# Help choosing a video card



## decuser (Apr 11, 2019)

All,

I would like to buy a cheap, compatible, video card that is able to output 1920x1080 through an hdmi cable. Is there such a thing? I would appreciate your suggestions for 2019. I have read endless posts about how to get this card or that card to work, but is there a card that will just work, with minimal effort (I’m fine with changes to loader.conf or rc.conf), but not keen on needing to recompile drivers. I’d like to stay in the $25-$30 range and I’m not looking to play games on the machine.


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## rigoletto@ (Apr 12, 2019)

decuser

Currently, graphics/drm-fbsd12.0-kmod do correspond to Linux 4.16 DRM. That said any AMD (and Intel) card supported by that Linux version is *supposedly* to work; however:



> amdgpu and radeonkms are known to fail with EFI boot.



Also, our nVidia drivers are supplied by nVidia and work pretty well.


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## shkhln (Apr 12, 2019)

Wozzeck.Live said:


> If it is too complicated for you... you are not a serious candidate for FreeBSD, as I said before ... Windows, Linux, Trident, GhostBSD.







Wozzeck.Live said:


> ZFS/BTFRS are good with high quality disk controller and are crafted for big data server user... theses filesystems are useless in a pure desktop context.


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## shkhln (Apr 12, 2019)

decuser said:


> video card that is able to output 1920x1080 through an hdmi cable



Do you need audio over HDMI?



decuser said:


> I would appreciate your suggestions for 2019.



https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/AMD-GPU-Matrix, https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/Intel-GPU-Matrix, anything Nvidia. Or just buy _something_, it will probably work ok.



decuser said:


> I have read endless posts about how to get this card or that card to work, but is there a card that will just work, with minimal effort (I’m fine with changes to loader.conf or rc.conf), but not keen on needing to recompile drivers.



Careful there, somebody casually reading this thread might get an impression that we actually have an endless stream of specific video card complaints on this forum. There is no such thing.


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## decuser (Apr 12, 2019)

Hmm, interesting. I've only used every version of FreeBSD since version 8 as my primary rsyncd server, my git server, secondary workstation and so on, maybe I'm a newb and didn't know it . By way of additional background, I had a radeon card that went bad, before that an integrated intel card. Each required some fiddling to get high res (kern.vty=vt, thisdriver_load="yes", etc). Recently I bought an AMD HD 6450 and it came in at low res... eventually, after some travail, I figured it out and it works at high res now. However, I have more than one identical system and for the other systems, I was hoping somebody would say something along the lines of, yes, card x works out of the box with the drivers included in the install. Yes, it is true that each of the three cards I've used in the machine work (at high res) without any additional configuration (beyond agreeing with the driver managers of the oses that yes, that mode will be fine) with Windows and various linuxes, but I have zero interest in using those oses as I am using Freebsd, hence the question.


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## D-FENS (Apr 12, 2019)

rigoletto@ said:


> decuser
> Currently, graphics/drm-fbsd12.0-kmod do correspond to Linux 4.16 DRM. That said any AMD (and Intel) card supported by that Linux version is *supposedly* to work; however:
> Also, our nVidia drivers are supplied by nVidia and work pretty well.


That's true about AMD and EFI. There is a workaround for this, disabling the EFI console on startup: hw.syscons.disable=1
However, this leaves a gap of ~5 seconds from your boot where you see nothing but jumbled colorful pixels on your screen. It's an annoyance but not a blocker.


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## malavon (Apr 12, 2019)

I've never been disappointed by Nvidia support. Been using Nvidia cards since 2002 on a FreeBSD desktop.
The only issue I ever had was not reading the docs after the module had been split into two (nvidia-modeset.ko and nvidia.ko).



decuser said:


> I’d like to stay in the $25-$30 range and I’m not looking to play games on the machine.


I think for that budget you'll have to go second hand. Even new a 1030 (assuming Nvidia) sells for quite a lot more.

There is possibly another option though. If you have an Intel CPU, it might have a GPU included and most of these actually work on FreeBSD.


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## scottro (Apr 12, 2019)

I think you can get some of the low end NVidia's for a little bit more, even new, say the $30-$40 range.   (Actually, I haven't shopped for a video card in a few years, so malavon is probably right.) Still it's worth poking around NewEgg and Amazon for a rebranded NVidia. My last one was an Asus (but it was NVidia) for about $40.00.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 12, 2019)

Zero issues with an on-chip Intel 630HD and display port. Can't speak to hdmi as I don't use it. Had a ton of issues with my Nvidia GTX 1050Ti over display port  but not convinced it was entirely the card + FreeBSD. That same card using dvi and FreeBSD was flawless.


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## decuser (Apr 12, 2019)

shkhln said:


> Do you need audio over HDMI?
> 
> https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/AMD-GPU-Matrix, https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/Intel-GPU-Matrix, anything Nvidia. Or just buy _something_, it will probably work ok.
> 
> Careful there, somebody casually reading this thread might get an impression that we actually have an endless stream of specific video card complaints on this forum. There is no such thing.



No need for audio, I have a sound card that works fine. I've read the linked pages, according to the matrices, most cards 'work', but I know from experience that doesn't mean out of the box, and the degree to how well they 'work' is pretty variable. I read the forum regularly and there's quite a stream of questions (wouldn't call them complaints) on the forum regarding video, although I'll grant you our readers are a sophisticated crowd, for the most part, and the questions are usually pretty technical in nature.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 12, 2019)

All video cards I have ever used with FreeBSD (Nvidia quadro fx1800, GTX560 Ti, GTX 1050Ti) and Intel onchip 630HD "just work" after driver installation. In the earlier days I had to build custom config files for xorg but not now. The Nvidia 1050 gave me dpms fits so I dumped Nvidia but I am not sure whether my monitor is at fault or if it was the card.


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## twllnbrck (Apr 12, 2019)

Same here - zero issues. Until last week I used AMD HD6450 for two years without any problems (2 monitors with HDMI and DVI). After changing my motherboard I switched to the integrated Intel 630 HD and it worked out of the box with graphics/drm-fbsd12.0-kmod respectively graphics/drm-kmod.
But nobody is willing to pay 25 - 30€ for my HD6450 on ebay so far


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