7 ms·

If I remember correctly, the open source ATI drivers were always a bit buggy and it wasn't that easy getting them installed either. The tradeoff was always Nvi

If I remember correctly, the open source ATI drivers were always a bit buggy and it wasn't that easy getting them installed either. The tradeoff was always Nvidia: proprietary but works well, ATI: open but buggy.

messe 4y ago
As far as I'm aware, since AMD took over, they've been fairly stable (although occasionally omitting support for the latest features until the next kernel release)
- dralley 4y ago
  IIRC were some problems with the Linux drivers for Navi 1.0 that continued for about a year after launch. Supposedly those have been fixed. My Vega 56 has been perfectly stable and trouble-free for years.
  - Kaze404 4y ago
    As a Navi 10 (5700 XT) owner, those problems still exist. It used to be that at least once a week while gaming the driver would crash with some undecipherable error message in dmesg, and because the card had the reset bug the only recourse was to reboot the machine entirely. 4 years later the only thing that's changed is that the crash shows up less frequently (I'd say once every 3 months).
    - dralley 4y ago
      Are you using Debian or Ubuntu LTS? LTS distros with older kernels are a separate beast when it comes to hardware support.
    - account42 4y ago
      Have you ruled out power supply issues and are you running at stock clocks (for CPU and RAM as well)? Anyway, going from "at least once a week" to "once every 3 months" means that 90% of your crashes have been fixed. > with some undecipherable error message in dmesg What kind of message would you expect that would be more decipherable.
      - Kaze404 4y ago
        > Have you ruled out power supply issues and are you running at stock clocks (for CPU and RAM as well)? Yes for both. No overclocking whatsoever. > Anyway, going from "at least once a week" to "once every 3 months" means that 90% of your crashes have been fixed. I don't think I'm supposed to be ok with a device I paid premium money for crashing once every three months with no explanation from the manufacturer. They could've fixed 99% for all I care, it's still absurd that it's even an issue in the first place. > What kind of message would you expect that would be more decipherable. One that would lead me to an actual solution or at least an explanation, not just year old threads of people reporting this exact issue with replies saying it was fixed in kernel version X, where X is different for each thread.
marcodiego 4y ago
> the open source ATI drivers were always a bit buggy and it wasn't that easy getting them installed either. No. Once mainlined, you had to do absolutely nothing to get the hardware working.
- chlorion 4y ago
  The part about them being buggy is definitely true. Up until somewhere around 2016-2017 the ATI/AMD drivers were really bad. I had an "HD 7850" GPU on Linux around that time and it was barely usable. The performance was less than half of what you got on Windows, and the drivers would crash very often, sometimes several times a day if I was trying to play games like Team Fortress 2. It was so bad that I decided to replace the HD 7850 with a new GTX 970 and decided to not buy anymore AMD GPUs for the indefinite future. The GTX 970 was stable and performed very well with the closed source drivers, and other than them being closed source I never had an issue with them. I always installed the closed drivers through the system package manager which handled all of the tricky stuff for me (Arch Linux maintains the nvidia driver as a system package and makes sure it runs on the current kernel before releasing it). In modern times the situation has flipped though. I still haven't bought an AMD GPU since then but I am pretty sure my next one will be.
  - marcodiego 4y ago
    About them being buggy, I won't discuss. But you didn't have to do anything to even get them installed.
    - ungamedplayer 4y ago
      For the people downvoting. The dude is saying there was nothing to download since the drivers come with the is install.
  - Shared404 4y ago
    Just bought a 6600XT, and it's been great. Literally just plugged it in and installed the driver packages I didn't on initial setup, on most distros it would've literally been plug and play.

messe 4y ago

As far as I'm aware, since AMD took over, they've been fairly stable (although occasionally omitting support for the latest features until the next kernel release)

dralley 4y ago
IIRC were some problems with the Linux drivers for Navi 1.0 that continued for about a year after launch. Supposedly those have been fixed. My Vega 56 has been perfectly stable and trouble-free for years.
- Kaze404 4y ago
  As a Navi 10 (5700 XT) owner, those problems still exist. It used to be that at least once a week while gaming the driver would crash with some undecipherable error message in dmesg, and because the card had the reset bug the only recourse was to reboot the machine entirely. 4 years later the only thing that's changed is that the crash shows up less frequently (I'd say once every 3 months).
  - dralley 4y ago
    Are you using Debian or Ubuntu LTS? LTS distros with older kernels are a separate beast when it comes to hardware support.
  - account42 4y ago
    Have you ruled out power supply issues and are you running at stock clocks (for CPU and RAM as well)? Anyway, going from "at least once a week" to "once every 3 months" means that 90% of your crashes have been fixed. > with some undecipherable error message in dmesg What kind of message would you expect that would be more decipherable.
    - Kaze404 4y ago
      > Have you ruled out power supply issues and are you running at stock clocks (for CPU and RAM as well)? Yes for both. No overclocking whatsoever. > Anyway, going from "at least once a week" to "once every 3 months" means that 90% of your crashes have been fixed. I don't think I'm supposed to be ok with a device I paid premium money for crashing once every three months with no explanation from the manufacturer. They could've fixed 99% for all I care, it's still absurd that it's even an issue in the first place. > What kind of message would you expect that would be more decipherable. One that would lead me to an actual solution or at least an explanation, not just year old threads of people reporting this exact issue with replies saying it was fixed in kernel version X, where X is different for each thread.

marcodiego 4y ago

> the open source ATI drivers were always a bit buggy and it wasn't that easy getting them installed either. No. Once mainlined, you had to do absolutely nothing to get the hardware working.

chlorion 4y ago
The part about them being buggy is definitely true. Up until somewhere around 2016-2017 the ATI/AMD drivers were really bad. I had an "HD 7850" GPU on Linux around that time and it was barely usable. The performance was less than half of what you got on Windows, and the drivers would crash very often, sometimes several times a day if I was trying to play games like Team Fortress 2. It was so bad that I decided to replace the HD 7850 with a new GTX 970 and decided to not buy anymore AMD GPUs for the indefinite future. The GTX 970 was stable and performed very well with the closed source drivers, and other than them being closed source I never had an issue with them. I always installed the closed drivers through the system package manager which handled all of the tricky stuff for me (Arch Linux maintains the nvidia driver as a system package and makes sure it runs on the current kernel before releasing it). In modern times the situation has flipped though. I still haven't bought an AMD GPU since then but I am pretty sure my next one will be.
- marcodiego 4y ago
  About them being buggy, I won't discuss. But you didn't have to do anything to even get them installed.
  - ungamedplayer 4y ago
    For the people downvoting. The dude is saying there was nothing to download since the drivers come with the is install.
- Shared404 4y ago
  Just bought a 6600XT, and it's been great. Literally just plugged it in and installed the driver packages I didn't on initial setup, on most distros it would've literally been plug and play.