Re: [PLUG] AMD or nVidia?

["Keith C. Perry" <kperry@daotechnologies.com>]

+1 on this.

I use AMD hardware almost exclusively and I have no issues compared to Intel and Nvidia combinations.  My 2016 ASUS ultrabook has annoying video quirks that I can't see to get rid off while hardware from 10+ years ago with Radeon graphics runs buttery smooth.  2017 marked a major leap forward for AMD and I would strong encourage people to check out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MPlS8RF0zE

if they are interested in seeing where AMD is now...  even if you are a gamer and especially if you involved in any HPC work.

Having deployed a ThreadRipper 1950X system with RX560 AND Vega Frontier GPUs last month for converged CPU/GPU workloads I can say that I am quite happy with processing stability on Linux.



~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E. 
Managing Member, DAO Technologies LLC 
(O) +1.215.525.4165 x2033 
(M) +1.215.432.5167 
www.daotechnologies.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rich Freeman" <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>
To: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 4, 2018 6:50:26 PM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] AMD or nVidia?

On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 6:02 PM, K.S. Bhaskar <bhaskar@bhaskars.com> wrote:
> I don't have much experience with AMD vide0, but FOSS drivers for Intel and
> the proprietary drivers for Nvidia Just Work™ (Ubuntu 16.04, 17.10, and
> Arch). The nouveau drivers work reasonably well for my normal usage (nothing
> computationally stressful for video – browsers, e-mail, editors, shell,
> etc.), but don't work well with multiple monitors. So, I use the Nvidia
> proprietary drivers on machines with Nvidia video.
>

Honestly, I'm surprised to hear so many people complaining about
issues with AMD.  In most circles I am in they are generally regarded
to have some of the best in-kernel drivers - Nvidia doesn't merge a
lot of their stuff into the kernel.  I've never had an issue with the
AMD in-kernel drivers.

From what I've heard the relative ranking goes:
NVidia in-kernel << AMD in-kernel <<< NVidia proprietary ( / AMD Windows)

I've heard that AMD is working on unifying their drivers and that in
the future their kernel drivers will be more equivalent to their
windows drivers.  I'm not sure where that stands.  In general I tend
to prefer AMD hardware on linux since their kernel drivers tend to be
better than NVidia's.

If I were using CUDA/etc than I'd be more likely to go with NVidia
since I think that is proprietary across the board, and historically I
think AMD's proprietary stuff on linux isn't as good as NVidia's.

I have no experience with Intel graphics.

One thing to watch out with the proprietary drivers is that they tend
to be finicky about kernel versions, and the vendors drop support for
older boards.  If you have an old NVidia card you might not be able to
get a driver that will run on a recent kernel.  If you stick to the
in-kernel drivers then you won't have issues with that, since Linus
ensures that nothing goes into the kernel that won't stick around.

Hardware-wise NVidia has tended to be superior though I hear the
latest AMD generations are pretty strong.  On Linux that hasn't tended
to be much of a consideration for me - if I were trying to do gaming
I'd be stuck with NVidia since their proprietary driver is about the
only one that is competitive on linux.

However, if you're buying a GPU right now I suspect your main
consideration is going to be what you can actually get your hands on,
since the cryptocurrency miners have been largely depleting stocks
from what I've heard.

-- 
Rich
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