Best nVidia card for Xorg on FreeBSD?

[Chuck Robey]

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Jonathan Chen wrote:
> On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 11:04:40PM +0100, 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.
> 
> Heh. I was just thinking about going the other way. One of the main
> problems with the nVidia on X is that the xorg-nvidia driver is very
> basic; this can be demonstrated by going to a Javascript heavy page (eg
> http://www.xwiki.org) using firefox. The X-server just slows to crawl
> when trying to scroll the site. The behaviour is not exhibited with
> xorg-intel driver, as a counter-example.
> 
> Support for the nVidia on FreeBSD from the vendor is also incomplete:
>   http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995.html
> The feature request from nVidia appears to have stalled for the time
> being (more correctly: I couldn't locate news on any updates to on the
> 'Net).
> 
> In short, nVidia cards are usable, but performance can be exceptionally
> bad.

'Scuse me, I'm not personally very familiar (yet) with 3D graphics, but I'm
reading OpenGL (I bought the SuperBible) and I'm quite well along in writing my
driver for a cheapy graphics tablet, to get me along with Gimp.  So, could you
tell me, are your comments about the Nvidia card driver performance dealing with
the Nvidia-supplied driver and OpenGL libs they have, as expressed in the
FreeBSD-ports supplied (from Nvidia code) Nvidia driver??  I have them compiled
under FreeBSD-current, because a friend recommended them as the best available,
is that wrong?  Is there better?  I am not aware of any pure-public driver for
those cards, but I just am not very well up on their details, so I want to be
sure of your meaning, making sure I have you right here..

BTW, my card is a Nvidia-compatible (licensed) GeForce 8600 GTS card, if that
means anything to you.  If you think the ATI cards (using FreeBSD available
drivers) are better, let me have that one more time please, there is very little
on the net from even slightly reliable sources on this, so I would guess you
have a attentive audience here.

> 
> Cheers.

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