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Consumer harm = selling their graphics cards at outrageous prices by keeping supply low and reducing the OS support for them by making Linux drivers crap. Then

by _nist 2y ago

Consumer harm = selling their graphics cards at outrageous prices by keeping supply low and reducing the OS support for them by making Linux drivers crap. Then again, it never "required" consumer harm as far as I've read.

Dalewyn 2y ago
That is at best a weak argument because guess what: AMD is competition and also sell at prices outrageous enough that there is no downward pressure. If anything, I would take Nvidia, AMD, and maybe Intel to court for price fixing their GPUs.
- _nist 2y ago
  I'm not sure what world you live in, but Nvidia sells their cards at 1.5 - 2 times the price than AMD's on average and AMD has had strong Linux support for years.
  - MR4D 2y ago
    Do they though? Another narrative is that AMD undercuts Nvidia prices because their product isn’t as good. Worse, Intel then undercuts AMD pricing for video cards because theirs aren’t even as good as AMD’s. When you get to antitrust, things like this are important. I may agree with you, but an Nvidia lawyer will take this tact and run with it.
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      Nvidia and AMD (previously ATI) have had a similar relationship for a long time, before ML was a use case. Nvidia has always been the more expensive option afaik. Kinda like Intel vs AMD.
      - _nist 2y ago
        It wasn't in the 2000's back when ATI and NVIDIA cards had comparable prices. Sometimes ATI cost a little more because they were better, but they were never crazy different from NVIDIA. And there were never supply problems.
    - _nist 2y ago
      When AMD can run 95% of games as good as any NVIDIA card and you factor in that most games have virtually no ray tracing support or any other fancy feature that NVIDIA offers, coupled with the known low performance/cost gains in their own graphics family, and their lack of ability to support demand despite being a trillion dollar company, I'd say that there isn't much of a leg to stand on.
      - MR4D 2y ago
        You could replace those brands with Times and Rolex. Still wouldn’t be antitrust.
        _nist 2y ago
        It would be anti-trust if they were deliberately shrinking supply to hike up prices on their cards. For example, I know I have the best card in the industry, so I'm going to force the supply low so I can charge effectively whatever I want.
theyeenzbeanz 2y ago
I had to use a bleeding edge live mint ISO yesterday because the regular release ISO gave me a black screen on my 3099z. Nvidia drivers continue to be my #1 Linux paint point aside from windows apps that don’t run on wine due to DRM/anticheats.
hot_gril 2y ago
Why would Nvidia intentionally use monopoly power to give Linux a hard time? You're also free to use AMD or Intel.
cududa 2y ago
They’re not required to make Linux drivers. They open sourced the stack years ago. Take it up with the driver community. Second, what? The drivers for AI work loads on Linux are powering massive models right now. I think what you actually meant is “I don’t understand antitrust laws or really underlying tech and am mad I can’t game on Linux”
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- _nist 2y ago
  I understand antitrust law enough to know that "mad I can't game on Linux" is an anti-competitive measure. As far as what I read about the driver stack, they only recently (within a year) release source for kernel modules. They did not open source the whole stack. And these are only new modules in an alpha state. Its basically the bare minimum. Most people aren't running ML on their workstations and these mostly use entirely different types of cards.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> making Linux drivers crap This has zero consumer harm since an insignificant fraction of consumers use Linux. The harm is in their control of both chip making and e.g. CUDA. The analogy would be Intel refusing to license 8086 and x86 to AMD [1]. [1] https://itigic.com/x86-on-intel-and-amd-why-cant-anyone-else-make-cpus/ https://itigic.com/x86-on-intel-and-amd-why-cant-anyone-else...
- cowpig 2y ago
  Isn't this reasoning circular? How would a significant fraction of consumers use Linux if it's not supported by a monopolist? edit: also, is the premise even true? Are these compute farms really running windows?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    It's circular the way it was described. Seems like Linux servers are fine with Nvidia GPUs for ML training, but not for graphics, which is more applicable to Linux desktops.
- EnergyAmy 2y ago
  I would be surprised if more than a small minority of consumers using CUDA ran anything other Linux. I would like it if I wasn't forced to use their crap drivers that force me to use X just because I want to do some ML.
- righthand 2y ago
  This is not true and very ignorant. Linux has huge marketshare especially across server space where NVidia cards are used also. Furthermore plenty of people run Linux desktops that would be affected by this. Consumer harm comes when there is intention to control consumer choice. Since Linux isn’t the biggest platform, but a major choice: It is therefor harmful for Nvidia to not support it properly. Check your bias.

by _nist 2y ago

Dalewyn 2y ago

That is at best a weak argument because guess what: AMD is competition and also sell at prices outrageous enough that there is no downward pressure. If anything, I would take Nvidia, AMD, and maybe Intel to court for price fixing their GPUs.

_nist 2y ago
I'm not sure what world you live in, but Nvidia sells their cards at 1.5 - 2 times the price than AMD's on average and AMD has had strong Linux support for years.
- MR4D 2y ago
  Do they though? Another narrative is that AMD undercuts Nvidia prices because their product isn’t as good. Worse, Intel then undercuts AMD pricing for video cards because theirs aren’t even as good as AMD’s. When you get to antitrust, things like this are important. I may agree with you, but an Nvidia lawyer will take this tact and run with it.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    Nvidia and AMD (previously ATI) have had a similar relationship for a long time, before ML was a use case. Nvidia has always been the more expensive option afaik. Kinda like Intel vs AMD.
    - _nist 2y ago
      It wasn't in the 2000's back when ATI and NVIDIA cards had comparable prices. Sometimes ATI cost a little more because they were better, but they were never crazy different from NVIDIA. And there were never supply problems.
  - _nist 2y ago
    When AMD can run 95% of games as good as any NVIDIA card and you factor in that most games have virtually no ray tracing support or any other fancy feature that NVIDIA offers, coupled with the known low performance/cost gains in their own graphics family, and their lack of ability to support demand despite being a trillion dollar company, I'd say that there isn't much of a leg to stand on.
    - MR4D 2y ago
      You could replace those brands with Times and Rolex. Still wouldn’t be antitrust.
      - _nist 2y ago
        It would be anti-trust if they were deliberately shrinking supply to hike up prices on their cards. For example, I know I have the best card in the industry, so I'm going to force the supply low so I can charge effectively whatever I want.

theyeenzbeanz 2y ago

I had to use a bleeding edge live mint ISO yesterday because the regular release ISO gave me a black screen on my 3099z. Nvidia drivers continue to be my #1 Linux paint point aside from windows apps that don’t run on wine due to DRM/anticheats.

hot_gril 2y ago

Why would Nvidia intentionally use monopoly power to give Linux a hard time? You're also free to use AMD or Intel.

cududa 2y ago

They’re not required to make Linux drivers. They open sourced the stack years ago. Take it up with the driver community. Second, what? The drivers for AI work loads on Linux are powering massive models right now. I think what you actually meant is “I don’t understand antitrust laws or really underlying tech and am mad I can’t game on Linux”

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
_nist 2y ago
I understand antitrust law enough to know that "mad I can't game on Linux" is an anti-competitive measure. As far as what I read about the driver stack, they only recently (within a year) release source for kernel modules. They did not open source the whole stack. And these are only new modules in an alpha state. Its basically the bare minimum. Most people aren't running ML on their workstations and these mostly use entirely different types of cards.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> making Linux drivers crap This has zero consumer harm since an insignificant fraction of consumers use Linux. The harm is in their control of both chip making and e.g. CUDA. The analogy would be Intel refusing to license 8086 and x86 to AMD [1]. [1] https://itigic.com/x86-on-intel-and-amd-why-cant-anyone-else-make-cpus/ https://itigic.com/x86-on-intel-and-amd-why-cant-anyone-else...

cowpig 2y ago
Isn't this reasoning circular? How would a significant fraction of consumers use Linux if it's not supported by a monopolist? edit: also, is the premise even true? Are these compute farms really running windows?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hot_gril 2y ago
  It's circular the way it was described. Seems like Linux servers are fine with Nvidia GPUs for ML training, but not for graphics, which is more applicable to Linux desktops.
EnergyAmy 2y ago
I would be surprised if more than a small minority of consumers using CUDA ran anything other Linux. I would like it if I wasn't forced to use their crap drivers that force me to use X just because I want to do some ML.
righthand 2y ago
This is not true and very ignorant. Linux has huge marketshare especially across server space where NVidia cards are used also. Furthermore plenty of people run Linux desktops that would be affected by this. Consumer harm comes when there is intention to control consumer choice. Since Linux isn’t the biggest platform, but a major choice: It is therefor harmful for Nvidia to not support it properly. Check your bias.