Removal of XAA acceleration in X.org, and older NVIDIA GeForce

[Mark Martinec]

/usr/ports/UPDATING:
> 20141219:
>  AFFECTS: users of x11/xorg and all xorg ports
>  AUTHOR: dumbbell at FreeBSD.org
>  The X.Org server (x11-servers/xorg-server) is updated to 1.14.

http://blogs.freebsdish.org/graphics/2014/11/19/xserver-1-14-update-ready/
> Changes since xserver 1.12
>   The most visible change is the removal of XAA. This is a 2D 
> acceleration
> method which was deprecated some time ago, in favor of EXA or 
> Intel-specific’s
> UXA or SNA. For the end user, this means that some drivers 
> (xf86-video-*)
> are not supported anymore, mostly for older GPUs according to Phoronix.
> If you encounter this case, please let us know.

Ouch!!! Upgrading X -related ports went with no problems (FreeBSD 10.1),
but I didn't realize the outcome would be so terrible. Scrolling or
refreshing a full-screen page in a web browser now feels like in the
good old days of a 19200 bps line and a glass terminal. Even scrolling
or paging through plain text with 'less' or editor on a KDE konsole
or xterm feels sluggish. Certainly the size of the display does not
help in this regards (2560x1600).

The Xorg.0.log reports:
   NV: Found NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT at 02 at 00:00:0

Now I fear that upgrading ports on my other workstation
(GeForce 7600 GS) would lead to similar results.

I know these graphics boards are not the latest of breed
(the CPU and mb are still fairly decent). They were chosen for being
fan-less, and coping sufficiently well with 2D and text even on
largish displays.

So is my only choice now replacing graphics with heat- and noise-
sources I don't really need, or being stuck with frozen ports?
I wonder if I'm the only one in this situation.

   Mark