ATi & Intel graphics

[John Nielsen]

On Wednesday 13 August 2008, Jim wrote:
> At some point fairly soon, I'll be rebuilding my computer, and I want
> three things.
>
> 64 Bit for more memory, maybe a bit of performance boost as well -
> it's mostly a multimedia machine
> decent/good 3D acceleration (better than a GeForce 7300GS - a few
> games in WINE in 1920x1080 - yes, believe it or not, the 7300GS
> doesn't do /bad/ on many of the games, but it certainly could be
> better).
> FreeBSD.

You may want to rethink this. The emulators/wine port is i386-only:

%grep -i arch /usr/ports/emulators/wine/Makefile
ONLY_FOR_ARCHS= i386

> I've used Solaris and Linux, and honestly, I'd rather go back to
> Windows and use Cygwin for my *nix needs.
> I'd rather use FreeBSD for the system than Windows.
>
> 64 Bit immediately knocks out the thoughts on using an nVidia card.
>
> Has anyone had much experience with a 3600 series ATi card, it's the
> best in the discreet-video category for my target price/performance,
> but not listed in the man pages for the Radeon (non-HD) - only the
> 3400s and the 3800s). Aside from that, going for the really cheap end,
> has anyone had much experience with the Intel 4500HD chipsets yet? I'm
> lousy with other people's code (barely good with my own), but I could
> test if needed, if/when I get the board.

In my experience the Intel and Radeon drivers for Xorg work very well on 
FreeBSD, but I don't have experience with any of the specific hardware you 
mention.

> Could anyone give me some of their experiences here? How are your
> experiences with these pieces of hardware and their drivers in terms
> of stability/reliability (in FreeBSD of course)? Are either of these
> setups in a place where a tester would be needed/welcome?