I like AMD. I really want to see them compete because I like options (and, you can't just swap card manufacturers in your laptops).
But... my hands on experiences with several AMD cards have been much like v8envy's. He's not trolling just for saying that the nVidia drivers usually just work better. Many of us who own both and have spent our fair share of time fighting with both share that opinion.
Just one instance: Last year, I won a gaming rig with a Radeon HD 5870. It had problems with so many Linux apps that I fought with it for two weeks and ended up giving it to one of my kids for their Winbox... installing their lesser powered nVidia card in the new rig. Yes, a downgrade was preferable to fighting with screen corruption, crashes, and other problems. THAT's how painful the AMD Linux drivers can be.
And I saw problems all around - not just with Wine (though that was particularly bad - over a half dozen of my Steam games not working at all whereas they worked fine with the lesser nVidia card), but also in KWin and Compiz (not being used concurrently, of course). At that time I became very familiar with the AMD user communities and unofficial bug-tracker - and my problems were not new or unique. Conversely, I honestly can't remember the last time I had a problem with the nVidia drivers that I'm using on four other machines.
If AMD has somehow gotten their act together in the last year, great. I somehow doubt that though, considering I still see plenty of new bugs in the various reporting places, and launchpad shows there are 3x the number of outstanding bugs for the Ubuntu fglrx packages as there are for the nvidia-current drivers. That's even more damning when you take into consideration that more Linux users use nVidia cards (according to the Phoronix Global stats).
Stability and bugs aside - the real problem with AMD is that it takes them months to release fixed versions when there's breakage due to new kernels or Xorg revs. That's probably not a huge concern for "normal" users (are there any "normal" Linux users? ), but it's a showstopper for those of us that ride the bleeding edge. For that reason alone, I wouldn't recommend their cards to anyone that really wants to hack on Linux.
TLDNR: v8envy's not the troll, mirv is - because he trolled me into summing up why I and others have valid reasons for our belief that AMD's drivers are not currently anywhere equal to nVidia's.
But... my hands on experiences with several AMD cards have been much like v8envy's. He's not trolling just for saying that the nVidia drivers usually just work better. Many of us who own both and have spent our fair share of time fighting with both share that opinion.
Just one instance: Last year, I won a gaming rig with a Radeon HD 5870. It had problems with so many Linux apps that I fought with it for two weeks and ended up giving it to one of my kids for their Winbox... installing their lesser powered nVidia card in the new rig. Yes, a downgrade was preferable to fighting with screen corruption, crashes, and other problems. THAT's how painful the AMD Linux drivers can be.
And I saw problems all around - not just with Wine (though that was particularly bad - over a half dozen of my Steam games not working at all whereas they worked fine with the lesser nVidia card), but also in KWin and Compiz (not being used concurrently, of course). At that time I became very familiar with the AMD user communities and unofficial bug-tracker - and my problems were not new or unique. Conversely, I honestly can't remember the last time I had a problem with the nVidia drivers that I'm using on four other machines.
If AMD has somehow gotten their act together in the last year, great. I somehow doubt that though, considering I still see plenty of new bugs in the various reporting places, and launchpad shows there are 3x the number of outstanding bugs for the Ubuntu fglrx packages as there are for the nvidia-current drivers. That's even more damning when you take into consideration that more Linux users use nVidia cards (according to the Phoronix Global stats).
Stability and bugs aside - the real problem with AMD is that it takes them months to release fixed versions when there's breakage due to new kernels or Xorg revs. That's probably not a huge concern for "normal" users (are there any "normal" Linux users? ), but it's a showstopper for those of us that ride the bleeding edge. For that reason alone, I wouldn't recommend their cards to anyone that really wants to hack on Linux.
TLDNR: v8envy's not the troll, mirv is - because he trolled me into summing up why I and others have valid reasons for our belief that AMD's drivers are not currently anywhere equal to nVidia's.
Comment