best video card for bsds

[Jon Noack]

On 5/17/2004 8:29 PM, eqe-support at cox.net wrote:
> I wanted some thoughts on what is the best video card out for
> freebsd. Not just the hardware but who supports freebsd the best by
> providing the best drivers. thx in advance

As far as I know, only nVidia offers third-party accelerated drivers for 
FreeBSD.  That said, there are still a few things that need to be done 
on our end (like TLS) before they will be up-to-par.  ATI Radeon cards 
up to the 9200 have accelerated support built-in to the X server 
(whether it be XFree86 or X.org).  Radeon cards after the 9200 have 
unaccelerated support in the X server.  Once 5.3 rolls around (with 
TLS), the nVidia cards will probably be the best choice.  For now, 
however, a Radeon 9200 or lower will probably give you the best 
experience.  Alternatively, you could buy an nVidia card and use the 
unaccelerated drivers that come with X until 5.3 comes around.

When I say 'accelerated' I mostly mean 3D.  Accelerated drivers often 
improve 2D performance as well, but for the vast majority of cases the 
2D speed of the unaccelerated drivers is sufficient.

Note that I am only considering ATI and nVidia cards as they are by far 
the most popular.  Others (like Matrox) also offer excellent X support 
but are more niche products.

Jon