I did buy a (secondhand) nvidia card specifically for AI worlkloads because yes, I realised that this is what the AI dev community has settled on, and if I try to avoid nvidia I will be making life very hard for myself.
But that doesn’t change the fact that it still absolutely sucks that nvidia have this dominance in the space, and that it is largely due to what tooling the community has decided to use, rather than any unique hardware capability which nvidia have.
What you want is to go to a cheap takeout that isn’t part of a chain. The kind that does burgers AND kebabs AND fried chicken AND curry AND pizza, all in the same place. It’s best if it smells of grease and the middle-eastern guy behind the counter refers to you as “bossman” as a term of endearment.
They’ll sort you out :)