# Which graphics cards work well with FreeBSD 13?



## hodong (Jan 4, 2022)

I'm using AMD 3000G integrated graphics on FreeBSD 13.
However, after 3 days or so, the computer crashes.
So I'm looking for a graphics card that works well with FreeBSD 13.
What about Intel CPU integrated graphics? Or how about the Nvidia GT730?


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## grahamperrin@ (Jan 4, 2022)

Have you checked the wiki?



			Graphics - FreeBSD Wiki
		




> crashes



Can you describe the crash?

Which version, exactly? Packages from quarterly, or latest?

`freebsd-version -kru`
`uname -aKU`
`pkg -vv | grep -e url -e enabled`



> AMD 3000G



<https://bsd-hardware.info/?id=cpu:amd-23-24-1-athlon-3000g-with-radeon-vega-graphics>


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## mer (Jan 4, 2022)

Most of the integrated Intel i915 graphics work fine, especially if the CPU is not the latest but maybe a "1 back" generation.  Not sure if there are any standalone graphics cards using it.
A lot of the Nvidia stuff works fine I've been using a generic GT740 card for a while.
If you have any special needs (video/photo editing, game playing, etc) you may want to tell us because there is a difference between "watching u-tube videos over the web" and "editing videos at 100fps".


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## SirDice (Jan 4, 2022)

hodong said:


> What about Intel CPU integrated graphics?


I'm going to say anything between 3rd and 10th generation Intel CPU/iGPUs should work fine. With 11th gen and higher, CPU is fine, graphics are still problematic. 



hodong said:


> Or how about the Nvidia GT730?


I have a Zotac small form factor PC with a GT520M. It's using the legacy version of the NVidia driver; x11/nvidia-driver-390. It's on 24/7 and 99% of the time the Xmatrix screen saver is running (hey! I know it's cheesy nowadays, it still looks awesome ). Has been working fine for the past couple of years, never crashes unless I make it crash myself. The GT730 should still be supported by the latest NVidia drivers, x11/nvidia-driver. I don't expect any problems with any GT700 or newer cards. No CUDA though, but as a 2D/3D driver it works rather well.


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## SirDice (Jan 4, 2022)

mer said:


> Not sure if there are any standalone graphics cards using it.


I'm wondering about the new Intel ARC video cards. They look very interesting, on paper at least. 

With regards to AMD/Radeon or Intel graphics drivers everything more or less depends on what's supported by the Linux DRM code. If it's not supported there it certainly won't be supported on FreeBSD.


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## shkhln (Jan 4, 2022)

hodong said:


> However, after 3 days or so, the computer crashes.


What makes you think this has anything to do with the GPU?



hodong said:


> Or how about the Nvidia GT730?


Poor little thing.


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## hodong (Jan 5, 2022)

grahamperrin said:


> Have you checked the wiki?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


When using FreeBSD 13 as a desktop, the screen turns black and crashes after about 3 days.  There is an error related to drm.  I'll take a picture of the screen later when I have time.


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## hodong (Jan 5, 2022)

Thanks everyone for the replies.  I'll try the Nvida GT730 first.


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## Andriy (Jan 5, 2022)

hodong said:


> However, after 3 days or so, the computer crashes.


Have you tried to understand why?


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## Sevendogsbsd (Jan 5, 2022)

I have limited experience but the GPU on the Intel i7 7700 (630HD?) worked perfectly, as did the AMD RX570. I used to run Nvidia but had nothing but issues so switched to AMD GPUs and had no issues. Now running virtualized so video is moot in my case any more.


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## aht0 (Jan 8, 2022)

From Radeon side, discrete Vega's (56/64) work fine.


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## meaw229a (Jan 9, 2022)

For me a Geforce GT 1030 is doing a good job running a 2k Monitor, very smooth. But be aware if you want to go Gaming or Video editing
you may have to fork out a few more bucks to get something decent.

This card also had a very nice side effect. Before the GT 1030 I was on Intel integrated UHD 630. Suspend/Resume was not possible System
only crashed when I tried. After replacing UHD 630 with the GT 1030 my Suspend/Resume works just fine.


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## 3301 (Jan 11, 2022)

I was (am?) always declared AMD/ATI fanboy but for FreeBSD switched to NVidia (because of their drivers). Currently working on Nvidia Quadro K2200 (bought in pre-miners era, for less than $100). Xmonad in 4k works very smoothly.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Jan 11, 2022)

I was/am the exact opposite: had Nvidia cards forever but got a new monitor which sent me to DMPS hell with an Nvidia card. I got an RX570 AMD card and things worked perfectly from there on out. I do believe the issue in my case was my monitor and how it behaved over DP. I never tried switching to HDMI to see if that resolved the issue. Water under the bridge at this point...


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## 3301 (Jan 11, 2022)

I had some issues with 4k setting. K2200 has 2 DPs and one DVI and my monitor (some Sharp TV to be precise) has only HDMI input. TL;DR the problem was with my c**ppy DP->HDMI adapter, switching to DVI->HDMI cable solved the problem.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Jan 11, 2022)

I was running a 4k large monitor and bought what I thought was a quality DisplayPort cable. What would happen is I could never drop out of X. Once I did this, the display would sleep and never come back. There was no resolution to this and I ended up switching to an AMD card, then it worked perfectly. Actually, I first went back to my on-chip HD630 (i7 7700) and that also worked perfectly. Like I said, was probably my monitor. I was running the latest Nvidia driver at the time - was probably a year and a half ago, maybe 2 years ago.


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## grahamperrin@ (Jan 11, 2022)

<https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-fbsd13-kmod/#history>
<https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-devel-kmod/#history>

Both refer to yesterday's commit: 

<https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/commit/?id=4519b9e81473444a7a2ac2bffe2158bd2da05b36>



> graphics/drm-{fbsd13,current,devel}-kmod: Update after drm-kmod lkpi 5.7



Ah, that's better. YMMV.


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## jmos (Jan 11, 2022)

meaw229a said:


> For me a Geforce GT 1030 is doing a good job running a 2k Monitor, very smooth. But be aware if you want to go Gaming or Video editing
> you may have to fork out a few more bucks to get something decent.


Two fanless GT 1030 cards in two computers doing their job great with display resolutions of 3440x1440 px and 3840x2160 px - both at 60 Hz. They are not very busy with it. And they also do video editing on these machines.


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## jbo (Jan 11, 2022)

On top of what was already stated here (especially the intel integrated GPUs between 3rd and 10th gen work very well) I'd like to add that I am having some really good experiences with Nvidia Quadro cards. I am running three systems with Nvidia Quadros. My main workstation runs a Quadro P5000 and it's a very satisfying experience.
Obviously you might not want to spent 2'500.- USD (or whatever the current price is) on that type of GPU. I just wanted to share since you were asking.


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## hodong (Jan 22, 2022)

I have a GT730 and it works very well. If you are struggling with amdgpu, try Nvidia products.


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## astyle (Jan 22, 2022)

Ahh, from my end of things, I've been running on an Asus Radeon RX 550 4GB card that I got back in 2017 for $90USD. No issues with the `vesa` driver or the latest `amdgpu`. But boy, I've seen Radeon RX 550's market price triple since I bought it!


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## kpedersen (Jan 22, 2022)

3301 said:


> I was (am?) always declared AMD/ATI fanboy but for FreeBSD switched to NVidia (because of their drivers).


This doesn't make too much sense to me.

You couldn't stand to run an open-source driver so much that you moved to Nvidia?

The proprietary amdgpu-pro driver on Linux shares 99% code with the open-source amdgpu driver. It isn't like Nouveau where it had to be reverse engineered and does not have Nvidia's "blessing". The AMD guys actively work on open-source amdgpu.


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## drr (Jan 22, 2022)

hodong said:


> What about Intel CPU integrated graphics?


I have been using Intel integrated graphics on my Thinkpad laptop (8th gen i5) and Optiplex desktop (10th gen i7) with the Intel kernel mode setting driver 'i915kms' in FreeBSD 13. Works perfectly.


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## 3301 (Jan 23, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> This doesn't make too much sense to me.
> 
> You couldn't stand to run an open-source driver so much that you moved to Nvidia?
> 
> The proprietary amdgpu-pro driver on Linux shares 99% code with the open-source amdgpu driver. It isn't like Nouveau where it had to be reverse engineered and does not have Nvidia's "blessing". The AMD guys actively work on open-source amdgpu.


It's not about being open-source or not. It was an older GPU - Radeon 6970 - and I had a lot of trouble in making it work the way I wanted (resolution, refresh frequency, etc). Furthermore it wasn't supporting 4k@60Hz (probably because of older HDMI version), so the real case was drivers and hardware caps and probably lack of my skills. With nvidia it was just plug and play - really sad to say that.


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## kpedersen (Jan 23, 2022)

3301 said:


> It's not about being open-source or not. It was an older GPU - Radeon 6970 - [...] With nvidia it was just plug and play - really sad to say that.


OK fair enough. Though do note that the Nvidia proprietary drivers will drop support over time with older cards and newer Xorgs (something open-source drivers rarely do) so if you do find yourself in the same boat in many years time, I recommend giving your 6970 another shot, it will be fairly ancient by then but will ultimately still be in a better position support wise than the Nvidia equivalent.


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## shkhln (Jan 23, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> The proprietary amdgpu-pro driver on Linux shares 99% code with the open-source amdgpu driver.


Pro refers specifically to the userspace part.


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## kpedersen (Jan 23, 2022)

shkhln said:


> Pro refers specifically to the userspace part.


Isn't there some sort of audio through HDMI that is only in the proprietary driver?


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## shkhln (Jan 23, 2022)

No idea. HDMI audio should work in open-source drivers as well.


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## patmaddox (Oct 26, 2022)

Is there any documentation on which vendors use open source drivers, vs proprietary ones? Particularly where the vendors contribute to the open source ones.

This thread is the only place I’ve seen this info. The graphics wiki page doesn’t mention this idea as far as I can tell.

It sounds like AMD and Intel integrated graphics are a safe bet because of open source drivers, and nvidia might be more risky because they’re proprietary and less likely to stay updated?


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## Whattteva (Oct 26, 2022)

SirDice said:


> I'm wondering about the new Intel ARC video cards. They look very interesting, on paper at least.
> 
> With regards to AMD/Radeon or Intel graphics drivers everything more or less depends on what's supported by the Linux DRM code. If it's not supported there it certainly won't be supported on FreeBSD.


Intel ARC drivers are terribad even for Windows systems. I wouldn't hold my breath running them on FreeBSD.


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## SirDice (Oct 26, 2022)

patmaddox said:


> Is there any documentation on which vendors use open source drivers, vs proprietary ones? Particularly where the vendors contribute to the open source ones.


It's a very short list nowadays. Only Intel, AMD and NVidia. NVidia's driver never was open source, although that might change some time in the future. Only Intel and AMD have something open source with regards to graphic card drivers.


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## mer (Oct 26, 2022)

Not sure about your first question,  I think Intel may contribute to open source drivers.  AMD I'm not even going to guess.

Nvidia:  they seem to be staying reasonably up to date, but you have to be aware of your hardware version because they will drop support for older hardware from the current version of the drivers.  That's why if you do "pkg search nvidia | grep driver" you see 5 different versions of the driver plus a couple for a secondary device.


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 26, 2022)

I own a cheap,
Caicos [Radeon HD 6450/7450/8450 / R5 230 OEM]
Works fine.


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## shkhln (Oct 26, 2022)

patmaddox said:


> It sounds like AMD and Intel integrated graphics are a safe bet because of open source drivers, and nvidia might be more risky because they’re proprietary and less likely to stay updated?


The ranking is: Nvdia >> Amd > Intel for gaming, Nvidia for computing and Whatever for basic 2d graphics. Nvidia generally has the most up-to-date driver, because they work on FreeBSD compatibility directly. Intel and AMD work on the GPU drivers in the Linux kernel and don't really help with porting them to FreeBSD.


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 26, 2022)

If i remember good Linus Thorvalds hates Nvidia... For it's closed.


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## shkhln (Oct 26, 2022)

Whattteva said:


> Intel ARC drivers are terribad even for Windows systems. I wouldn't hold my breath running them on FreeBSD.


You might want to read http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver-quality.html.


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## Whattteva (Oct 26, 2022)

Alain De Vos said:


> If i remember good Linus Thorvalds hates Nvidia... For it's closed.


He gave Nvidia the "bird" though that was back in 2012. Not sure what his attitude to them is now.


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## patmaddox (Oct 26, 2022)

I am trying to build a desktop machine for programming, not for gaming, so I’m looking for graphics that “just work” (and will keep working) with a minimum of hassle. As long as I can launch a desktop environment, run emacs, and a web browser with a couple hundred open tabs, I’m good to go.

I’m currently looking at Intel i71100b CPU w/ integrated graphics. I think I’ve done as much research as I can at this point, and just have to cross my fingers and hope it works.


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 26, 2022)

For Intel there is this table,


			Graphics/Intel-GPU-Matrix - FreeBSD Wiki
		

For AMD,


			Graphics/AMD-GPU-Matrix - FreeBSD Wiki
		

I just have chosen one out of the table.


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## Jose (Oct 26, 2022)

shkhln said:


> You might want to read http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-truth-on-opengl-driver-quality.html.


That's horrifying, but it's from 8 years ago. Hopefully things have improved? Vulkan gonna save us?


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## patmaddox (Oct 26, 2022)

Alain De Vos said:


> For Intel there is this table,
> 
> 
> Graphics/Intel-GPU-Matrix - FreeBSD Wiki
> ...


The Intel graphics page, at least, is not current (it even says the table is obsolete). Even the note about Linux 5.4 is not current. drm-510-kmod is the current version, so whatever Linux kernel 5.10 supports should also work on 13.1.


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## mer (Oct 26, 2022)

patmaddox said:


> I am trying to build a desktop machine for programming, not for gaming, so I’m looking for graphics that “just work” (and will keep working) with a minimum of hassle.


Low bar  but a good one.  For that integrated Intel graphics using the modesetting drivers in 13.x should be fine.  I've been doing that on a NUC for a while, works nicely, so for your requirements it should be good.


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 26, 2022)

Even with cheap accelerated video-cards & wifi-dongles you can arrive at very positive results.


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## shkhln (Oct 26, 2022)

Jose said:


> That's horrifying, but it's from 8 years ago. Hopefully things have improved? Vulkan gonna save us?


Well, fglrx is gone for good. I mostly linked that blog post for the two Intel teams claim.


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## SirDice (Oct 26, 2022)

mer said:


> For that integrated Intel graphics using the modesetting drivers in 13.x should be fine.


Yeah, I agree. Get a mainboard (and CPU) with integrated graphics. Then you can always 'upgrade' your graphics by sticking a 'real' graphics card in it some time in the future. Up to 11th gen Intel should work fine, not sure about the 12th gen though. Besides the graphics there may also be an issue with the P and E core differences. As far as I know the FreeBSD process scheduler doesn't understand the difference and will treat them all the same.


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## mer (Oct 26, 2022)

SirDice said:


> Up to 11th gen Intel should work fine, not sure about the 12th gen though.


I've always had better luck picking "latest gen - [1|2]" hardware for FreeBSD.  My needs have never demanded bleeding edge, heck the system idle stats say I'm not doing anything.  I'll take more memory over pure cpu for my workloads any day.


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## astyle (Oct 26, 2022)

patmaddox said:


> The Intel graphics page, at least, is not current (it even says the table is obsolete). Even the note about Linux 5.4 is not current. drm-510-kmod is the current version, so whatever Linux kernel 5.10 supports should also work on 13.1.


I got RX 6900 XT going under FreeBSD 









						sienna_cichlid driver
					

Discussion: Last year, I got a water-cooled RX 6900 XT GPU (Yeah, worst possible time to get it, at height of GPU shortage, but deed is done 😅 ). Spent some time mating it to an aftermarket cooling system, and it's finally working under Windows, and the hardware is fine, I can use the latest AMD...




					forums.freebsd.org


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