# Nvidia GPUs

67 Hacker News commenters recommended Nvidia GPUs and 67 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 6 years (3 owners).

**Verdict:** People recommend Nvidia GPUs for top performance, mature software support and a strong CUDA ecosystem; critics point to high prices and closed-source drivers.

## Why people recommend it

- Works well on Linux (7 comments): "nVidia has provided feature parity for their GPUs between Windows and Linux for longer than even fglrx was a thing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49449070)) "I have been using Nvidia on Linux for years and am able to run 95%+ of my library on Steam." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46193651)) "Nvidia's Wayland experience has been very usable with post-550-Series drivers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48664561))
- Top performance and power efficiency (6 comments): "An Nvidia GPU involves as much CUDA lock-in as Nvidia can manage, but it's also where the best performance is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49765734)) "Easily 10x–20x higher token rate per GPU with public solutions like dynamo and sglang." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49167587)) "in terms of cost per dollar/per watt of inference Nvidia's GPUs are pretty up there" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47321356))
- Strong standards and developer ecosystem (5 comments): "Nvidia won because they embraced standards, in a time when alternatives like OpenCL were outright sabotaged by AMD, Intel and Apple." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48226469)) "Nvidia cooperates with Khronos, implements open-source and proprietary APIs simultaneously, documents their GPU hardware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45883283)) "good integration between various open source software and proprietary CUDA drivers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48310082))
- Engineering and long-term vision (4 comments): "Nvidia architectures keep changing and getting more advanced as well, with specialized tensor operations, different accumulators and caches" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46073372)) "They are the only company I've seen that saw the early vision and carried it through with focus through today." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50093236)) "The niche for HPC will exist, and Nvidia continues to serve the niche while others turn up their nose." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48487048))

## What people warn about

- Linux driver and display problems (6 comments): "Nvidia makes a fine GPU. The problem with Nvidia on linux is the drivers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48127660)) "Switching from an Nvidia card to an AMD one I am now able to upgrade my kernel whenever without getting a blinking cursor after reboot." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45936887)) "I use KDE + Nvidia, and last I looked into it, it only worked if you had one monitor enabled." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47653123))
- Closed-source software and CUDA lock-in (4 comments): "which in turn requires gigabytes of closed-source runtime" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46956831)) "I wallet-vote for those over Nvidia who require proprietary code in user space where it requires rights within my operating system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49981198)) "An Nvidia GPU involves as much CUDA lock-in as Nvidia can manage, but it's also where the best performance is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49765734))
- High prices and margins (3 comments): "NVidia's bubble is about vastly overcharging for a thing that only they can provide." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46834749)) "Nvidia sets their own margins, exploiting American investors and taxpayers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49453897)) "NVidia controlling the price, features and, most importantly, who gets to buy them is bad for Google." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49185449))
- Planned obsolescence and usage restrictions (4 comments): "This is on NVIDIA ensuring their hardware doesn't last to long and forcing you to throw it away eventually." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46796648)) "Nvidia's ambitions for remote disabling and charging rent to use keep using GPUs are more unsettling to me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50269915)) "as Nvidia does with forbidding datacenter use of some of its GPUs, charging extra for it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46366227))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3090.md): 116 recommend
- [NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090.md): 102 recommend
- [NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-rtx-pro-6000.md): 77 recommend
- [AMD Radeon GPU](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amd-gpus.md): 48 recommend
- [AMD Radeon AI Pro R9700](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amd-radeon-ai-pro-r9700.md): 45 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Nvidia+GeForce+graphics+card&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Official site](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Nvidia GPUs", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-gpus/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).