In search of a video card

[Mike Meyer]

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
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.

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