http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/76884
Initial support for Gsync in Linux!
Why would you give Nvidia money for their inferior price-to-performance GPUs (AMD beats NVIDIA at every price point, just take a look at last few video card recommendation articles on anandtech), to lock you in with their closed source drivers and anti-consumer marketing schemes and then pay another extra $100 for a G-sync enabled monitor?
I would wait for the FreeSync (I think VESA chose a different name for it, I don't remember) standard to be adopted.
Well as of now I would go with AMD but I already have 2 660s.
"Why would you give Nvidia money"
Simple - performance.
I buy the brand which gives me the best performance overall. I'm not a political or philisophical psycopath so I am not going to let that sway my freedom of choice.
I use linux/BSD because of the tools which work for me - I am not a hipster who can't afford an iMac.
I can emulate linux binaries on BSD running a Nvidia blob with better performance than baremetal linux or windows 8.
When AMD gives me better performance than Nvidia, I will buy more of their products. Until then I don't care, but it is annoying that I have to recompile my kernel to remove all the AMD modules bloat atm.
"Simple - performance."
That statement is incomplete. Performance while using what operating system and what drivers?
- On Windows NVIDIA performs worse than any AMD GPU at the same price point - every review I read this year confirms this.
- On linux, NVIDIA proprietary drivers perform better than Catalyst (if you get them to install on your current kernel). On the other hand, NVIDIA open source drivers are abysmal compared to AMD's.
- Can't comment about BSD/Macs.
NVIDIA if inferior to AMD on Windows (obvious from benchmarks) and on linux, if you like to use the latest kernel versions.
"I'm not a political or philisophical psycopath [..]"
I am not one either. Besides the above objective reasons (well, as objective as I can make them) why NVIDIA is a worse choice than AMD, I also simply prefer not to give my money to companies that don't respect users. Seems like a healthy and logical consumer attitude from where I'm standing.
And I haven't even touched the fact that open source is a superior choice than proprietary software, and NVIDIA doesn't offer any sensible open source alternative to their drivers.
"I am not a hipster who can't afford an iMac [..]"
This sounds slightly discriminative to me.
Now, if you want to go in-depth about G-sync: it's only useful if you're having framerates between 30 and 60 fps (below 30 G-sync will repeat a frame, causing stuttering, above 60 plain old v-sync does the exact same job as G-sync). To get G-sync you also need to fork $100 for a G-sync enabled monitor. So that's an extra $100 plus the money you would normally pay for the monitor.
Let me put it this way: you're buying a GPU that doesn't hit 60 fps and then you're spending $100 dollars extra AND buying a new monitor so your games don't stutter while playing below 60 fps. Doesn't putting those $100 towards a better GPU (with display port 1.2a) that would allow you to hit 60 fps sound like a more reasonable choice (while also not buying a new monitor)? This way you end up with a better GPU, and a year down the line if the newer games are stuttering you can buy a new monitor with display port 1.2a. You might even forgo buying a new monitor if your current one has display port 1.2a and you receive a firmware update from the manufacturer (not likely, but hey, who knows?).
Dude, it's so hard for me not to facepalm when reading your posts as it's totally clear you are new to the whole linux/BSD thing and IT in general - You read like you have no idea what you're talking about.
Send me a message if you feel like raging about it?
EDIT: would you be so kind as point out what I am wrong about? I wouldn't want other people to get false information from my post.
15 MB of "bloat" as modules in RAM
..."would you be so kind as point out what I am wrong about? I wouldn't want other people to get false information from my post."
I'm not saying you're wrong about anything as you're entitled to say whatever you want. I'm just saying that it's painful to read some of your posts as you're clearly an educated person but you also have a FOSS anti proprietary agenda which isn't tolerated in any linux community I am part of.
..."NVIDIA performs worse than any AMD GPU at the same price point - every review I read this year confirms this."
Yes, this has been the way since time immemorial. It's about competition and pricing products according to relative performance. Nvidia currently has the fastest consumer-grade single GPU card on the market ie; the GTX 780ti. High-end offerings traditionally add a premium for their performance. And what is your point?
..."On linux, NVIDIA proprietary drivers perform better than Catalyst (if you get them to install on your current kernel."
Really, that's interesting. Are you speaking from experience because you have Nvidia cards?
My experience has been different. I have a lot more issues with AMD on linux than I do with Nvidia. It's been this way for me for I would say over ten years. A few years ago if you bought any AMD card to use on linux you were nuts, unless you didn't need stable 3D accelerated graphics. But I am not indifferent towards AMD - I like AMD.
..."Now, if you want to go in-depth about G-sync"
You make it sounds like you know a lot about Gsync - are you a developer? Every time I have seen variable refresh rates in action I think they're pretty nice. Having a graphics card company developing hardware to essentially improve monitors with GPU-display interaction, and not just for frame-rates, but for colour depth/correction formats, compression and pixel depth etc etc. This is fantastic IMHO.
Without offering a history lesson, the thing with Nvidia is that they drive innovation. There was a time when if you wanted 3D graphics on linux, you needed to buy Nvidia. Reason being that other available options cost ten times as much or even sometimes as much as a new car costs today. Nvidia offered a cheaper solution for enterprise scalability back in those days, and as a result a plethora of open source development was born.
You can be anti Nvidia et al but it makes you look like you have an agenda, ie; a Stallman/AMD fanboy - or it makes you look like you don't know a great deal of history about the hardware/software innovation in the overall greater open source movement. If you use linux, then I guess you'd also be familiar with a truck-load of other proprietary firmware modules and drivers - I wait with bated breath for all the anti-proprietary posts to come.
"I wait with bated breath for all the anti-proprietary posts to come."
Although I appreciate you taking the time to write such a lengthy reply to my post, I am afraid I am going to disappoint you, no open source deifying from me today.
As for G-Sync:
"You make it sounds like you know a lot about Gsync - are you a developer?"
Do I have to be a developer to have a valid opinion about a certain technology? Here's the source of my assessment of G-Sync: http://anandtech.com/show/7582/nvidia-gsync-review, are Anand's reviews useless because he isn't a developer?
My previous comments weren't about variable refresh monitors, I actually think Nvidia's idea was great. What I dislike is the implementation. First of all, because of the financial aspect that I mentioned earlier (I was refering to the majority of users, that means more than 50%), and because AMD's implementation is far superior for the following reasons:
- AMD is implementing variable refresh rate as a driver update, instead of a separate hardware module. I might not be an IT specialist, but it seems to me that a software implementation of a feature is better than a hardware implementation because it's cheaper, it's backwards compatible (in this case) and it's easier to maintain. Am I wrong in believing this?
- G-Sync is proprietary, only Nvidia users have access to it, and it will be harder for other GPU manufacturer to have access to it because of pantent fees (presumably). On the other hand, AMD's implementation is open source, meaning that it's a lot easier for everyone to benefit from it. All it takes for Nvidia to implement it is a driver update.
"High-end offerings traditionally add a premium for their performance. And what is your point?"
Of course there will always be exceptions, my statements concern the majority of users, and the majority of users have maninstream GPUs, not the high end.
"Are you speaking from experience because you have Nvidia cards?"
I'm not speaking from experience. The source for my statements is the Gentoo wiki (http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/NVidia/nvidia-drivers, scroll down to the Kernel compatibility section) and various posts that I occasionaly saw on different forums.
Of course everybody's experience will be different, and like I've said earlier, my statements weren't meant to cover absolutely everyone, just what I consider to be the majority of cases. I would argue that it being on the Gentoo wiki is reason enough to call the fact that Nvidia drivers sometimes don't install on new kernel versions a likely use scenario.
As for the short history of Nvidia that you have posted, I appreciate it, but I dislike Nvidia not for their history, but for the crap they are pulling today. I don't believe in absolutes, and there is no such thing as an absolutely evil or absolutely good company. I consider G-Sync to be a valid example of this, the idea was great and without Nvidia AMD wouldn't have worked with VESA to implement Adaptive-Sync. Their implementation was awful though.
"You can be anti Nvidia et al but it makes you look like you have an agenda [..]"
Is disliking what a company does considered "having an agenda"? I don't agree.
"[..] a Stallman/AMD fanboy [..]"
I don't consider myself a fanboy of anything or anyone, but I'm not bothered at all by you believing otherwise.
..."Although I appreciate you taking the time to write such a lengthy reply to my post"
I usually don't have a lot of time for lengthier posts, but no worries.
..."Do I have to be a developer to have a valid opinion about a certain technology? Here's the source of my assessment of G-Sync: http://anandtech.com/show/7582/nvidia-gsync-review, are Anand's reviews useless because he isn't a developer?"
You could be a desktop user and read articles and talk about whatever makes you happy. Shit, I've seen people quote wikipedia. BTW, Anand Lal Shimpi is a developer just so you know.
..."I'm not speaking from experience. The source for my statements is the Gentoo wiki (http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/NVidia/nvidia-drivers, scroll down to the Kernel compatibility section) and various posts that I occasionaly saw on different forums."
Gentoo is one of my passions, and has been for many years. I can tell you a lot of the wiki has outdated info. root # update-modules from the page you linked for example has been deprecated for a long time. Most people who use Gentoo know how to configure a video card. It's really as simple as using your existing config and doing a rebuild. ie; emerge -avt1 @module-rebuild.
..."Is disliking what a company does considered "having an agenda"? I don't agree."
It might be construed that way when the majority of your thread history is nvidia/microsoft rants.
..."I don't consider myself a fanboy of anything or anyone, but I'm not bothered at all by you believing otherwise."
Right.
As an aside, technology licenses from 3rd party companies/investors are the reason many proprietary hardware/software companies don't open source drivers. Even if they wanted to they can't ;)
"BTW, Anand Lal Shimpi is a developer just so you know."
Didn't know that, thank you for the info.
"Even if they wanted to they can't ;)"
I would rather be a cynic and say that they don't want to, and use the above as an easy excuse. The more critical of a company's strategies, the less chance for being taken for a ride.
I feel like both are expensive.
While an open free option is certainly advantageous to consumers it remains to be seen how AMD will truly be able to implement this technology. Recent examples of the technology were shown with laptops which have a different display system than desktops. NVIDIA claims that a module is ultimately necessary in order to get the performance they showcase; however at recent Computex events the technology was indeed showcased on a monitor setup. A DisplayPort 1.2a link will be required between the monitor and graphics card.
Ultimately, neither one of these technologies are free with G-Sync requiring the new G-Sync compatible monitor and while the monitor may be cheaper on the Adaptive Sync side you'll still need it as well as a compatible AMD graphics card to work. -- http://toptenmonitors.hubpages.com/hub/G-sync-monitors