From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Feb 2 22:00:43 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA8F816A417 for ; Sat, 2 Feb 2008 22:00:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jmc-freebsd@milibyte.co.uk) Received: from ptb-relay01.plus.net (ptb-relay01.plus.net [212.159.14.212]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A0B1B13C448 for ; Sat, 2 Feb 2008 22:00:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jmc-freebsd@milibyte.co.uk) Received: from [84.92.153.232] (helo=kestrel.milibyte.co.uk) by ptb-relay01.plus.net with esmtp (Exim) id 1JLPf4-0007ZT-Jk; Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:12:30 +0000 Received: by kestrel.milibyte.co.uk with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1JLPf2-00074r-Pu; Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:12:29 +0000 From: Mike Clarke Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 21:12:27 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200802022112.28641.jmc-freebsd@milibyte.co.uk> X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: jmc-freebsd@milibyte.co.uk X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on kestrel.milibyte.co.uk); SAEximRunCond expanded to false X-Plusnet-Relay: 919411d6e2deda45b9fcba8a542a84b2 Subject: Nvidia graphics on AMD64 X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 22:00:43 -0000 After running a 90 hour portupgrade job on my current Duron 1600 based system I've persuaded myself that a hardware upgrade is due. I'm contemplating building a system around an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ CPU. I'm not into games and overclocking so a relatively low end motherboard with integrated graphics should suffice. I've been looking at a few specs, many of them use Nvidia chipsets and I understand that there isn't a Nvidia graphics driver for FreeBSD on the AMD64 platform. If I choose a Nvidia based motherboard would I have to install the i386 version of FreeBSD if I wanted to use the onboard graphics, in which case to what extent would the overall performance suffer? My graphics needs are fairly modest, so long as I can use the Gimp to edit some photos I'm OK, but playing the occasional DVD fairly smoothly would be a bonus but not essential. Is there any alternative graphics driver which would meet my needs? ... or should I just keep away from Nvidia and concentrate on something with ATI graphics? -- Mike Clarke