AMD open-source drivers (new GPUs: amdgpu; old GPUs: radeon) is way better than NVIDIA open-source drivers (nouveau) and is competitive with their own closed-source drivers (new GPUs: amggpupro; old GPUs: catalyst), while losing to the NVIDIA close drivers [1].
If you want good performance using open-source drivers, AMD is the way to go with Linux [2].
[2]: Open-source drivers is important not only because FSF and all, but because the open-source drivers follows the advancements in Linux graphics stack much closer. Things like KMS and Wayland works much better with open-source drivers than NVIDIA proprietary drivers. Even things simple like Xrandr is ramdomly broken in NVIDIA drivers.
Open-source-only is an artificial comparison to make; nvidia's open-source drivers get very little development attention precisely because their official drivers on Linux are so good that most people have no reason to use the open-source ones. What matters to most users is performance, stability, and features under the best available driver - and in those terms nvidia still wins on Linux. (At least IME - e.g. my experience is that Xrandr was much more reliable for nvidia than for AMD)
It depends, open-source driver brings better desktop experience in general, even considering only NVIDIA drivers (nouveau), since you don't need the extra performance in 90% of the cases. Things like KMS is only available in NVIDIA binary drivers in recent releases, are still kind bugged and it is more difficult to use (installing a binary driver and including the module in initramfs VS. completely plug-and-play support with open-source drivers; the work can be automated by distro maintainers, but still is not the same thing). Other things like Wayland works so slow in NVIDIA binary drivers that is simple unusable. Another example is GPU switching: for some time Linux has a very good dynamic GPU switching support using PRIMUS, however NVIDIA proprietary drivers still does not support it (maybe they can't?), so NVIDIA ends up reinventing the wheel and their implementation is really bad (Vsync issues and no dynamic switching, you either start your whole X11 session in iGPU or dGPU, so it is kinda useless).
NVIDIA binary drivers really only win in performance. Even the features in NVIDIA drivers tends to be more bugged: i.e. I use compton as my composite manager. It needs a very old OpenGL version (like 1.1 or 2.0 capability), and NVIDIA drivers still mess up and I need to activates some workarounds in compton to get usable desktop. MESA (used by open-source drivers) has a much better OpenGL implementation, and I can basically get a glitch free desktop without workarounds. I also remember getting random glitches in Chrome and Gnome Shell, just to cite more examples.
So it is not an artificial comparison. Want performance and CUDA? Yeah, go to NVIDIA. Want just a stable, modern desktop (Wayland and composite glitch-free)? Open-source drivers is the way to go.
The AMD open source driver is just about on-par with their closed source Windows driver. One of the benefits of Open Source is also being utilized now. Game companies like Feral Interactive, who develop many Linux ports, have been improving the driver's performance for their games.
I just wanted a comparison between NVIDIA binary drivers and AMD open-source drivers. I know the comparison is old, I even added a footnote explaining this, saying that current performance of open source-drivers is even better.
Nvidia can play the game however they want. But they were not pushed into that situation. Their choice, they get to own it. I think it’s a fair comparison.
Nvidia isn't involved in nouveau, it's developed completely by the community. Since it can't use hardware in full, there is no point to compare it to radeonsi performance wise.
I don't think anyone would say this with any negativity towards the folks who are developing the nouveau driver. Given the circumstances that they are working under (no useful help from the vendor), they have done heroic work.
But I think you are missing the point here and that is: if you want to buy a GPU now for a Linux machine and you don't want to use a big proprietary blob, AMD is by far the best choice, because the amdgpu driver outperforms the nouveau driver.
> if you want to buy a GPU now for a Linux machine and you don't want to use a big proprietary blob, AMD is by far the best choice, because the amdgpu driver outperforms the nouveau driver.
No doubt, I said so explicitly elsewhere in this thread. I.e. that on Linux Nvidia will lose its current dominance.
Sure it makes sense, since the graphics driver for most is a means to an end. Few users are graphics driver fans based on how commendable the progress is relative to circumstances. Though this is of course a good and valid POV too.
In The Witcher 3 in Wine, AMD with Mesa beats Nvidia blob by a huge margin. Nvidia usually tries to optimize individual titles by cheating and substituting shaders and etc. In conformant OpenGL tests, AMD / Mesa is already close if not better. Mesa developers did a great job in the past year, and they are still working on improving performance.
I think he's basing it on a price-performance ratio. Phoronix tests show that NVIDIA's closed OpenGL/Vulkan drivers are still ahead of AMD/Mesa's open graphics stack. -- On the bright side the "relative" transparency of AMD with their graphics development does make maintaining the FOSS drivers easier as a kernel maintainer (although I rarely send patches to the graphics subsystem I have friends who do).
