# Zotac & Gigabyte video cards any good?



## randux (Jan 25, 2009)

Hi,

My local shop has mostly Zotac and Gigabye video cards.

The ones in my price range are the nVidia GeForce 9500GT 512MB DDR3, the same thing with DDR2 memory, and Gigabye GeForce 9500GT 512MB DDR2 or DDR3.

First of all are these cards any good?

Is the DDR3 worth paying extra for and is the 9500GT a good card?

Does anyone happen to know if this will work with drm on FreeBSD (my Intel G33 chipset isn't supported by 7.1 RELEASE although somebody said it is supported in CURRENT.)

The card is for use with Linux, FreeBSD, or Solaris on a Core 2 Duo box with 4G RAM and a 22 inch screen that can only do 1680x1050. I'm not a gamer, but I would like good graphics. My G33 chipset does an ok job on everything but Solaris now, which doesn't recognize it. The fonts are not displaying that great on FreeBSD current although most everything else looks pretty good.

The shop has a Zotac GeForce 6200 256M for about half the price but I didn't see any good reviews for it. Is this a good card?

Thanks,

Rand


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## Maledictus (Jan 25, 2009)

In my opinion nvidia is a company which is not very open source friendly. So if you are not a gamer and don't need 3D working just right now why not consider an amd card?

That said all of those nvidia cards should work ok on a i386 machine. On amd64 they suck!


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## vermaden (Jan 25, 2009)

Geforce 9500GT = Geforce 8600GT = SHIT

nVidia only changed its name, nothing more, they are recently only rebranding their products using old chips, nothing more.

If you want to pay for gfx card that is worth something, get Radeon 4670/4830 or Geforce 9600GSO/9600GT.

Also 9600GSO = 8800GS, but both of these cards provide good performance.

Gigabyte does pretty standart casual gfx cards, nothing big really, Zotac likes to providemore custom/overclocked/better colled gfx cards.

DDR2 memory is too slow for anything bigger then Geforce 8400, stay with DDR3 or higher.



> Does anyone happen to know if this will work with drm on FreeBSD (my Intel G33 chipset isn't supported by 7.1 RELEASE although somebody said it is supported in CURRENT.)


Intel G33 is one of the best choices for FreeBSD/OpenSolaris/Linux and is supported, if you have this card and you donot want gaming, then stay away from nVidia as far as you can, you can get Radeon, but the RadeonHD driver will be ready for about a year or so, so you will have to wait for your support, stick with Intel and dont but that gfx if you do not want to play @ Windows.


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## randux (Jan 25, 2009)

Hi guys thanks for your posts. I just got back from the shop and I got another MSI P6NG board (the other box they built on it is working nicely) it has integrated nVidia GeForce 7100. I think I won't buy another video card for this box if it will work on Solaris. This is the mobo http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=P6NG_Neo-Digital&class=mb

Vermaden, did you see my thread here http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=1466? I couldn't get the G33 chipset to work with drm on FreeBSD 7.1 RELEASE. When you say it is supported, do you mean I can get drm with this card on FreeBSD or you mean I can just use the card?

I'm running 7.1 AMD64 on this box now and I will try to track stable when I get the time. Thanks.


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## vermaden (Jan 25, 2009)

It works @ i386, but dunno about amd64.

I personally have Intel Q35 chipset based motherboard with the same as in G33 graphics (GMA 3100) and it wokrs very well with FreeBSD.

By the way, how is this new Geforce 7100 based motherboards works for you?
You propably use xorg's nv or vesa driver?


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## randux (Jan 25, 2009)

vermaden said:
			
		

> It works @ i386, but dunno about amd64.
> 
> I personally have Intel Q35 chipset based motherboard with the same as in G33 graphics (GMA 3100) and it wokrs very well with FreeBSD.
> 
> ...



Do you have drm working on 7.1 RELEASE (or earlier) with G33 chipset? Did you have to do anything special to make it work?

On my 1st P6NG (which has the GeForce 7100) I have Slackware 12.2 which is 2.6.27.7 SMP kernel and I downloaded the nvidia driver and installed it. It's really beautiful and smooth, no complaints on E2200 box with 2G RAM. It's not a super fast box but it runs great. I'm using JFS for all filesystems.

I don't remember if I tried FreeBSD on that box but I am running it now on a more powerful box which has the G33 chipset.


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## vermaden (Jan 25, 2009)

randux said:
			
		

> Do you have drm working on 7.1 RELEASE (or earlier) with G33 chipset? Did you have to do anything special to make it work?


I have working Q35 Intel motherboard working, but G33 uses the same graphics card as Q35 does --> GMA 3100.

I just use xf86-video-intel driver (intel in the device section @ xorg.conf) for that, the drm/i915 modules are loaded automatically at x11 start.




			
				randux said:
			
		

> On my 1st P6NG (which has the GeForce 7100) I have Slackware 12.2 which is 2.6.27.7 SMP kernel and I downloaded the nvidia driver and installed it.


I thought you run FreeBSD there, no matter then.




			
				randux said:
			
		

> (...) E5200 box with 2G RAM. It's not a super fast box but it runs great.


Not superfast?
2 x 2.5GHz @ 45nm + 2GB RAM is not fast?

So what is, a dual quad core @ 4.0GHz + 16GB RAM?

I personally use Intel e6320 (2 x 1.86GHz) + Intel Q35 with GMA 3100 graphics and this box feels fast for everything I do here.



			
				randux said:
			
		

> I'm using JFS for all filesystems.



Good, they are far better then the overrated ext* filesystems and JFS consumes a lot less CPU time, also it also adds inodes dynamically.


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## randux (Jan 25, 2009)

vermaden said:
			
		

> I have working Q35 Intel motherboard working, but G33 uses the same graphics card as Q35 does --> GMA 3100.
> 
> I just use xf86-video-intel driver (intel in the device section @ xorg.conf) for that, the drm/i915 modules are loaded automatically at x11 start.



Hmmmm I have intel driver specified and it doesn't work with drm...




			
				vermaden said:
			
		

> I thought you run FreeBSD there, no matter then.



No, I'm using it on my "fast" box with the G33 chipset. 




			
				vermaden said:
			
		

> Not superfast?
> 2 x 2.5GHz @ 45nm + 2GB RAM is not fast?
> 
> So what is, a dual quad core @ 4.0GHz + 16GB RAM?



Well my FreeBSD box is E8400 with 4G Mushkin RAM. It runs almost twice as fast as my E2200 Slackware box.



			
				vermaden said:
			
		

> Good, they are far better then the overrated ext* filesystems and JFS consumes a lot less CPU time, also it also adds inodes dynamically.



I did find ext3 very slow, but it was extremely reliable. I never had any corruption. I had two power loss last week and one file was complete toast under JFS. JFS does only metadata journaling and I tuned ext3 to data journaling.

I don't know if I am happy with any Linux filesystems right now from performance/reliability position. It's probably true of UFS, FFS, etc. but I didn't have a box running when the power went...


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## vermaden (Jan 25, 2009)

randux said:
			
		

> Hmmmm I have intel driver specified and it doesn't work with drm...



I have read @MLs that some changes had been made to 7-STABLE just after the 7.1-RELEASE because it was too late to put them into RELEASE, you should check 7-RELEASE snapshot at least.



			
				randux said:
			
		

> Well my FreeBSD box is E8400 with 4G Mushkin RAM. It runs almost twice as fast as my E2200 Slackware box.


I thought you mean e5200, but your e2200 is propably faster then mine e6320 



			
				randux said:
			
		

> I did find ext3 very slow, but it was extremely reliable. I never had any corruption. I had two power loss last week and one file was complete toast under JFS. JFS does only metadata journaling and I tuned ext3 to data journaling.



Check these options for ext3 with tune2fs:
*-c 0* [does not check fsck after X mounts]
*-o journal_data_ordered* [makes ext3 faster, good for important filesystems]
*-o journal_data_writeback* [makes it even faster, good for /var /tmp ...]
*-O dir_index* [hash dirs, makes it faster]szybciej ]
*-m 1* [use 1% for root, good for very bog volums]


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## randux (Jan 25, 2009)

vermaden said:
			
		

> I have read @MLs that some changes had been made to 7-STABLE just after the 7.1-RELEASE because it was too late to put them into RELEASE, you should check 7-RELEASE snapshot at least.



Yes, I plan to track stable because somebody said it was there. I guess I can test more easily on snapshot, but I thought maybe I can learn something if I track stable. I will think about it. I have some projects I have to do but I hope I can start this in a few weeks. Of course you will see my questions on this board when I do 



			
				vermaden said:
			
		

> I thought you mean e5200, but your e2200 is propably faster then mine e6320



No, you are correct. I made a mistake in my first post and said 5200, I went back and fixed it to 2200. Interesting, some OS won't run 64 bit on this chip...



			
				vermaden said:
			
		

> Check these options for ext3 with tune2fs:
> *-c 0* [does not check fsck after X mounts]
> *-o journal_data_ordered* [makes ext3 faster, good for important filesystems]
> *-o journal_data_writeback* [makes it even faster, good for /var /tmp ...]
> ...



Yes, I always use dir_index and journal_data. I didn't try writeback yet. I am recovering from a bad failure and I don't have my systems set up yet but I usually take hourly rsync backup and create a mirror system on another drive. I hope I won't have more electricity problems but I will learn more about JFS if I do.

Thanks Vermaden :e


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## aragon (Jan 25, 2009)

I've tested the G33 patches that were merged to 7.1-STABLE.  The only problem I encountered was with linux DRM support, but native apps worked.  Played a bit of Quake 3 even.


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## randux (Jan 26, 2009)

Thank you very much Aragon for this update! I will try to track stable.....


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