In search of a video card

[Josef Grosch]

On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 12:02:03AM -0400, Mike Meyer wrote:
> On Wed, 13 May 2009 20:06:34 -0700
> Josef Grosch <jgrosch at mooseriver.com> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I'm in search for a decent video card. I currently have an Nvidia GeForce
> > 8400 GS. It worked pretty well i386 FreeBSD 6.2. I have upgraded my home
> > machine and I am running amd64 FreeBSD 7.2 and it just refuses to go into
> > X. It just hangs. I've been poking around and, based on what I read, some
> > FreeBSD developers and Nvidia have gotten into a finger pointing contest as
> > to what is the problem. Its all very nice but doesn't help me much.
> > 
> > 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
> 
> You forgot the critical information: you didn't define what works for
> you. In particular, does a card that doesn't do 3d acceleration
> "work"? How about 2d?
> 
> The open source Nvidia driver pretty much sucks. Probably because the
> proprietary Nvidia blob (which you were presumably using on i386) is
> one of the most functional X video drivers around, so there's not a
> lot of incentive to work on the open source version. But you can't use
> the proprietary blob on amd64, so you get the open source driver, and
> - well you've experienced it.
> 
> The ATI radeon driver - it's open source, there's no proprietary blob
> - is actually pretty good. Except that 2d & 3d acceleration support
> is, um, variable.
> 
> If you have to have 2d & 3d acceleration, I don't believe you have a
> good option for FreeBSD on amd64, at least not until the kernel tweaks
> Nvidia needs are done (there has been some motion on that front
> recently). But I don't really need it, so I haven't spent any time
> looking for such a card.
> 
> If you're ok with solid - if basic - video performance, I'll recommend
> pretty much any radeon card. I've used a number of them to drive dual
> 1920x1200 displays on a variety of systems for a couple of years now.
> Amazon has cards that meet your listed requirements for under US$40.
> 
>      <mike

Thanks,

I don't need 2d & 3d acceleration. I just need a card that will handle
WindowMaker on a 24 inch Dell monitor at 1920x1200 and as long as the flesh
tones on my JPGs don't suck I'm happy.

Thanks for the advice. I guess I'm going to make a trip to Fry's Friday.


Josef

-- 
Josef Grosch           | Another day closer to a | FreeBSD 7.2
jgrosch at MooseRiver.com |   Micro$oft free world  | Berkeley, Ca.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 155 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/attachments/20090514/49c604dd/attachment.pgp