Intel/AMD - Nvidia/ATI Debate

[McCordRm]

Ok, so no posting in the debate. So I'll start this here.

I'm not interested in a flame/bashing war, just thought it was interesting how

far apart the CPU votes are, whereas the Video Card votes continue to stay

extremely close.

In the "old" days, you had Intel, AMD, Cyrix (?), etc... and the debates got

really heated about "bang for buck". Today, it's pretty much Intel's world.

But on the video card side... wow. There's still no real clear winner.

[Arceles]

Last time I helped a mate to buy a laptop, it was the only AMD that we could found here on Sheffield, it was an HP Envy with an A6-4455m, the laptop itself it's almost like a ultrabook, battery last, in words of him "all day"

What amazed me of this laptop though, it was that it could play Max Payne 3 (DX11 in low settings) quite fast, and by fast I mean above 30+ fps, there were no slowdowns. I think AMD pretty much has taken in the ultrabook experience competition by quite a lot.

This was the laptop: http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/laptops/product-detail.html?oid=5278389 (with cash back at currys they took of 150 pounds of the price)

[Shane Nokes]

I would personally like to see a good quality AMD-based motherboard with dual CPU that allows me to also use the GPU portion of the APU's in Crossfire mode. If they did that then they could really hurt Intel on a Price/Performance ratio even more than what they are doing now.

[f0rk_b0mb]

NVIDIA all the way.

[jorel009]

Intel?s illegal tactics paid off for them. If amds strategy works out for them (they really need to get more server parts out and up their market share), it would still take a couple of years for them to do well financially.

[Karl L.]

I think it really depends on what you are looking for in a video card. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.

nVidia tends to be very good with their proprietary drivers (on Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD), but the open-source nouveau graphics driver (integrated into the Linux kernel) is somewhat lacking in both features and hardware support (mostly due to nVidia's refusal to provide help or the necessary documentation from what I understand).

AMD is almost exactly the opposite of nVidia. Their proprietary graphics drivers are fairly descent on Windows, but are severely lacking on Linux. However, AMD has been supporting the development of the open-source Radeon graphics driver integrated into the Linux kernel. It is improving rapidly and already provides excellent performance, even on the latest hardware.

Intel's latest generation of GPUs actually provide descent performance for every-day use, although nowhere close to the power of their modern AMD and nVidia counterparts. Their main advantage is excellent driver support on both Windows and Linux. Their officially supported open-source drivers are integrated into the Linux kernel and support full 2D and 3D acceleration, power management, sleep, and generally perform very well.

Summary:

nVidia: Excellent if you need a powerful GPU with good proprietary drivers.

AMD: Excellent if you need a powerful GPU with good open-source drivers.

Intel: Excellent if you can sacrifice power for rock-solid stability.

Note: I only considered technical factors. While price is certainly a very important factor, it is constantly changing and completely unrelated to my general opinion of each manufacturer.

[mycoolkim]

Intel + NVIDIA FTMFT

Haven't touched AMD since Athlon 64 and dropped ATI 8 years ago when 2 GFX cards bonked out on me within a month (yes, I know 8 years is a long time to hold a grudge over a product, but first impressions are what counts)

[redvamp128]

I think it really depends on what you are looking for in a video card. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.

nVidia tends to be very good with their proprietary drivers (on Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD), but the open-source nouveau graphics driver (integrated into the Linux kernel) is somewhat lacking in both features and hardware support (mostly due to nVidia's refusal to provide help or the necessary documentation from what I understand).

AMD is almost exactly the opposite of nVidia. Their proprietary graphics drivers are fairly descent on Windows, but are severely lacking on Linux. However, AMD has been supporting the development of the open-source Radeon graphics driver integrated into the Linux kernel. It is improving rapidly and already provides excellent performance, even on the latest hardware.

Intel's latest generation of GPUs actually provide descent performance for every-day use, although nowhere close to the power of their modern AMD and nVidia counterparts. Their main advantage is excellent driver support on both Windows and Linux. Their officially supported open-source drivers are integrated into the Linux kernel and support full 2D and 3D acceleration, power management, sleep, and generally perform very well.

Summary:

nVidia: Excellent if you need a powerful GPU with good proprietary drivers.

AMD: Excellent if you need a powerful GPU with good open-source drivers.

Intel: Excellent if you can sacrifice power for rock-solid stability.

Note: I only considered technical factors. While price is certainly a very important factor, it is constantly changing and completely unrelated to my general opinion of each manufacturer.

I would concur about Nvidia should you want to dual boot- Linux and Windows- . Still has a box up and running with a Nvidia Ge-force 4 4000 64 mb video card that runs XP and Ubuntu 10.04.

[Shane Nokes]

Intel + NVIDIA FTMFT

Haven't touched AMD since Athlon 64 and dropped ATI 8 years ago when 2 GFX cards bonked out on me within a month (yes, I know 8 years is a long time to hold a grudge over a product, but first impressions are what counts)

Remember that ATi/AMD hasn't made their own cards in years. So odds are that what you bought were 3rd party made cards...which is what you get with nVidia as well.

So just because one vendor made some bad cards doesn't meant that ATi/AMD graphics cards are bad. I have certain vendors I won't buy cards from based on the reliability ratings I see at a few places. That goes for both ATi/AMD and nVidia.

[Karl L.]

I would concur about Nvidia should you want to dual boot- Linux and Windows- . Still has a box up and running with a Nvidia Ge-force 4 4000 64 mb video card that runs XP and Ubuntu 10.04.

I would actually say exactly the opposite. I would go with AMD in that case. I prioritize open-source drivers over proprietary drivers because they tend to support much older cards extremely well, have no ABI problems, and work on more than a few "blessed" architectures (namely i686 and AMD64, occasionally ARMv6/v7 as well).

Are you using the proprietary or open-source driver for your GeForce 4? As far as I know, the proprietary driver doesn't support it anymore (although Canonical may have an older version in the repository). Its likely that nouveau would get better performance with a card that old anyway.

[redvamp128]

I would actually say exactly the opposite. I would go with AMD in that case. I prioritize open-source drivers over proprietary drivers because they tend to support much older cards extremely well, have no ABI problems, and work on more than a few "blessed" architectures (namely i686 and AMD64, occasionally ARMv6/v7 as well).

Are you using the proprietary or open-source driver for your GeForce 4? As far as I know, the proprietary driver doesn't support it anymore (although Canonical may have an older version in the repository). Its likely that nouveau would get better performance with a card that old anyway.

The Geforce 4 MX4000 is an old card... DX7 open GL 1.2

actually the Nvidia drivers for the old work fine.

[Karl L.]

The Geforce 4 MX4000 is an old card... DX7 open GL 1.2

actually the Nvidia drivers for the old work fine.

This is what I get when I use aptitude to search for proprietary nVidia drivers on Ubuntu 12.04:

$ aptitude versions '^nvidia[-]([0-9]+$|current$)'
Package nvidia-173:														     
p   173.14.30-0ubuntu11						   precise				   500
p   173.14.35-0ubuntu0.2						  precise-security,precise- 500

Package nvidia-173:i386:
p   173.14.30-0ubuntu11						   precise				   500
p   173.14.35-0ubuntu0.2						  precise-security,precise- 500

Package nvidia-96:
p   96.43.20-0ubuntu6							 precise				   500

Package nvidia-96:i386:
p   96.43.20-0ubuntu6							 precise				   500

Package nvidia-current:
p   295.40-0ubuntu1							   precise				   500
p   295.40-0ubuntu1.1							 precise-security,precise- 500

Package nvidia-current:i386:
p   295.40-0ubuntu1							   precise				   500
p   295.40-0ubuntu1.1							 precise-security,precise- 500
[/CODE]

I'm guessing you are using version 96 or 173, probably not 295. Although it would be pretty cool if I'm wrong; that would prove nVidia has much better old hardware support on Linux than I thought. (Aptitude would show 'i' or 'v' instead of 'p' if you have the package installed.)

[redvamp128]

This is what I get when I use aptitude to search for proprietary nVidia drivers on Ubuntu 12.04:

$ aptitude versions '^nvidia[-]([0-9]+$|current$)'

Package nvidia-96:

p 96.43.20-0ubuntu6 precise 500

Package nvidia-96:i386:

p 96.43.20-0ubuntu6 precise 500

#sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.20-pkg1.run[/CODE]

[/font][/color]

http://www.nvidia.co....20-driver.html

And should I decide to- that will even do the "compiz cube spin"

I don't use the new layout -- still love the old Gnome.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

What is the best at the time of purchase.

I've owned both nvidia and Ati/amd video cards. Amd, and intel cpu systems. I figure out what I'm going to spend, look at both ati/nvidia cards in that price range, and buy the one that gives me the best performance (for what I'm wanting to spend).

I do the same thing with amd cpu's,however you reach a certain point that amd has no equivalent in terms of performance of the intel version on the higher end of the processors.

[Karl L.]

#sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.20-pkg1.run[/CODE]

[/font][/color]

http://www.nvidia.co....20-driver.html

I see. So you are using a legacy proprietary driver, just not the one from the repository.

While downloading drivers and other software directly from the vendor's website is common practice on Windows, it is not recommend in most Linux distributions unless the software is not in the repository (and sometimes not even then). As you can see from your aptitude output, you can install nvidia-96 directly from the repository. (It is far less likely to cause breakage, will get updates with your other software, and will hook into DKMS properly.)

Despite the fact that you [i]can[/i] install an obsolete proprietary driver for your video card, you will likely get better performance with the open-source nouveau driver. While I don't have exactly the same card as you, I can verify that nouveau performs well on a GeForce 4 series card. However, there are a couple of packages that you will need to install so nouveau can get full 3D acceleration. Install [i]libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental[/i], [i]xserver-xorg-video-nouveau[/i], and [i]nouveau-firmware[/i] (if you're using Ubuntu or Linux Mint) or [i]firmware-linux-nonfree[/i] (if you're using Debian). Obviously, you will also need to remove the proprietary driver first so there are no driver conflicts.

I don't use the new layout -- still love the old Gnome.

If you really like GNOME 2, you should check out MATE. Basically, it is a project based on the last released version of GNOME 2, plus additional enhancements. Their goal is to continue development of GNOME 2 where the GNOME Project left off. Eventually, they plan to integrate GTK3 support and other newer technologies while still retaining the look-and-feel of GNOME 2.

Instead of sticking with Ubuntu 10.04 forever, you should consider upgrading to a newer version of Ubuntu (or another distribution). Your desktop environment preference doesn't have to hold back the rest of the software on your system. I installed Debian Wheezy on my laptop, selecting the XFCE desktop environment during the installation so a lightweight desktop environment would be installed with the default applications. Then, I added the contrib and non-free repositories and installed the proprietary firmware to make all of my hardware work. Finally, I added the MATE Debian repository to my [i]sources.list[/i] using the instructions in the MATE wiki and installed [i]mate-desktop-environment[/i] from the repository. After reboot, I selected MATE as my default desktop environment from the LightDM login manager and have been using it ever since.