What are good graphic cards for X, low-end and high-end

[Greg V]

On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 5:14 AM, Erich Dollansky 
<freebsd.ed.lists at sumeritec.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am currently planning a new computer. I have check the wiki but I
> also would like to get real-life experience here. I have not decided
> yet of I should get a cheap card just for software development and
> watching videos or a good card also usable for processing videos.
> 
> What cards do you use for these purposes?

Hi!

Video cards aren't that involved in... processing videos :)
That's why they're often called graphics cards these days.

So you need a powerful GPU if you want to:

- play 3D games
- use 3D CAD and modeling applications
- run compute tasks like offline 3D rendering (path tracing), mining 
buttcoins, deep learning, folding at home... and, yes, rendering some 
effects in some video editors, but the key word is "some"

Now, GPUs also have onboard hardware video codecs, and that can help 
with watching videos, if you get it to work (have to use a dedicated 
player right now, since web browsers don't support VAAPI yet, except 
for some unofficial forks; also YouTube prefers VP9 and only the newest 
(ish) GPUs have a VP9 codec, but you can ask YouTube for H.264...)
This is only useful for laptops and other mobile devices.
On a desktop, you don't have to care, the beefy CPU will easily decode 
anything.

Oh, also these codecs can *en*code videos, but the quality per bitrate 
is always worse in hardware codecs than software, so you only really 
want this for recording gameplay (like ReLive/ShadowPlay).

So, finally, recommendations -- well, one big recommendation: AMD 
Polaris.
If you like (relatively high end) gaming, you might want the top tier 
one (Radeon RX 480/580) or the one below (470/570).
Otherwise, RX 460/560.

FreeBSD support is excellent with drm-next-kmod :)