AMD
this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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On Windows, Nvidia without thinking twice. On Linux, depends, on rDNA 4 and the next release of Nvidia drivers, but probably still Nvidia.
Unfortunately, despite how much I would rather buy from someone else, AMD's products are just inferior, especially software.
Examples of AMD being worse:
- AMD's implementation of opengl is a joke, the open source implementation used on Linux is several times faster and made for free by volunteers, without internal knowledge
- AMD will never run physx, which is every day less relevant, but if AMD from the past had proposed an alternative we would have a standardized physics extension in DirectX by now, like with dlss
- AMD's ray accelerators are "incomplete" compared to Nvidia RT cores, which is why ray tracing is better on Nvidia, and which is why with rDNA 4 they are changing how they work
- GCN was terrible and very different from Nvidia's architecture, it was hard to optimize for both. rDNA is more similar, but now AMD has a plethora of old junk to maintain compatible with rDNA
- Nvidia has been constantly investing in new software technologies (nowadays it's mainly AI), AMD didn't and now it's always playing catch up
AMD also has its wins, for example:
- They often make their stuff open source, mainly because it's convenient for its underdog position
- Has a pretty good software stack on Linux (much better than on windows) partly because it's not entirely done by them
- Nvidia has been a bad faith actor for many years on the Linux space, even if it's in its redemption arc
- Modern GPU seems to be catching up in compute performance
- AMD is less greedy with VRAM, mainly because they are less at risk of competing with their own enterprise lineup
- Current Nvidia's prices are stupid
I would still prefer Nvidia right now, but maybe it's gonna change with the next releases.
P.s. I have used a GTX 1060, an RX 480, and a Vega 56
but if AMD from the past had proposed an alternative we would have a standardized physics extension in DirectX by now, like with dlss
Why the fuck put this on AMD when it was Nvidia who did their usual proprietary bullshit? "AMD is worse than Nvidia because they didn't provide us with a better alternative!" ???
I use Linux, so not Nvidia. AMD is great. Good power for the money.
Supposedly Nvidia has become a lot better on Linux lately. They finally dropped their weird framebuffer API or whatever (the one that was the reason for horrible Wayland compatibility and also caused a heated Linus Torvalds moment), and I think they even made their linux drivers open source.
Historically speaking, Nvidia was always the best for Linux. Nvidia's success history with Linux trace back to the 2004 with State-of-the-art 3d capabilities (albeit for arcade machines). At that time ATi radeon 3D capabilities for Linux were below sub-par.
The problem with Linux+Nvidia is that it was never "the Linux way"... but always the "Nvidia way".
The Linux way is... flexibility: it mean you can use whatever kind of Linux you want, and the drivers works straight out of the box (basically you need open source drivers). Instead Nvidia always pushed for fixed binary blob that required specific kernel and rigid environment.
The modern support for Linux by AMD is mostly "the Linux way", that's why the Linux community love AMD more than Nvidia.
In any case of hardware parity between Nvidia and AMD; Linux crowd will always prefer AMD, because AMD mean you can use any kind of Linux distro-thing and have an uncompromising gaming experience.
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I must be in the minority, but I’ve been digging Intels Arc GPUs. For their price point and the fact I don’t play bleeding edge AAA games, they’ve actually done pretty well. Additionally I’m tired of nvidia’s price gouging and AMD following after, I want to support a disruptive third party. Their driver support gets better every release and I can’t wait to see their next generation of cards.
I agree with the Arc cards.
They are good, they are cheap, and they're targeting the midrange to low-end hardware segment which is not covered by any other manufacturer.
I have a 3090 in my desktop but I have an Arc card on my server for Moonlight/Sunshine streaming, as well as Plex transcoding. It's the cheapest card to have AV1 encoding built in.
I also keep seeing them increase performance significantly with every driver update, which is pretty cool.
I'm interested in your use of the Arc card for media transcoding. What one did you get and how would you say it compares to a GTX 960? The one in my server died and I stuck a spare 2060 in there a while back and am looking to downgrade to something sensible.
Most of my media is 1080p x264 with some 4k HEVC (and growing) if that helps.
I had a 1050ti in the machine and I bought an A770. It's overpowered for transcoding but I do remotely stream games at 1080p, which is a good workout for the card.
For simple transcoding I would buy the A310 since it's the cheapest card with AV1. I'm running an old 6th Gen i7-6600k and I had to mess with the UEFI to allow REBAR, but I used this tool to do it.
Too many edge case issues, especially for someone who plays a lot of indie titles and uses Linux. Also, they kinda just went into the low performance market. If they'd launch something for the upper midrange I'd be more interested (assuming they improved on a lot of fronts of course).
Didn't even know Intel made dedicated GPUs. The integrated ones have always been positively terrible.
The new dedicated cards are actually very good. They sell them at a competitive price because they are not powerhouses, but they get the job done. If you're targeting 1080p at your top end, it's almost a no-brainer to go with an Arc card. If you're pushing a higher resolution, it's probably better to go with another manufacturer, unless you're fine with higher resolutions and lower framerates.
I had a 1060 and upgraded to a 3080 ahile ago. For next upgrade most likely will do AMD unless Nvidia can convince me to go with them again
Brand-wise I've had great reliability with Zotac. They're seen as a budget brand but I've been using their GPUs for years without issue.