recommended new graphics card for amd64

[Adam K Kirchhoff]

On Friday 23 November 2007 22:19:44 Ben Kaduk wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Sorry if this is a FAQ, but I didn't see anything in the archives
> for the past few months, and google wasn't helpful either.
>
> I'm looking to build a new machine from parts, and I want
> to have a reasonably modern graphics card in it that supports
> dual-headed output (preferably DVI, but doesn't really matter).
>
> I want to run freebsd-amd64 on the machine, so nvidia's
> binary blob is out.  The motherboard will probably only
> have PCI-E slots (so no AGP cards).
>
> What cards are people getting good results from, these days?

The Radeon x850 is the fastest card that has open source 3D drivers.  They are 
PCI-E and support dual DVI (at least mine meets both qualifications).  I've 
only tried freebsd-i386 for an extended time on this machine, but the DRI 
drivers work just fine (including AIGLX, if you patch the driver before 
building the kernel).  

On freebsd-amd64, Xorg comes up with direct rendering and a quick test shows 
the mesa demos working just as well as they do on i386.  The downside to 
using this card on amd64 is that the linux_dri port is i386 only, which means 
I can't run any 3D linux games.  Which means that if you want to use any 
linux opengl applications under FreeBSD, you will have to stick with i386.  
If amd64 is a requirement, the x850 seems to be a good choice.

Adam