AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan

Post by vetinari » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #11

baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

While NVIDIA is far from the only choice and AMD has improved dramatically these days to the point where they are within NVIDIA's performance reach, NVIDIA still dominates the higher end side [1] and they do have by far the most complete and stable OpenGL implementation (with the Mesa front end on AMD you do not even get a compatibility profile - a major disaster IMO - whereas on the other hand NVIDIA not only gives…

Post by ensignavenger » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 3:55 PM UTC

baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

Post by jhasse » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

Asooka wrote: post #34

jhasse wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2003 You had a problem with ATI's closed-source driver 14 years ago. AMD's open-source driver now is a COMPLETELY different story.

Yes, and it was bad enough that I decided to never ever buy from that company again. For the record, I did have the displeasure of using an AMD GPU in 2010, because that's what my employer at the time purchased, and it was only slightly more stable. I am absolutely convinced that nobody except nVidia can produce stable, working video drivers. The last 14 years haven't produced a counter-example.

Post by Symmetry » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:43 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #17

baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

This does not mirror my experience. I have a machine with amdgpu drivers installed. I specifically installed ubuntu instead of arch or something more exotic because i knew there would be issues. And i was right. I can use the OpenCL now but I can't use x11 because the driver uses old ABIs. My experience with Nvidias binary blobs even on systems like freebsd has been stellar in comparison.

Post by baldfat » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

rhaps0dy wrote: post #16

baldfat wrote: post #6

AMD has been working for years to make them the most Linux friendly GPU option. Sadly the legacy of the Linux community talks like AMD doesn't work in Linux and NVIDIA is the only real choice. Kind of like Windows users complaining about AMD drivers when they haven't been an issue for over five years. I had AMD on my Linux boxes for eight years and I have haven't had an issue for the past six years.

Semi-relatedly and unfortunately, AI research is locked-in to NVIDIA (on Linux) because all the big lienar algebra and autodifferentiation frameworks work only with CUDA.