my dollar at any "mid-tier" gaming level with AMD, and have had zero complaints.

Bratmon 1y ago

AMD GPUs are 5 years behind Nvidia. But that logically means that if you thought Nvidia graphics looked fine in 2020, you'll think AMD graphics look fine now.