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by rewgs 348 days ago
> 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.

Err, what? While you're right about Intel integrated GPUs being a safe choice, AMD has long since been the GPU of choice for Linux -- it just works. Whereas Nvidia on Linux has been flaky for as long as I can remember.

3 comments

>Err, what? While you're right about Intel integrated GPUs being a safe choice, AMD has long since been the GPU of choice for Linux -- it just works. Whereas Nvidia on Linux has been flaky for as long as I can remember.

Not OP, I had same experience in the past with AMD,I bought a new laptop and in 6 months the AMD decided that my card is obsolete and no longer provided drivers forcing me to be stuck with older kernel/X11 , so I switched to NVIDIA and after 2 PC changes I still use NVIDIA since the official drivers work great, I really hope AMD this time is putting the effort to keep older generations of cards working on latest kernels/X11 maybe next card will be AMD.

But this is an explanations why us some older Linux users have bad memories with AMD and we had good reason to switch over to NVIDIA and no good reason to switch back to AMD

Had major problems with xinerama, suspend/resume, vsync, probably a bunch of other stuff.

That said, I've been avoiding AMD in general for so long the ecosystem might have really improved in the meantime, as there was no incentive for me to try and switch.

Recently I've been dabbling in AI where AMD GPUs (well, sw ecosystem, really) are lagging behind. Just wasn't worth the hassle.

NVidia hw, once I set it up (which may be a bit involved), has been pretty stable for me.

I run llama.cpp using Vulkan and AMD CPUs, no need to install any drivers (or management software for that matter, nor any need to taint the kernel meaning if I have an issue it's easy to get support). For example the other day when a Mesa update had an issue I had a fix in less than 36 hours (without any support contract or fees) and `apt-mark hold` did a perfect job until there was a fix. Performance for me is within a couple of % points, and with under-volting I get better joules per token.
> I've been avoiding AMD in general

I have no opinion on GPUs (I don't play anything released later than about 2008), but Intel CPUs have had more problems over the last five years than AMD, including disabling the already limited support for AVX-512 after release and simply burning themselves to the ground to get an easy win in initial benchmarks.

I fear your perception of their products is seriously out of date.

> I fear your perception of their products is seriously out of date.

How's the chipset+linux story these days? That was the main reason for not choosing AMD CPU for me the last few times I was in the market.

I believe this is correct. Linux drivers and support duration were garbage at least 2003-2015. AMD fanboys feveretly expressed opinions notwithstanding. Especially so when AMD started the process of open sourcing their drivers even though many chips already existing didn't qualify for the new upcoming open source drivers. 2015-2018 drivers were acceptable but performance was poorer than Nvidia and wayland support wasn't a notable for most parties.

Now wayland support is an important factor and AMD is a perfectly acceptable and indeed economical choice.

Basically 15 years inertia is hard to counter.

They have never been flaky on the x11 desktop