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AMD's Open Source Linux Driver Trounces NVIDIA's

Posted by timothy on from the hari-seldon dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In a 15-way graphics card comparison on Linux of both the open and closed-source drivers, it was found that the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver is much faster than the open-source NVIDIA driver on Ubuntu 13.04. The open-source NVIDIA driver is developed entirely by the community via reverse-engineering, but for Linux desktop users, is this enough? The big issue for the open-source 'Nouveau' driver is that it doesn't yet fully support re-clocking the graphics processor so that the hardware can actually run at its rated speeds. With the closed-source AMD Radeon and NVIDIA GeForce results, the drivers were substantially faster than their respective open-source driver. Between NVIDIA and AMD on Linux, the NVIDIA closed-source driver was generally doing better than AMD Catalyst."

7 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Nice heading by Desler · · Score: 5, Informative

    NVIDIA doesn't have an open source graphics driver... Nice misleading title there, timmy.

    1. Re:Nice heading by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who knows what they are doing.

      Guessing. AMD provides specs, nVidia doesn't nor do they offer developer help. The hardware interface of graphics cards changes a lot since what people care about is compliance with DirectX and OpenGL, what happens behind the scenes between the driver and hardware isn't important. Lots of weird interfaces, lots of magic values, lots of bugs that don't appear in the closed source drivers because the driver and hardware team have agreed on just the right order to set it up and call it. Nouveau is fueled by "if you refuse to support open source, by god we'll make it work with open source" and all credit for that but it seems this is a tough enough mountain to climb without the blindfold. Personally I'd rather get behind one of the companies that actually support open source, but everybody do what they want. That's how it works.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:Nice heading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You know, there's more than just two video card vendors in the world.

      Intel's graphics are supported better on linux than either nVidia or AMD. Intel hired Keith Packard, for chrissakes, what more could you want in support?

      Now it's true nVidia's hardware is faster & more powerful - at the moment. But you didn't mention that, you just claimed (incorrectly) that "nVidia has always had more 'just works' on linux" with is completely false. Matrox cards worked better than nVidia in the old days, and Intel 'just works' better now.

      I'm a pragmatist - I use Intel graphics chips in my linux boxen - and I suggest you do the same. They just work.

  2. Re:So the OSS community sucks at writing drivers by Zimluura · · Score: 5, Insightful

    wow, what a subject line. for the oss community to be able to get hw acceleration through reverse engineering is impressive!

    this isn't network/disk i/o hardware. opengl is a very complex api. it took nvidia years to get their ogl drivers into stable working order (without reverse engineering).

  3. Re:So the OSS community sucks at writing drivers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Access to the documentation of the hardware you are writing a driver for helps when writing the driver. If the OSS driver programmers are as good as the manufacturer's, or even slightly better, you'd still expect the manufacturer to produce better drivers simply because they don't have to waste their time to figure out how to access the hardware. Instead of experimenting some extended time, they just have a look in the internal hardware manual.

    If the OSS drivers are better than the manufacturer's without the manufacturer opening up the relevant documentation, it usually means that either the hardware is outdated, or the manufacturer's programmers did a really bad job, or both.

  4. Re:In other words: by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yup. I still buy NVidia cards because they ACTUALLY WORK and they do a reasonable quality control effort on their drivers.

    As opposed to AMD/ATI's drivers. Every time I've gone near a Radeon it's been nightmare driver hell, whether the platform is Linux or Windows. (Yeah, they can't even get their Windows drivers right. It should be the exception and not the norm that game A requires driver version Y and above, but game B requires drivers Z and below, where Z Y, because AMD/ATI don't comprehend regression testing - but every time I've worked with an AMD/ATI graphics chipset, that shit is normal.)

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  5. Re:hum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work for a semiconductor company, not one of the three mentioned above. I've worked on video drivers for our GPU as well.
    nVidia won't open source their drivers because it opens them up to patent lawsuits.
    Undoubtedly nVidia is using some crap that is patented by someone else in their hardware and software. Only a fool thinks they won't be sued by someone, even if it's bogus. AMD and Intel have been very careful on how they release and what they release. It's an expensive (in lawyer time) proposition and nVidia doesn't care to spend the money.