Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 01:21:16 +0300 From: Manolis Kiagias <sonicy@otenet.gr> To: Mark Ovens <parish@magichamster.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Best nVidia card for Xorg on FreeBSD? Message-ID: <4839E65C.9070809@otenet.gr> In-Reply-To: <4839E278.3060208@magichamster.com> References: <4839E278.3060208@magichamster.com>
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Mark Ovens wrote: > Currently using a Radeon 8500LE but since u/g to xorg 7.3 I've had > nothing but trouble with X hanging/crashing/locking-up. > > From what I've read, the state of the radeon drivers leaves much to be > desired and although some people seem to have trouble with nVidia > cards they appear to be a better choice. > > So, after over a decade of brand-loyalty to ATI (when I started with > FreeBSD back in the mid-90's ATI cards were the only ones I could find > that would run X at better than VGA resolution) I'm going to switch to > nVidia. > > The machine is FreeBSD-only so no issues with Windows drivers and > performance etc. (I divorced the Evil Empire a couple of years ago) > and my Radeon 8500 is adequate for my needs so I don't need a high-end > card. > > I'm looking on eBay and an FX5x00 card seems to fit the bill. > > So, are there any particular cards that work well under Xorg/FreeBSD > or, more importantly, any that don't? > > Any advice about the need to consider 3D issues would be welcome? I > run KDE and mainly use digikam/GIMP for digital photo editing and > kmplayer for viewing videos. I believe there is a 3D interface for KDE > (CompuViz?) - is this worth bothering with? > > All help/advice gratefully received. > > TIA > > Mark > Don't know about CompuViz, but if you would like to try compiz fusion, I am a bit tempted to point you to this article (maybe because I am the author :) http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/compiz-fusion/ This will answer your questions on installing nvidia drivers and also getting 3D effects and compiz-fusion to work. Note that there is no nvidia-supplied (read: proprietary) driver for the 64bit version of FreeBSD. The community 'nvidia' driver works fine, although no 3D and 2D performance is somewhat limited. I've used a number of cards with FreeBSD (7300GT, 7300Go (laptop), 6600GT, 6200) and never had problems. The FX series should also work, but why not buying a newer card? You can get new entry-level nvidia cards for very little money.
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