Date: Thu, 14 May 2009 13:58:26 -0500 From: "Rick C. Petty" <rick-freebsd2008@kiwi-computer.com> To: Josef Grosch <jgrosch@mooseriver.com> Cc: question@freebsd.org, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: In search of a video card Message-ID: <20090514185826.GA45111@keira.kiwi-computer.com> In-Reply-To: <20090514030634.GA1252@mooseriver.com> References: <20090514030634.GA1252@mooseriver.com>
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On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 08:06:34PM -0700, Josef Grosch wrote: > > So, can any one recommend a good video card? What I'm looking for is > > * Works with amd64 FreeBSD 7.2 > * DVI > * PCI-E x16 > * 512 MB or more > * Not going to cost an arm and a leg I just bought an nVidia and an ATI on newegg for under $30 each (plus mail-in rebates), buth PCI x16, DVI+VGA, 512MB. I have tried them both on amd64 and this is what I've discovered: - The ATI is quite fast for xvideo (via mplayer) and somewhat fast on 3D, there seems to be some cursor-related artifacts (I've tried a number of cards with the same results). - The nVidia card required Robert Noland's patches applied against RELENG_7, and the latest git checkouts of the nouveau driver and the libdrm code. I forcibly installed xf86-video-nouveau and then "gmake install"'d the nouveau build on top of it. I did the same for libdrm. It was very slow for xvideo (mplayer) and 3D acceleration was nonexistent. I could not get the "nv" driver to work in dual-head mode nor in single-head mode. Nouveau didn't support my onboard card either. Neither of these drivers comes remotely close to the performance of the same cards using the nvidia driver (on i386). I tried ati and nouveau on i386 for comparisons. The nvidia driver did support my onboard video. I ran these tests on a couple of ATI cards and various nvidia cards. It was very frustrating. I'm using the ati/radeon driver currently on amd64 until nvidia finishes their 64-bit driver. YMMV, -- Rick C. Petty
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