Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

andrewstuart

AMD is well behind nvidia on Linux.

Nvidia has powerful video capture and encoding functionality fully supported on Linux.

AMDs Linux support for anything except it’s core driver is crappy.

View on HN

AMD on Linux is the only platform where I don't have to install extra crap to use my graphics card.

Even AMD on Windows pretty much misses this mark. Windows Update will swap in a "slim" driver package on first boot, but if it weren't for that...

> AMD is well behind nvidia on Linux.

It is sarcasm, right? Last time I checked nvidia GPUs on Linux required proprietary nonsense and could not even run Wayland.

> AMDs Linux support for anything except it’s core driver is crappy.

Fortunately, the vast majority of users want their GPUs to display graphics. If the Steam Deck is any indication, AMD GPUs on Linux are quite capable of that.

OTOH AMDs core driver is open source and an developed along with the rest of the Linux graphics stack so downstream doesn't need to work around their NIH syndrome like with Nvidia.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know if it is fair to say "well behind." There are certainly mssing features, such as CUDA and proper video encoding, but using an amd gpu on linux is a seamless experience. Using nvidia cards requires their proprietary driver, and it doesn't always work well.

Video encoding works fine using VAAPI with their open source driver. Sadly there are lots of programs that don't implement VAAPI.

How does it compare with intel's quick sync video in terms of performance and supported codecs?

I can't say much on performance, though from what I've read online, AMD's video encoding engine is usually branded as the worst of the three.

Supported codecs depend on what generation of video decoder your graphics card contains. See these two comparison tables.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardware_video_acceleration...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder#Format_s...

AMD is supported natively on linux. Nvidia didn't make an open source version of the drivers because they sell the same chip under different prices, to cover more price segments, and limit the performance for the cheaper versions at the driver level.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com