That’s less of an issue these days. In the 2000s it was like that, especially since people used all sorts of add-in cards. These days a lot of those cards have merged with the mainboard (networking, sound, USB) or have fallen out of fashion (e.g. TV tuners).
The mainboard stuff is generally well-supported. The days of the Winmodem are over. The big issues these days are special-purpose hardware (which generally doesn’t work with later Windows versions either), laptops, and Nvidia GPUs (which are getting better).
I said what I said because it’s relevant today. I literally had this issue last month with modern hardware, when I couldn’t get HDR working properly in KDE 6 Plasma (colors are washed-out and have no contrast when HDR is on). And features from my GPU are completely missing, like SDR-to-HDR conversion, AI upscaling, and the entire 3D Settings Page (the one where you can change settings not available in-game). When I ask people for help with restoring these features/settings, no one has any idea what I’m talking about. So I gave up and went back to Windows.
Ah, the old Nvidia problem. It’s true that Nvidia’s Linux driver isn’t very good (although I don’t think their Windows driver is very good either, it just has more features).
The 3D Settings page is specific to the Nvidia Windows driver. Even an AMD user might’ve been slightly confused (although AMD ships comparable features, just located elsewhere under a different name). This is indeed something the Linux drivers plain don’t have in that form, although I can’t remember the last time I felt a need to really muck around in there.
Admittedly, overriding game rendering behavior might not even always be possible, seeing that DirectX games are run through a translation layer before the GPU gets to do anything.
I wasn’t able to find solid info for AI upscaling even on Windows, mainly because of the terrible name of that feature and because Nvidia offers both “AI Upscaling” and “Nvidia Image Scaling” and I have no idea if those are the same thing. The former seems to be specific to the Nvidia SHIELD.
Unless you’re talking about DLSS, which is supported.
The HDR one is odd but might again be related to the Nvidia driver not being very good. This should improve in the future but they are admittedly trailing behind.
That’s less of an issue these days. In the 2000s it was like that, especially since people used all sorts of add-in cards. These days a lot of those cards have merged with the mainboard (networking, sound, USB) or have fallen out of fashion (e.g. TV tuners).
The mainboard stuff is generally well-supported. The days of the Winmodem are over. The big issues these days are special-purpose hardware (which generally doesn’t work with later Windows versions either), laptops, and Nvidia GPUs (which are getting better).
I said what I said because it’s relevant today. I literally had this issue last month with modern hardware, when I couldn’t get HDR working properly in KDE 6 Plasma (colors are washed-out and have no contrast when HDR is on). And features from my GPU are completely missing, like SDR-to-HDR conversion, AI upscaling, and the entire 3D Settings Page (the one where you can change settings not available in-game). When I ask people for help with restoring these features/settings, no one has any idea what I’m talking about. So I gave up and went back to Windows.
Ah, the old Nvidia problem. It’s true that Nvidia’s Linux driver isn’t very good (although I don’t think their Windows driver is very good either, it just has more features).
The 3D Settings page is specific to the Nvidia Windows driver. Even an AMD user might’ve been slightly confused (although AMD ships comparable features, just located elsewhere under a different name). This is indeed something the Linux drivers plain don’t have in that form, although I can’t remember the last time I felt a need to really muck around in there.
Admittedly, overriding game rendering behavior might not even always be possible, seeing that DirectX games are run through a translation layer before the GPU gets to do anything.
I wasn’t able to find solid info for AI upscaling even on Windows, mainly because of the terrible name of that feature and because Nvidia offers both “AI Upscaling” and “Nvidia Image Scaling” and I have no idea if those are the same thing. The former seems to be specific to the Nvidia SHIELD.
Unless you’re talking about DLSS, which is supported.
The HDR one is odd but might again be related to the Nvidia driver not being very good. This should improve in the future but they are admittedly trailing behind.