Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2013 23:18:09 +0100 From: "O. Hartmann" <ohartman@zedat.fu-berlin.de> To: Arto Pekkanen <isoa@kapsi.fi> Cc: "heasus@gmail.com" <heasus@gmail.com>, "freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org" <freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: recommended dual-head video cards for amd64? Message-ID: <512005A1.5060500@zedat.fu-berlin.de> In-Reply-To: <AFD976CB-0900-4B58-9114-25767589692C@kapsi.fi> References: <CABzpvzFgvH70cK=o-=xrCtiuXuf4KnWTDuOu0szqTu7hP-y%2B_w@mail.gmail.com> <AFD976CB-0900-4B58-9114-25767589692C@kapsi.fi>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 2440 and 3156) --------------enig23ECB1738C3CB93D4181C37D Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Am 02/16/13 15:23, schrieb Arto Pekkanen: > I heartily recommend nVidia, their drivers work nicely. Dual head is su= pported. Driver installation is simple, just download, extract, make inst= all. Also you gotta install x11/nvidia-settings, with this tool it is rea= lly easy to configure screen layout etc. >=20 > If you do have something against closed sourced drivers then I have no = idea what to use except Google. >=20 > On 16 Feb 2013, at 02:42, heasus@gmail.com wrote: >=20 >> Hello. I am looking for a dual-head pci-e video card with DVI (or VGA)= >> outputs for amd64. I do not have extraordinary graphics requirements;= >> I am just looking for one workspace over 1600x1200 dual-heads without >> driver/Xconfig aggravation. >> >> I have found some recommendations on this list for nvidia / GeForce >> cards, but those posts were all from 2009 or earlier - or I haven't >> chosen my search terms well. I presume that things have changed a bit >> since 2009 and that many have dual-head cards on recent motherboards, >> so I'd like to hear about what works from those using them, please. >> My experiences with AMD graphics cards on FreeBSD were horrific (HD4830 worked half way, but froze system, all models below HD48XX, for instance HD4670 and HD4770 made the system go freeze when leaving desktop or crashed speonatnously). AMD does not provide ANY(!) BLOB for their GPUs for FreeBSD, you're bound to the open source drivers which are not very robust at this moment for HD6000 boards and as far as I know, the support for HD7000 is still abyssimal - if it is there. 3D support is a black hole for HD7000. I use nVidia GTX560Ti, GTX570 and GTX580 on FreeBSD (9.1-STABLE, 10.0-CURRENT, all amd64) by using the nVidia BLOB for 64Bit FreeBSD. As of this writing, I use the BETA driver 313.18 on all of our boxes without problems and on one box I was also performing some experiments with a second and third screen - with no problems for the limited test I did. On a Dell Laitude 6510E there is also a Quadro 3000M chip, used with the BLOB from nVidia without problems. Sometimes I have to fiddle around with the display and VGA outlet for BEAMER driven presentations, but that is no serious issue. We also run two TESLA boards sometimes with FreeBSD, using the BLOB (some 30X.XX driver) for display output. nVidia doesn't provide any kind of OpenCL or CUDA support in either 32bit or 64bit for FreeBSD, it is just the display driver. If you look for a working, reliable system with modern hardware, there is now way passing by nVidia at the moment if you intend to stay with FreeBSD. My experiences with the OpenSource drivers, both the Noveau and the Radeon ones, are bad, bad 3D support, flaky and sometimes "frosty". For any serious desktop or scientific purpose, I recommend a Linux Flavor due to the fact FreeBSD suffer from not having OpenCL or CUDA accelerated GPGPU support which becomes dramatically important - even on desktop systems. Don't confuse "desktop" with gaming rig or something, most machines we use in the lab are de facto "desktops", acting as servers AND graphical workstations, some of them are FreeBSD. Well, for short, buying crappy outdated hardware from AMD or nVidia or Matrox to match an existing and working opensource driver on FreeBSD doesn't count in my opinion, it is a waste of money. So - go with nVidia!= --------------enig23ECB1738C3CB93D4181C37D Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: OpenPGP digital signature Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (FreeBSD) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJRIAWiAAoJEOgBcD7A/5N8bfQH/REbam2KdZVuVgzFNPIgjA8k ES6D7VNLmWYyWS8q8wFCdBe66qrO/AZH12igsb7s4n2yh2vjLUXPHWi8S0ZGnKP8 0bnvZ4/476eFMTrttkUBcjj7fZJlLZwdC8plzR27RBQdhpCxvf4wVSbVMmOCmzdk Jyjcv5DT5yayDTXVamyxNeg+DrM2ZcOwZxgRYTstSf+LjverW+ltIbSzAaZg++k0 611HCu0GTqlW0fTqLsoIso0Kw58Yea+leuQOmuvynh9V5iyOPkEo0pSQyywWHsjy k90xB3YwgraIun8u/bFr/yhjkW7T2uFeteDaXVeuKwIVQQBBb5lcExzi74LxzXo= =AzCc -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------enig23ECB1738C3CB93D4181C37D--
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?512005A1.5060500>