Graphic card that works (summary) ?

[Patrick Lamaiziere]

Le Thu, 23 Jun 2011 22:13:05 +0200,
Patrick Lamaiziere <patfbsd at davenulle.org> a écrit :

Hi,

First thanks to all, help is very appreciated.

A small summary on this topic.

> I'm using a Nvidia 460 but my box is stable as a Windows3.1 :(

Context:
-------

- 8.2-STABLE/i386
- NVidia drivers since march to the current beta.
- Xvideo extension freezes the box within minutes.
- Random freeze occurs.

I've made further tests:

- Building the Nvidia driver with WBINVD and ACPI_PM does not help
regarding the xvideo issue.

- I was not able to use vdpau in mplayer (yes I've setup the option).
Anyway I can live without xvideo, the problem is more the random
freezes while I'm working.

- On the nvidia forums, there is a suggestion to force the "powermizer"
of the card to fixed values (this issue looks very specific to the 
Nvidia 460). I'm trying this and it looks very better: no random locks
anymore (but there is still an issue on xvideo).

- There was a suggestion to disable powerd, but I've not tried this yet.

Work-arounds:
------------

- use something else, like the suggested ATI cards in this thread ;-)

- disable Xvideo in Xorg.conf.
Section "Module"
[...]
#   Load "extmod"
    SubSection  "extmod"
       Option "omit xvideo"
       Option "omit xvideo-motioncompensation"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

- setup the powermizer in xorg.conf to low power:
Section "Device"
[...]
    Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2222; PowerMizerDefault=0x3; PowerMizerDefaultAC=0x3" 
EndSection

(for powermizer options, see http://tutanhamon.com.ua/technovodstvo/NVIDIA-UNIX-driver/)

Voila, thanks again.
Regards.