Graphic card that works?

[Kris Moore]

On 06/29/2011 05:03, Luca Pizzamiglio wrote:
> My 2 cents to this discussion...
>
> I currently use NVidia 450 GTS. It works fine, video and KDE with 
> compositing runs pretty well.
> Yes, sometimes NVidia closed source FreeBSD driver has some bugs and 
> you could not fix it.
> Yes, Nvidia closed source FreeBSD driver can turn on a lot of HW 
> acceleration that open source driver can't.
>
> So, if you're lucky, you could use your powerful NVidia card without 
> problem. if not, you should find and disable features that cause the 
> problem or wait a new driver release, hoping that fix that issue 
> (forum discussion could help!). It's hard to say: this NVidia board 
> works without problem in all possible scenario!
>
> Graphic chips are too complex and too hidden to have high quality open 
> sourced driver. Company should provide them... AMD helps open source 
> community developing its driver, but it doesn't provide a really high 
> quality driver. They works, but they don't enable a lot of acceleration.
>
> So, NVidia is still the best solution for me, but it's a compromise.
> If you want performance, NVidia is the best option, but if you enable 
> too many features, you could have some stability issue. This is my 
> personal experience.
>
> Good luck
>
> Luca

My 2 cents as well...

For obvious reasons I tend to do a LOT of FreeBSD desktop related stuff 
(duh)

When people ask what video hardware to use I flat out recommend NVIDIA. 
Their drivers provide the best shot of getting a system up and working 
with 2D/3D accell, and having problems is often the exception not the 
rule. Plus whenever I've run into issues, they have been very 
responsive, and usually have it fixed in the next driver release.

On the other hand, running Intel / AMD on any modern hardware is often 
an exercise in futility. Even if you do manage to get it somewhat 
"working" it seems that with every driver update things tend to break 
again, regressions occur, etc.

That being said, your mileage may vary, but just from keeping a finger 
on the pulse of our community it seems nvidia is the only one which 
provides a consistent shot at success, without hours of hair-pulling.

BTW, I'm personally running 9800GT, 285GTX, 570GTX and some 8800GTX's 
and they all work great, even with dual-head. The only failure I've ever 
run into was system lockups, and when I put that video card into a 
Windows box and tried playing games the same thing occurred, so chalk it 
up to defective hardware.

-- 
Kris Moore
PC-BSD Software
iXsystems