Old NVIDIA card, new FreeBSD = failure?

[Greg V]

On June 26, 2021 10:11:42 PM UTC, Robert Huff <roberthuff at rcn.com> wrote:
>
>Greg V <greg at unrelenting.technology>:
>
>>   Robert Huff <roberthuff at rcn.com>:
>>   
>>   >	(For anyone in my position: I _think_ the RX 460 and above
>>   >support GCN 2.1, which is what I _think_ is the bottom-end
>>   >specification.  Cards matching this number seem to start at about
>>   >US $50.)
>>   
>>   GCN is the name of the GPU architecture, not something a GPU
>>   "supports"..
>
>	Got that; the "support" is from the software.
>	I have two conflicting desires:
>	a) I want to run modern applications ...
>			on the latest stable version of X ...
>			using an actively maintained and
>				improved version of amdgpu/drm ...
>			working with reasonably high-performance hardware.

Yes, all you need is a GCN GPU. Avoid the really old pre-GCN (TeraScale and older) architectures and you'll be fine.

>	b) I have a very limited budget, and would ideally like to be
>		able to use this on older systems - say ones with a PCIe 2.0
>		expansion slot.

No conflict here: PCI Express generations are all backward and forward compatible. You can run the newest gen4 cards in gen2 slots just fine (obviously at gen2 bandwidth).

Similarly it's all compatible between different lane counts, e.g. you can shove an x16 card into an x4 slot (if it's not an open ended slot.. it can be made open-ended with a rotary tool :D)