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My understanding is that Nvidia has at least in the past been more friendly to linux development and that AMD linux drivers can be buggy.


Anyone have any experience with AMD and linux?



Thanks

LC

AMD Drivers are a pain on windows desktops let alone Linux.

Reliant121 wrote:AMD Drivers are a pain on windows desktops let alone Linux.

Wow really lol. Good thing I mostly use Nvidia.


And thanks for the reply.

AMD drivers have, in my experience at least, always been rather unstable and poorly optimised. The power is there but the software to optimise it simply isn't. I'd always by Intel processors and Nvidia graphics for that very reason; the drivers and software are lightyears ahead, making a less powerful intel computer perform on a level with a significantly more meaty AMD based one.

Put it this way, we recently built an AMD 6 core powered PC with tonnes of RAM and a very good AMD graphics card. It matches my three year old Intel i5 with nvidia computer; the graphics card is slightly more powerful but otherwise they are near identical matches. Intel stuff is expensive for a reason.

Reliant121 wrote:AMD drivers have, in my experience at least, always been rather unstable and poorly optimised. The power is there but the software to optimise it simply isn't. I'd always by Intel processors and Nvidia graphics for that very reason; the drivers and software are lightyears ahead, making a less powerful intel computer perform on a level with a significantly more meaty AMD based one.

Put it this way, we recently built an AMD 6 core powered PC with tonnes of RAM and a very good AMD graphics card. It matches my three year old Intel i5 with nvidia computer; the graphics card is slightly more powerful but otherwise they are near identical matches. Intel stuff is expensive for a reason.

Sounds like if AMD actually bothered they could be much more of an actual competitor to Intel/Nvidia.

Which is a real shame, because we need competition in this space.

Reliant121 wrote:AMD drivers have, in my experience at least, always been rather unstable and poorly optimised. The power is there but the software to optimise it simply isn't. I'd always by Intel processors and Nvidia graphics for that very reason; the drivers and software are lightyears ahead, making a less powerful intel computer perform on a level with a significantly more meaty AMD based one.

Put it this way, we recently built an AMD 6 core powered PC with tonnes of RAM and a very good AMD graphics card. It matches my three year old Intel i5 with nvidia computer; the graphics card is slightly more powerful but otherwise they are near identical matches. Intel stuff is expensive for a reason.

I'd summarize the difference between Intel and AMD in CPU performance not as a driver issue but a matter of efficiency. I'm not sure what criteria you're using to judge an AMD system as "significantly more meaty," but CPU performance is based on more than core count and clock speed. In short, a single Intel core compared to a single AMD core of the equivalent series (similar time of release) and at the same frequency is significantly faster. The reasons are due to lots of small optimizations in the circuit layout of the chips; it's hard to point out individual hardware features that make the difference. Technically it is referred to as differences in "IPC," or Instructions Per Clock - this isn't a constant.

It wasn't always this way: back a bit over a decade ago AMD had the fastest chips around when Athlon 64 competed with Pentium 4, this time due to a more efficient architecture by AMD. Intel thought it could achieve high performance through high clock speed, and had designed the P4 specifically to reach the highest possible clocks. Unfortunately it's performance was held back by inefficiencies, and it ran into thermal problems: it turns out that the frequency a chip is run at has a strong influence on the power it consumes and accordingly the heat it puts out. This is no small part of the reasons for the move to multicore chips. Clearly Intel learned it's lesson, as the Core series returned to a much more efficient architecture, winning back the performance crown which Intel hasn't surrendered since. The Core-i series became more integrated, baking the memory controller and integrated graphics onto the same chip as the CPU proper and continued steady improvements in efficiency/IPC with each successive generation (with modest bumps in clock frequencies as well).

Nowadays, AMD chips are sold with higher base frequencies and more cores than similarly placed Intel chips but due to better engineering the Intel chips perform better at real world tasks. That's not to say AMD has no value; they still have better graphics tech and can perform well in midrange systems with good performance for the [unit of currency]. It's only at the very top of the scale where AMD can't compete with the Core i7.

That was mostly my point (just without the more detailed knowledge). Intel computers I have used have always punched well above their weight compared to AMD ones and since it isn't clock speed and core count, it must be the more intricate things such as the efficiency of the design and software.

Even our midrange AMD is utterly outperformed by my Intel. It's just a shame INtel are so expensive as mine is getting a bit old now but replacing it is going to be expensive.