Keve Nagy wrote:
>
>
> Hello Everyone,
> I am looking for a decent video card for my new machine. Unfortunatelly
> none of the PCI-E cards seem to have good support under xorg nowadays.
> My old system has an AGP radeon 9200, and anything more modern than that
> seems to provide less under xorg. The only modern graphics chip that I
> found with nice xorg driver (including hw accel) is the Intel integrated
> ones. Unfortunately their DVI resolution is limited to 1600x1200 max,
> and I really wish to buy a nice 24" Sun LCD and use it via DVI. The
> RadeonHD driver is promising, but in a very-very early stage, so here is
> the thing:
> I would like a PCI-E card with 1920x1200 DVI support AND 3D hardware
> acceleration under xorg 7.3.
> It seems that the video card for my new system has to be an nvidia or
> radeon (unless you can recommend any PCI-E alternative), and I must use
> a binary driver.
>
> If you are one of those using (or have used) a PCI-e nvidia or radeon
> card with a binary driver, I would like to hear your experience. What
> card model did/do you use, what xorg version, how simple or
> straightforward was to get and install the binary driver, how reliably
> your xorg works with the binary driver?
>
> I don't run games and I don't do 3D modelling/rendering on my FreeBSD
> desktop at all. The reason why I would like a working 3D accelerated
> graphics card is mostly eye-candy. I would like a really nice looking
> desktop environment, with some nice visual effects, some of the widget
> beauties, and I also like watching movies. Many of these tend to rely on
> 3D acceleration, at least that is what I noticed.
> I am not experienced with this, but from my requirements I believe that
> any of the less powerful PCI-e cards would do. Correct me if I am wrong!
> One important thing to clear: My goal would be to identify one card that
> is suitable for me now, today. I don't need something that is promised
> to be better sometime soon. The keyword is: TODAY.
>
> I really appreciate any feedback, comment or suggestion in this topic.
>
> Best Regards,
> Keve
>

I'm using 2 different pci-e cards with X:
msi nx7300le
ATI Sapphie Radeon x550 (pci-e version)

Keve Nagy wrote:
>
>
> Hello Everyone,
> I am looking for a decent video card for my new machine. Unfortunatelly
> none of the PCI-E cards seem to have good support under xorg nowadays.
> My old system has an AGP radeon 9200, and anything more modern than that
> seems to provide less under xorg. The only modern graphics chip that I
> found with nice xorg driver (including hw accel) is the Intel integrated
> ones. Unfortunately their DVI resolution is limited to 1600x1200 max,
> and I really wish to buy a nice 24" Sun LCD and use it via DVI. The
> RadeonHD driver is promising, but in a very-very early stage, so here is
> the thing:
> I would like a PCI-E card with 1920x1200 DVI support AND 3D hardware
> acceleration under xorg 7.3.
> It seems that the video card for my new system has to be an nvidia or
> radeon (unless you can recommend any PCI-E alternative), and I must use
> a binary driver.
>
> If you are one of those using (or have used) a PCI-e nvidia or radeon
> card with a binary driver, I would like to hear your experience. What
> card model did/do you use, what xorg version, how simple or
> straightforward was to get and install the binary driver, how reliably
> your xorg works with the binary driver?
>
> I don't run games and I don't do 3D modelling/rendering on my FreeBSD
> desktop at all. The reason why I would like a working 3D accelerated
> graphics card is mostly eye-candy. I would like a really nice looking
> desktop environment, with some nice visual effects, some of the widget
> beauties, and I also like watching movies. Many of these tend to rely on
> 3D acceleration, at least that is what I noticed.
> I am not experienced with this, but from my requirements I believe that
> any of the less powerful PCI-e cards would do. Correct me if I am wrong!
> One important thing to clear: My goal would be to identify one card that
> is suitable for me now, today. I don't need something that is promised
> to be better sometime soon. The keyword is: TODAY.
>
> I really appreciate any feedback, comment or suggestion in this topic.
>
> Best Regards,
> Keve
>

Buy a cheap PCI-e Nvidia card. I've used a GeForce FX5500 (although with
AGP) and Nvidia binary drivers with success. I don't think ATI has
binary drivers for FreeBSD.

--
"If I can't smoke and swear I'm ****ed."

marko [dot] vihoma [at] pp1 [dot] inet [dot] fi

On Sat, 17 May 2008 12:00:20 GMT, Marko Vihoma wrote:
: Keve Nagy wrote:
: >
: >
: > Hello Everyone,
: > I am looking for a decent video card for my new machine. Unfortunatelly
: > none of the PCI-E cards seem to have good support under xorg nowadays.

IIRC my Nvidia based GeForce 7300 LE cost maybe US$30 at newegg a
couple of months ago. Works fine.

Thank you for the feedback, Everyone!

Seems that for now a cheap nvidia is a good choice.
Those of you who had success with these nvidia cards, what driver did
you use? I found one in the ports, did you build that one? Or did you
use the one available for download from the nvidia site?
How smooth did the driver installation go?
Any reliability issues with these binary drivers?

Regards,
Keve

--
if you need to reply directly:
keve(at)mail(dot)poliod(dot)hu

Keve Nagy wrote:
> Thank you for the feedback, Everyone!
>
> Seems that for now a cheap nvidia is a good choice.

I have a 7300 GS myself. One of the 7600 models is probably a notch
better - very good, cheap, fanless cards with all the resolution you
need, I believe.

> Those of you who had success with these nvidia cards, what driver did
> you use? I found one in the ports, did you build that one? Or did you
> use the one available for download from the nvidia site?

The one in the ports seems to be the official Nvidia driver. You will
need to have kernel sources.

> How smooth did the driver installation go?
> Any reliability issues with these binary drivers?

No problems, but do read the fine print about agp and running
nvidia-xconfig. Install nvidia-settings if you are into photography or
otherwise care about good colors etc.
--
Tore (home period no, user tl18)

Keve Nagy wrote:
> How smooth did the driver installation go?

Take care, they will *not* work with AMD64.

cu
Clemens.
--
/"\ http://czauner.onlineloop.com/
\ / ASCII RIBBON CAMPAIGN
X AGAINST HTML MAIL
/ \ AND POSTINGS

On Sun, 18 May 2008 18:42:32 +0200, Keve Nagy wrote:

> Seems that for now a cheap nvidia is a good choice.

Only if you're happy to run in ia-32 mode with a closed-source driver.
I'm about to throw away my inexpensive nvidia card, to be replaced by an
inexpensive ATi or S3 card, on the grounds that the xorg drivers would
have at least a hope of improving. (I'd go for intel, since they seem to
have the best open-source support, but they don't seem to be available on
PCI-e cards: only laptop motherboards.) The xorg nv driver doesn't work
for me at all. I'm running in amd64 mode for unrelated reasons that
aren't about to change.

Cheers,

--
Andrew

Keve Nagy wrote:
> Thank you for the feedback, Everyone!
>
> Seems that for now a cheap nvidia is a good choice.
> Those of you who had success with these nvidia cards, what driver did
> you use? I found one in the ports, did you build that one? Or did you
> use the one available for download from the nvidia site?
> How smooth did the driver installation go?
> Any reliability issues with these binary drivers?
>
> Regards,
> Keve
>

I've used the nvidia-driver port (from ports) and the installation is a
breeze. Only you have to remember to reinstall (recompile) the driver
every time you upgrade your kernel. The driver has worked reliably, at
least for the last year or two, with no problems I can recall. There
might have been some problems a few years back, but fortunately I don't
remember what they were (if there were any)

--
"If I can't smoke and swear I'm ****ed."

marko [dot] vihoma [at] pp1 [dot] inet [dot] fi

Tore Lund schrieb:
> Keve Nagy wrote:
>> Thank you for the feedback, Everyone!
>>
>> Seems that for now a cheap nvidia is a good choice.
>
> I have a 7300 GS myself. One of the 7600 models is probably a notch
> better - very good, cheap, fanless cards with all the resolution you
> need, I believe.

Unless he's got a 30" display (does that actually work with FreeBSD?).
I think even the 7300 "LE" model can display 1900x1200 (i.e. 24" display
resolution).

>> Those of you who had success with these nvidia cards, what driver did
>> you use? I found one in the ports, did you build that one? Or did you
>> use the one available for download from the nvidia site?
>
> The one in the ports seems to be the official Nvidia driver. You will
> need to have kernel sources.
>
>> How smooth did the driver installation go?
>> Any reliability issues with these binary drivers?
>
> No problems, but do read the fine print about agp and running
> nvidia-xconfig. Install nvidia-settings if you are into photography or
> otherwise care about good colors etc.

I'm not running FreeBSD natively on my setup (yet), but I believe there
are multiple version of the binary NVidia driver in the freebsd
ports-tree, because NVidia doesn't have a "unified" driver for all their
hardware.




Rainer

Andrew Reilly wrote:
+---------------
| Keve Nagy wrote:
| > Seems that for now a cheap nvidia is a good choice.
|
| Only if you're happy to run in ia-32 mode with a closed-source driver.
| I'm about to throw away my inexpensive nvidia card, to be replaced by an
| inexpensive ATi or S3 card, on the grounds that the xorg drivers would
| have at least a hope of improving. (I'd go for intel, since they seem to
| have the best open-source support, but they don't seem to be available on
| PCI-e cards: only laptop motherboards.) The xorg nv driver doesn't work
| for me at all. I'm running in amd64 mode for unrelated reasons that
| aren't about to change.
+---------------

Weird. Mine worked just fine right out of the box
with a 1680x1050 Samsung monitor:

$ uname -mrs
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p4 amd64
$ grep nVidia /var/log/Xorg.0.log
(--) PCI:*(1:0:0) nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7300 GT] rev 161,
Mem @ 0xd0000000/24, 0xc0000000/28, 0xd1000000/24, I/O @ 0xa000/7,
BIOS @ 0xd2000000/17
$


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock
627 26th Avenue
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607

Rainer Duffner wrote:
> I'm not running FreeBSD natively on my setup (yet), but I believe there
> are multiple version of the binary NVidia driver in the freebsd
> ports-tree, because NVidia doesn't have a "unified" driver for all their
> hardware.

I presumed that Keve was looking at /usr/ports/x11/nvidia-driver, which
is the latest driver and most probably the correct one if he buys a new
product. But he could always keep in mind that there are legacy
versions. Hard to discuss the matter until he decides on a card.
--
Tore (home period no, user tl18)

On Sun, 18 May 2008 18:42:32 +0200, Keve Nagy wrote:
: Thank you for the feedback, Everyone!
:
: Seems that for now a cheap nvidia is a good choice.
: Those of you who had success with these nvidia cards, what driver did
: you use? I found one in the ports, did you build that one? Or did you

x11/nvidia-driver-96xx from ports for my 7300 LE. Anything newer
works initially but later on hard lock the system after a few
hours or days and then the gmirrors need rebuilding etc. Piece of
cake with that driver and the 7300 LE.

Hi Rob,

On Mon, 19 May 2008 06:30:55 -0500, Rob Warnock wrote:

> Weird. Mine worked just fine right out of the box with a 1680x1050
> Samsung monitor:

I agree that it's weird. In fact, it *used* to work, some long time
ago. What happens now, though, is that the screen (a 1600x1200 ViewSonic
LCD) just goes black and the "out of sync" message comes up: doesn't look
as though any signal is getting out at all. The vesa driver "works", but
only for small values of works: I can't reliably convince it to drive the
screen at 1600x1200. Gets there very occasionally, but mostly sits at
1200x1024. (I just tried the "Screen_nv" config in my xorg.conf again,
and it's still broken. Very broken: even the keyboard's ability to
switch virtual consoles goes away, so I have to log in from another
machine to shut the server down.) I wonder if there's a useful mailing
list where someone sufficiently knowledgeable could point out the errors
in my xorg.conf or say "a-ha!" when shown my Xorg.0.log, but I haven't
been able to find one.

Cheers,

--
Andrew

On 20 May 2008 00:38:47 GMT,
Andrew Reilly wrote:
[upgrading Xorg funkyness]
> I agree that it's weird. In fact, it *used* to work, some long time
> ago. What happens now, though, is that the screen (a 1600x1200 ViewSonic
> LCD) just goes black and the "out of sync" message comes up: doesn't look
> as though any signal is getting out at all.

Might be a case of changed default modelines or possibly Xorg changing
the way it looks at DPMS data, or whatnot. If you have a copy of the
Xorg.0.log when running with the old Xorg, you might be able to extract
that modeline and copy it to your xorg.conf, or perhaps simply looking
up the appropriate hsync/vrefresh rates and feeding it that might help.
Could be as simple as subtracting a tenth of the top of one of them, or
something. Of course, all the usual disclaimers apply as I'm guessing.


> I wonder if there's a useful mailing list where someone sufficiently
> knowledgeable could point out the errors in my xorg.conf or say
> "a-ha!" when shown my Xorg.0.log, but I haven't been able to find one.

Did you look at x.org?


--
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