Yes. The Nvidia GPU stuff is usually more painful. I tended to not update my kernel+drivers as much on those boxes. In the end, I moved to Intel GPUs, which are punier, but, at least, work.
You don't go with an Intel GPU because you want a powerful GPU, you go with an Intel because you want a reliable GPU that will never give you any problems, ever.
With an AMD or something else, maybe it's more powerful, and works fine to most appearances. But the colors start to be a little funny when the uptime gets in to the months. Or a kernel update changes whether it thinks the unused S-video port is live. Or other weird <1% issues.
> You don't go with an Intel GPU because you want a powerful GPU
That's true. For desktop work, just about any GPU is overkill. Even the kind of scientific visualization we used expensive SGI boxes for not so long ago can easily be done with the cheapest Chromebook. I'd love to be able to play with OpenCL (where a beefier GPU would be useful) and see how far my boxes can actually go, but I never get around to find a good excuse.
