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Nvidia won, we all lost

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Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#361

Post by josephg »

ho_schi wrote: post #324
senko wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is wrong. For 14 years the recommendation on Linux is: * Purchase always AMD. * Purchase never Nvidia. * Intel is also okay. Because the AMD drivers are good and open-source. And AMD cares about bug reports. The one from Nvidia can and will create issues because they’re closed-source and avoided for years to support Wayland. Now Nvidia published source-code and refuses to merge it into Linux and Mesa facepalm Wh…

I've been using a 4090 on my linux workstation for a few years now. Its mostly fine - with the occasional bad driver version randomly messing things up. I'm using linux mint. Mint uses X11, which, while silly, means suspend / resume works fine.

NVIDIA's drivers also recently completely changed how they worked. Hopefully that'll result in a lot of these long term issues getting fixed. As I understand it, the change is this: The nvidia drivers contain a huge amount of proprietary, closed source code. This code used to be shipped as a closed source binary blob which needed to run on your CPU. And that caused all sorts of problems - because its linux and you can't recompile their binary blob. Earlier this year, they moved all the secret, proprietary parts into a firmware image instead which runs on a coprocessor within the GPU itself. This then allowed them to - at last - opensource (most? all?) of their remaining linux driver code. And that means we can patch and change and recompile that part of the driver. And that should mean the wayland & kernel teams can start fixing these issues.

In theory, users shouldn't notice any changes at all. But I suspect all the nvidia driver problems people have been running into lately have been fallout from this change.

Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#362

Post by imtringued »

frollogaston wrote: post #72
rightbyte wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam's Wine thing works quite well. And yes you need to fiddle and do work arounds including giving up getting some games to work.

Yeah, but it's not worth. Apparently the "gold" list on ProtonDB is games that allegedly work with tweaks . So like, drop in this random DLL and it might fix the game. I'm not gonna spend time on that. Last one I ever tried was https://www.protondb.com/app/813780 with comments like "works perfectly, except multiplayer is completely broken" and the workaround has changed 3 times so far, also it lags no matter what. Ga…

You're not supposed to "steal DLLs".

You're supposed to find a proton fork like "glorious eggroll" that has patches specifically for your game.

Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#363

Post by jorams »

senko wrote: post #296
darkoob12 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

> I use Linux and have learned not to touch AMD GPUs

The situation completely changed with the introduction of the AMDGPU drivers integrated into the kernel. This was like 10 years ago.

Before then the AMD driver situation on Linux was atrocious. The open source drivers performed so bad you'd get better performance out of Intel integrated graphics than an expensive AMD GPU, and their closed source drivers were so poorly updated you'd have to downgrade the entire world for the rest of your software to be compatible. At that time Nvidia was clearly ahead, even though the driver needs to be updated separately and they invented their own versions of some stuff.

With the introduction of AMDGPU and the years after that everything changed. AMD GPUs now worked great without any effort, while Nvidia's tendency to invent their own things really started grating. Much of the world started moving to Wayland, but Nvidia refused to support some important common standards. Those that really wanted their stuff to work on Nvidia had to introduce entirely separate code paths for it, while other parts of the landscape refused to do so. This started improving again a few years ago, but I'm not aware of the current state because I now only use Intel and AMD hardware.

Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#364

Post by pixelesque »

delusional wrote: post #358
duckmysick wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games, and getting all in a huff about it isn’t worth my time or energy. I'd really love to try AMD as a daily driver. For me CUDA is the showstopper. There's really nothing comparable in the AMD camp.

ROCM is, to some degree and in some areas, a pretty decent alternative. Developing with it is often times a horrible experience, but once something works, it works fine.

> but once something works, it works fine.

Is there "forwards compatibility" to the same code working on the next cards yet like PTX provided Nvidia?

Last time (4 years ago?) I looked into ROCM, you seemed to have to compile for each revision of each architecture.

Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#365

Post by quicksilver03 »

ho_schi wrote: post #324
senko wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is wrong. For 14 years the recommendation on Linux is: * Purchase always AMD. * Purchase never Nvidia. * Intel is also okay. Because the AMD drivers are good and open-source. And AMD cares about bug reports. The one from Nvidia can and will create issues because they’re closed-source and avoided for years to support Wayland. Now Nvidia published source-code and refuses to merge it into Linux and Mesa facepalm Wh…

The AMD drivers are open source, but they definitely are not good. Have a look at the Fedora discussion forums (for example https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-does-not-boot-... ) to see what happens about each month.

I have no NVIDIA hardware, but I understand that the drivers are even worse than AMD's.

Intel seems to be, at the moment, the least worse compromise between performance and stability,

Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#366

Post by dgellow »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #49

> With over 90% of the PC market running on NVIDIA tech, they’re the clear winner of the GPU race. The losers are every single one of us. I have been rocking AMD GPU ever since the drivers were upstreamed into the linux kernel. No regrets. I have also realized that there is a lot out there in the world besides video games, and getting all in a huff about it isn’t worth my time or energy. But consumer gotta consoooooo…

> when they are exploited instead of just walking away and doing something else.

You don’t even have to walk away. You pretty much never need the latest GPUs to have a great gaming experience

Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#367

Post by blueboo »

datagram wrote: post #315
cherioo wrote: post #9

High end GPU has over the last 5 years slowly turning from an enthusiast product into a luxury product. 5 or maybe 10 years ago, high-end GPU are needed to run games at reasonably eye candy setting. In 2025, $500 mid-range GPUs are more than enough. Folks all over can barely tell between High and Ultra settings, DLSS vs FSR, or DLSS FG and Lossless Scaling. There's just no point to compete at $500 price point any mor…

The fact that we're calling $500 GPUs "midrange" is proof that Nvidia's strategy is working.

I think my TNT2 Ultra was $200. But Nvidia had dozens of competitors back then. 89 when it was founded! Now: AMD…

Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#368

Post by nirv »

josephg wrote: post #361
ho_schi wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong. For 14 years the recommendation on Linux is: * Purchase always AMD. * Purchase never Nvidia. * Intel is also okay. Because the AMD drivers are good and open-source. And AMD cares about bug reports. The one from Nvidia can and will create issues because they’re closed-source and avoided for years to support Wayland. Now Nvidia published source-code and refuses to merge it into Linux and Mesa facepalm Wh…

I've been using a 4090 on my linux workstation for a few years now. Its mostly fine - with the occasional bad driver version randomly messing things up. I'm using linux mint. Mint uses X11, which, while silly, means suspend / resume works fine. NVIDIA's drivers also recently completely changed how they worked. Hopefully that'll result in a lot of these long term issues getting fixed. As I understand it, the change is…

No browser on Linux supports any other backend for video acceleration except VAAPI, as far as I know. AMD and Intel use VAAPI, while Nvidia uses VDPAU, which is not supported anywhere. This single fact means that with Nvidia graphics cards on Linux, there isn't even such a simple and important feature for users as video decoding acceleration in the browser. Every silly YouTube video will use CPU (not iGPU, but CPU) to decode video, consuming resources and power.

Yes, there are translation layers[1] which you have to know about and understand how to install correctly, which partially solve the problem by translating from VAAPI to NVDEC, but this is certainly not for the average user.

Hopefully, in the future browsers will add support for the new Vulkan Video standard, but for now, unfortunately, one has to hardcode the browser launch parameters in order to use the integrated graphics chip's driver (custom XDG-application file for AMD APU in my case: ~/.local/share/applications/Firefox-amdgpu.desktop): `Exec=env LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=radeonsi DRI_PRIME=0 MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=0 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=radeons i /usr/bin/firefox-beta %u`.

[1] https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver/

Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#369

Post by the__alchemist »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #302
sgarland wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AoE2, baby. Still going strong, decades after launch.

And AoE4, one of the few high profile RTS games of the past years, is dead.

That was disappointing to see. I thought it was a great game, with some mechanics improved over 2, and missing some of the glitchy behavior that became cannon (e.g. foot archer kiting) The community (nor my friends) didn't seem to go for it, primarily for the reason that it's not AoE2. Exquisite sound design too.

Re: Nvidia won, we all lost

#370

Post by dgellow »

kevincox wrote: post #349
klipklop wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are certainly right that this group has little spending self-control. There is no limit just about to how abusive companies like Hasbro, Nvidia and Nintendo can be and still rake in record sales. They will complain endlessly about the price of a RTX 5090 and still rush out to buy it. I know people that own these high end cards as a flex, but their lives are too busy to actually play games.

I'm not saying that these companies aren't charging "fair" prices (whatever that means) but for many hardcore gamers their spending per hour is tiny compared to other forms of entertainment. They may buyba $100 game and play to for over 100 hours. Maybe add another $1/hour for the console. Compared to someone who frequents the cinema goes to the pub or does many other common hobbies and it can be hard to say that gam…

Off-topic: micro transactions are just digital transactions. There is nothing micro about them. I really wish that term would just die
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