# 64bit support for nvidia and creative



## p3n1x (Dec 20, 2008)

title says it.

basically i want to know if the 64bit editions of 7 support nvidia drivers, or creative x-fi pci card.

those are the 2 i need working to go bsd on my main home workstation. 

this is my hardware
Gigabyte EP45-UD3P - E7200 C2D @ 3.16 Ghz - XFX 9800GTX+ - 8GB Kingston DDR2 800 - Creative X-fi Music - BFG Ageia Phys-X 100 - Logitech X-530 5.1 Sound - Powered by 500W PS on a Samsung 2493HM Widescreen

so id like to go 64 so i can use my 8 gigs of ram. enjoy my 9800gtx+ on my widescreen and then enjoy the x-fi. 

i know it is possible to get the x-fi working on linux, and nvidia 64 on linux, but 64bit support for freebsd is not there yet is it? or when will it? anybody have some comments, or insight? 

Thanks!


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## vermaden (Dec 20, 2008)

p3n1x said:
			
		

> title says it.
> 
> basically i want to know if the 64bit editions of 7 support nvidia drivers, or creative x-fi pci card.



Its the other way mate, nvidia and creative does not support 64bit FreeBSD.


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## fender0107401 (Dec 20, 2008)

hahahaha :e

Another one, who want the driver from nvidia!


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## hydra (Dec 20, 2008)

+1 here...


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## milosz (Dec 20, 2008)

Hello,

I use nvidia 9600 GT on my desktop (amd64). 

I just needed to compile xorg from ports to use its nv driver.

My device section in xorg.conf is:

```
Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "nv"
        VendorName  "nVidia Corporation"
        BoardName   "Unknown Board"
        BusID       "PCI:2:0:0"
        Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
        Option "MigrationHeuristic"  "greedy"
EndSection
```

It works great for standard desktop usage (desktop resolution 1920x1200). However I experienced some small problems with MPlayer and Firefox. MPlayer has some problems in full screen mode, but problably I caused this. Firefox could be slower on some sites, flash (linux-flashplugin-7.0r73_1) is working fine.

Just opened xorg log and it looks like 9800 GTX is supported by nv driver.


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## p3n1x (Dec 20, 2008)

excellent...

right the other way around, creative and NV supporting bsd 

well i believe ill give it a shot later. right now my logitech g15 keyboard does not get recognized when i boot from a net install cd 

it still wouldnt even see my keyboard when i put on the usb/ps2 adapter.

but ill get it going soon enough


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## cracauer@ (Dec 20, 2008)

The "nv" driver doesn't have video playback acceleration, doesn't do multi-head and doesn't have power savings, the card will run at much higher power when you are idle or in 2D mode compared to the binary nvidia drivers. And of course no 3D and hence no google earth.

On the bright side, it seems to have less bugs.


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## jpaetzel@ (Dec 21, 2008)

I believe the nv driver did recently sprout multi-head support.  Still no 3d accel though.


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## SirDice (Dec 22, 2008)

The Creative X-Fi doesn't work at all. Not on i386, not on anything else.

The binary nvidia driver only works on i386. 

Want better support? Ask Creative and NVidia.. 
Don't hold your breath in the meantime though 

My G15 works.. Sort of.. I can't select anything in the bootmenu, hence I can't use it to boot to single user mode. 
Once the kernel is fully loaded it works like a normal keyboard though.


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## kamikaze (Dec 22, 2008)

Can't you get X-Fi working through oss?


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## trasz@ (Dec 22, 2008)

Problem with nVidia is, they are waiting for some additional support from FreeBSD, as described here: http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests.  GSoC is coming, so maybe someone would...?  ;-)


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## hedwards (Dec 22, 2008)

SirDice said:
			
		

> The Creative X-Fi doesn't work at all. Not on i386, not on anything else.
> 
> The binary nvidia driver only works on i386.
> 
> ...


Didn't Creative recently start releasing their hardware specs and information relevant to driver creation? Not that that's an automatic driver, but it does speed things up.

Personally I'm not sure how useful that's going to be at this point considering that modern integrated sound chips seem to work fine and are all HD surround sound capable. A couple of years back it would have been a much bigger deal.

Still waiting on nVidia, it's truly a shame that right now the only decent choice for graphics on FreeBSD is ATI/AMD.


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## graudeejs (Dec 22, 2008)

OK, pardon me, but why ya'll so fancy about 64bit, and not using PAE?
I know FreeBSD recommends using 64bit over PAE, but still, what is the reason?


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## trasz@ (Dec 22, 2008)

hedwards said:
			
		

> Still waiting on nVidia, it's truly a shame that right now the only decent choice for graphics on FreeBSD is ATI/AMD.



Actually, right now the only decent choice for graphics on FreeBSD is... nVidia.  Same with Linux - closed source ATI drivers are unstable and cause all kinds of problems, while open source ATI and Intel drivers don't support much of the functionality and the supported pieces of 3D are slow.  So, if one wants graphics card that actually works, the only choice is nVidia.  The drawback of FreeBSD compared to Linux is that on FreeBSD, nVidia drivers don't work on amd64, one has to use x86 instead.


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## adamk (Dec 22, 2008)

trasz@ said:
			
		

> Actually, right now the only decent choice for graphics on FreeBSD is... nVidia.  Same with Linux - closed source ATI drivers are unstable and cause all kinds of problems, while open source ATI and Intel drivers don't support much of the functionality and the supported pieces of 3D are slow.  So, if one wants graphics card that actually works, the only choice is nVidia.  The drawback of FreeBSD compared to Linux is that on FreeBSD, nVidia drivers don't work on amd64, one has to use x86 instead.



Is that your opinion, or are you speaking as a representative of the FreeBSD project?

[sarcasm]
Since ATI isn't a decent choice for graphics on FreeBSD, I guess I must be imagining that these two workstations are working so well with ATI video cards.  Thanks for pointing out my mistake. 
[/sarcasm]

Adam


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## kamikaze (Dec 22, 2008)

Did any one mention that the NVidia driver runs under the GIANT lock. This is a major catastrophe under 7.x.


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## trasz@ (Dec 23, 2008)

adamk said:
			
		

> Is that your opinion, or are you speaking as a representative of the FreeBSD project?



Of course it's my personal opinion.



> [sarcasm]
> Since ATI isn't a decent choice for graphics on FreeBSD, I guess I must be imagining that these two workstations are working so well with ATI video cards.[/sarcasm]



I guess it's all about the definition of "so well".  ;-)


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## trasz@ (Dec 23, 2008)

kamikaze said:
			
		

> Did any one mention that the NVidia driver runs under the GIANT lock. This is a major catastrophe under 7.x.



Could you explain?  While it's true that getting rid of Giant is one of the biggest tasks going on since FreeBSD 5, it doesn't mean that in FreeBSD 7 Giant causes bigger problems than in, say, FreeBSD 5.  It would be great if all the drivers were MPSAFE, but hey, this nVidia thing still works perfectly.  Just not for amd64 ;-(


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## adamk (Dec 23, 2008)

trasz@ said:
			
		

> I guess it's all about the definition of "so well".  ;-)



I have fully functioning Xv, very fast 2D (including RENDER and COMPOSITE support) via EXA, 3D acceleration good enough for compiz, openarena, ut2004, NeverwinterNights,  even doom3 if I'm willing to set the quality down a little.  

Oh, and it works on AMD64   I'd consider that "so well".

Adam


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## adamk (Dec 23, 2008)

trasz@ said:
			
		

> Could you explain?  While it's true that getting rid of Giant is one of the biggest tasks going on since FreeBSD 5, it doesn't mean that in FreeBSD 7 Giant causes bigger problems than in, say, FreeBSD 5.  It would be great if all the drivers were MPSAFE, but hey, this nVidia thing still works perfectly.  Just not for amd64 ;-(



I guess it all depends on the definition of "perfectly".   

Adam


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## p3n1x (Dec 23, 2008)

ive settled for xubuntu now  its decent

supports my sound and video no problems. flash too LOL!

freebsd still for my servers though!


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## hedwards (Dec 23, 2008)

trasz@ said:
			
		

> Actually, right now the only decent choice for graphics on FreeBSD is... nVidia.  Same with Linux - closed source ATI drivers are unstable and cause all kinds of problems, while open source ATI and Intel drivers don't support much of the functionality and the supported pieces of 3D are slow.  So, if one wants graphics card that actually works, the only choice is nVidia.  The drawback of FreeBSD compared to Linux is that on FreeBSD, nVidia drivers don't work on amd64, one has to use x86 instead.


Considering that this is a thread about amd64 and AMD providing support to developers, I'd say that's a better choice. And far better than the crap Intel keeps producing. Either way you don't get 3d, but at least with ATI you can get impatient and start writing yourself.


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## aragon (Dec 23, 2008)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> OK, pardon me, but why ya'll so fancy about 64bit, and not using PAE?
> I know FreeBSD recommends using 64bit over PAE, but still, what is the reason?


nVidia drivers don't work in a PAE kernel either.


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## kamikaze (Dec 24, 2008)

trasz@ said:
			
		

> Could you explain?  While it's true that getting rid of Giant is one of the biggest tasks going on since FreeBSD 5, it doesn't mean that in FreeBSD 7 Giant causes bigger problems than in, say, FreeBSD 5.  It would be great if all the drivers were MPSAFE, but hey, this nVidia thing still works perfectly.  Just not for amd64 ;-(


In deed it is a major catastrophe under 7.x, because it breaks the new fine grained locking. Just look how easy it is to lock the whole system with file system operations in 7.0.

On 7.0 I couldn't even play music on a single core machine, because every single file access caused an interruption.


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## nakal (Dec 24, 2008)

adamk said:
			
		

> I have fully functioning Xv, very fast 2D (including RENDER and COMPOSITE support) via EXA, 3D acceleration good enough for compiz, openarena, ut2004, NeverwinterNights,  even doom3 if I'm willing to set the quality down a little.
> 
> Oh, and it works on AMD64   I'd consider that "so well".



I also have an ATI, because I'm almost convinced that NVidia does not really care about FreeBSD/amd64. And who wants an amd64 system crippled to i386?

What VGA card did you choose? I reached a bit "too high" and bought an RV630 based one. I'm still waiting for Xv support, but desktop works very well and as I read this thread, it seems it even works far better than with nv, which apparently cannot do full screen video playback. I have no problems with unaccelerated video playback, even at 1920x1200.


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## cracauer@ (Dec 24, 2008)

The locking in NVidia's driver shouldn't matter too much. I don't think there is too much kernel activity other than the video card while you make heavy use 3D. It's not that disk or network are in heavy use.


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## aragon (Dec 24, 2008)

nakal said:
			
		

> I reached a bit "too high" and bought an RV630 based one. I'm still waiting for Xv support, but desktop works very well and as I read this thread, it seems it even works far better than with nv, which apparently cannot do full screen video playback. I have no problems with unaccelerated video playback, even at 1920x1200.


I'm in a similar situation.  I picked an RV620 card.  Fortunately full screen video playback works for me too, even h.264 encoded HD videos.  I think if I didn't have an E8500 CPU things might be different. 

It will be good when Xv and 3D support is available.  I've read suggestions that March 2009 will be the month.  I'm missing quake 3!


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## adamk (Dec 25, 2008)

The DRM and DDX functionality will probably be present in the next week.  The DRM may be linux specific at first but that hopefully won't last long.  That would give you Xv and EXA support.  March/April is the current rough estimate for 3D parity with the r500 driver.

Adam


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## SirDice (Dec 25, 2008)

nakal said:
			
		

> I also have an ATI, because I'm almost convinced that NVidia does not really care about FreeBSD/amd64. And who wants an amd64 system crippled to i386?


NVidia does care.. Why would they even build an fbsd driver in the first place? As has been said over and over again, the fbsd kernel is missing some functionality NVidia needs to make a decent amd64 driver. Heck, even the ATI driver would benefit from that.

And why would my system be crippled? I've only got 2GB of RAM (plenty for fbsd), so what would I gain by running amd64 instead of i386? Besides bragging rights?


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## adamk (Dec 25, 2008)

SirDice said:
			
		

> NVidia does care.. Why would they even build an fbsd driver in the first place? As has been said over and over again, the fbsd kernel is missing some functionality NVidia needs to make a decent amd64 driver. Heck, even the ATI driver would benefit from that.



Interesting...  Can you please explain that statement a little better?  What functionality and how would the currently functioning FreeBSD/amd64 Mesa driver benefit from this currently missing functionality?

Adam


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## Mystikki (Dec 25, 2008)

I think Sirdice is referring to this article: http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests mentioned before even in this thread. Hopefully someone can make nvidia 64-driver happen sometime...


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## adamk (Dec 25, 2008)

I'm familiar with that document.  I'm curious what functionality listed there would help improve the open source Mesa drivers, and how it would help.

Adam


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## aragon (Dec 26, 2008)

I thought I'd post about my recent success in getting DRI working with my onboard G33 graphics.  Xv works, high resolution video playback no longer kills CPU and 3D is fast enough for Quake 3!  I've disabled my ATI in the BIOS for now.  You might consider doing the same!


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## kamikaze (Dec 27, 2008)

cracauer@ said:
			
		

> The locking in NVidia's driver shouldn't matter too much. I don't think there is too much kernel activity other than the video card while you make heavy use 3D. It's not that disk or network are in heavy use.


WTF? Almost any application displays something. Browsers, mail clients, terminals... that's done by the video card, too.


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## nakal (Dec 27, 2008)

aragon said:
			
		

> I think if I didn't have an E8500 CPU things might be different.



No, it's not!  I can tell you that my E2200 CPU performs very decently. I have no complaints at all with video playback.



> It will be good when Xv and 3D support is available.  I've read suggestions that March 2009 will be the month.  I'm missing quake 3!



I'm missing Unreal Tournament. :e



			
				SirDice said:
			
		

> As has been said over and over again, the fbsd kernel is missing some functionality NVidia



I wonder why it is possible to make an AMD/ATI driver then. Apparently, the radeonhd developers don't have any complaints about amd64.



> And why would my system be crippled?



Why not use the full amd64 CPU instruction set? amd64 is working better with ZFS and if you have plenty of memory (which is pretty cheap at the moment btw). I have made some CPU speed tests and it seems in certain situations an amd64 system is almost twice as fast as i386 on the same hardware.


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## oliverh (Dec 27, 2008)

>I have made some CPU speed tests and it seems in certain situations an amd64 system is almost twice as fast as i386 on the same hardware.

Do you have some real-world tests too? I didn't see any of such improvments - maybe apart from a big database server with heavy load.


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## nakal (Dec 28, 2008)

When I test the speed of CPUs, I try to test the CPU _only_. So it's not possible to compare it to real world scenarios. I remember, I've seen some drastic improvement while running _openssl speed_ using certain crypto algorithms. I'm using encryption a lot.


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## none (Dec 28, 2008)

nakal said:
			
		

> I also have an ATI, because I'm almost convinced that NVidia does not really care about FreeBSD/amd64. And who wants an amd64 system crippled to i386?
> 
> What VGA card did you choose? I reached a bit "too high" and bought an RV630 based one. I'm still waiting for Xv support, but desktop works very well and as I read this thread, it seems it even works far better than with nv, which apparently cannot do full screen video playback. I have no problems with unaccelerated video playback, even at 1920x1200.



just RV630 family ?
I was planning to buy a HD 4850 (from newer family) for using in games (windows) and FreeBSD amd64.

As I read the main page of the radeonhd site, this ain't a good path., right ?

where can I find their roadmap (if any) ?

and what about the ati driver (read there about a driver-ati x driver-radeonhd issue) ?

thanks,

none


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## adamk (Dec 28, 2008)

What I said above pretty much holds true for r600 and r700 cards:



> The DRM and DDX functionality will probably be present in the next week. The DRM may be linux specific at first but that hopefully won't last long. That would give you Xv and EXA support. March/April is the current rough estimate for 3D parity with the r500 driver.



This is true for both the xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-radeonhd driver.  At the present moment, 2D acceleration (without Xv) is present via shadowfb.  Xv and 2D acceleration via EXA will be available as soon as the DRM and DDX are updated...  The code for this is done, AMD is just waiting for approval which they hoped to have done by Christmas (and obvious missed by at least a few days).

Adam


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## SirDice (Dec 28, 2008)

> Why not use the full amd64 CPU instruction set? amd64 is working better with ZFS and if you have plenty of memory (which is pretty cheap at the moment btw).


Memory may be cheap but that doesn't mean I will just go out and buy something I do not need. Besides, the mainboard I'm using can't handle more then 2GB. So should I rush out and buy a new mainboard too? Oh.. that would mean getting a new CPU and graphics card too.. Sure.. I'd love to but bills need to be payed too, you know.


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## adamk (Dec 28, 2008)

Since you appear to be around now, SirDice, I'm still interested in knowing specifically which features that nvidia has requested would benefit the open source Mesa drivers and how they would benefit from them.

Adam


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## SirDice (Dec 28, 2008)

adamk said:
			
		

> Since you appear to be around now, SirDice, I'm still interested in knowing specifically which features that nvidia has requested would benefit the open source Mesa drivers and how they would benefit from them.


I am by no means a kernel hacker, so I go on what someone else says. But I did read the original request for those features some time ago. Reading the reasons behind the need made sense to me. And I'm sure you've seen the 25 page thread on the nvnews forum :e

http://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hackers&m=115157983106569&w=2

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=1620669#post1620669


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## SirDice (Dec 28, 2008)

Oh.. I need to clearify something about the X-Fi too.. 

When I first got that card it wasn't supported.. With OSS 4.0 it seems there's beta support.. So I'll be trying that if I have some time, on i386 

http://www.opensound.com/freebsd.html
http://www.freshports.org/audio/oss/


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## adamk (Dec 28, 2008)

SirDice said:
			
		

> I am by no means a kernel hacker, so I go on what someone else says. But I did read the original request for those features some time ago. Reading the reasons behind the need made sense to me. And I'm sure you've seen the 25 page thread on the nvnews forum :e
> 
> http://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hackers&m=115157983106569&w=2
> 
> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=1620669#post1620669



I'm certainly familiar with all the requests, and the various discussions about the requests.  And while the requests seem to make sense, you actually said:



> As has been said over and over again, the fbsd kernel is missing some functionality NVidia needs to make a decent amd64 driver. Heck, even the ATI driver would benefit from that.



That's what I'm looking for clarification on.  I've had numerous discussions with the current DRI maintainer for FreeBSD, and he's never mentioned any of those items at all, much less in any way to suggest that the drivers would benefit from that functionality.  So I'm curious how you, or this "someone else", came to that conclusion.

Adam


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## adamk (Dec 29, 2008)

Your lack of a response makes me think that you really did not know what you were talking about when you said those changes would help the ATI driver.  Is that the case?

Adam


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## vermaden (Dec 30, 2008)

ATI has just released 3D documentation for R600/R700 chips (yes, the newest series also), so in longer term RadeonHD driver will support full 3D accelration: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_r600_oss_3d


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## adamk (Dec 30, 2008)

vermaden said:
			
		

> ATI has just released 3D documentation for R600/R700 chips (yes, the newest series also), so in longer term RadeonHD driver will support full 3D accelration: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_r600_oss_3d



Errr.  Please re-read the article.  They did not release any  r600/r700 documentation at this time.  It clearly states:



> There was about 180 pages of 3D register specifications set to be released, but all of the AMD officials didn't come to a consensus before leaving for the holidays.



What they did release was functioning code for the DRM (the kernel module) along with updates to the 2D driver to support EXA acceleration and Xv, along with an application designed to test 2D and 3D operations by communicating directly with the GPU.

The DRM code is linux specific at this point, though I saw rnoland talking with the ATI guys on IRC yesterday, discussing what changes would need to happen to the BSD DRM code.

Documentation will hopefully be following in the next month, with basic 3D functionality in Mesa in the near future, too.  The last estimate I heard for parity with the r500 driver was March/April.

Adam


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## vermaden (Dec 30, 2008)

adamk said:
			
		

> Errr.  Please re-read the article.  They did not release any  r600/r700 documentation at this time.



... great :/

I was not interested in all reading so I read only "3D Code" and assumed that its whole 3D documentation, sorry for misinformation.


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## nakal (Dec 30, 2008)

none said:
			
		

> where can I find their roadmap (if any) ?



They don't publish any roadmaps, because they cannot guarantee anything.



> and what about the ati driver (read there about a driver-ati x driver-radeonhd issue) ?



Simply said: there is none. The authors of radeon and ati drivers always argued with radeonhd developers. As far as I understand, this fight had its peak when radeonhd implemented the generic AtomBIOS support (AMD has always pushed the radeonhd developers to do so). This has made the radeon or ati developers angry because radeonhd began to support older cards out of the box and reached in their territory.

As a kind of revenge, one radeon/ati developer desperately deleted a line from a testing/integration script (that noone really uses), in hope radeonhd will not be considered as the official driver for Xorg. In my opinion, this is a really childish behavior, especially his argumentation and justification. On the other hand the radeonhd developers handled it very easy (they simply asked something like "what the hell are you doing?" and that's all). It makes them a lot more likeable somehow.

When you ask me, I use radeonhd, because it simply works better on my PCs. I need dual-screen pretty often and I like a functioning VT-switch, as I mentioned before.


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## adamk (Dec 30, 2008)

nakal said:
			
		

> They don't publish any roadmaps, because they cannot guarantee anything.
> 
> 
> 
> Simply said: there is none. The authors of radeon and ati drivers always argued with radeonhd developers. As far as I understand, this fight had its peak when radeonhd implemented the generic AtomBIOS support (AMD has always pushed the radeonhd developers to do so). This has made the radeon or ati developers angry because radeonhd began to support older cards out of the box and reached in their territory.



Errr..  You're a little misinformed here.

xf86-video-ati (aka, the 'radeon' driver in this case) supported AtomBIOS first.  While 'radeonhd' was the first to support 2D in r500 cards (*not* through AtomBIOS) the same functionality was quickly added to the 'radeon' driver.  Many folks still can not understand why the 'radeon' driver wasn't just modified by the Novell developers in the first place to support r500 cards instead of creating a whole new driver.

The developers of the 'radeon' driver then extended this support to use AtomBIOS where available.  The radeonhd developers then did the same with their driver.  In fact, the 'radeon' driver was the first one to support both 2D and 3D acceleration at the same time on r500 cards.

There was never any anger over radeonhd suddenly supporting older cards since, frankly, radeonhd didn't suddenly start supporting older cards.  It is not, and always has been, limited to r500 and newer cards.  It does not work on older radeons, at all, and there are no plans on having it do so.  

As for me, I prefer the 'radeon' driver simply because I've been using it for years on older GPUs and it works fine.  I use dual screen all the time, and regularly switch VTs without issue.

Adam


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## none (Dec 30, 2008)

I guess I'll wait more to make this new video card purchase. I'm still more likely to go ATi, but let's see 

none


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## nakal (Dec 30, 2008)

adamk said:
			
		

> Errr..  You're a little misinformed here.
> 
> xf86-video-ati (aka, the 'radeon' driver in this case) supported AtomBIOS first.



radeonhd developers did not want AtomBIOS at all. That's why radeon/ati supported it first. AMD wanted to have AtomBIOS as fallback in radeonhd, as far as I understood it and pushed the developers to support it. Finally they decided that they want to be nice to AMD and implemented it. Everyone was happy, except radeon/ati developers.



> While 'radeonhd' was the first to support 2D in r500 cards (*not* through AtomBIOS) the same functionality was quickly added to the 'radeon' driver.



Not quite the same. radeonhd is whole lot more efficient than radeon using 2D thanks to its command submission architecture. You can see it when you compare them both directly on your desktop. radeonhd is faster and smoother than radeon on my hardware.



> As for me, I prefer the 'radeon' driver simply because I've been using it for years on older GPUs and it works fine.  I use dual screen all the time, and regularly switch VTs without issue.



I tried 3 different ATI cards. Every single of them works better when I use radeonhd. I can understand that everyone chooses the driver which works best on their own hardware. When you choose radeon and it works better than radeonhd, it's ok, of course.


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## adamk (Dec 31, 2008)

Your post got me thinking...  I hadn't actually tried radeonhd in a while, so I did a quick comparison of 'radeon' and 'radeonhd' with gtkperf on an x1950.  Same DRM version, same Xorg version.  This is basically the current ports tree with this patch to bring Xorg up to 7.4: http://pastebin.ca/raw/1296801 . DRM was pulled from git just two days ago.  I just switched from one driver to the other in my xorg.conf file between tests.  The Test rounds was set to 1000:

With radeon

```
GtkPerf 0.40 - Starting testing: Tue Dec 30 20:26:34 2008 

GtkEntry - time:  0.31
GtkComboBox - time:  6.41
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  5.40
GtkSpinButton - time:  0.93
GtkProgressBar - time:  0.30
GtkToggleButton - time:  1.60
GtkCheckButton - time:  1.51
GtkRadioButton - time:  2.03
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 37.72
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 54.80
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 31.33
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  5.55
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 13.56
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  0.79
 --- 
Total time: 162.24
```

With radeonhd:


```
GtkPerf 0.40 - Starting testing: Tue Dec 30 20:33:33 2008

GtkEntry - time:  0.37
GtkComboBox - time:  6.28
GtkComboBoxEntry - time:  5.32
GtkSpinButton - time:  0.82
GtkProgressBar - time:  0.40
GtkToggleButton - time:  2.07
GtkCheckButton - time:  1.47
GtkRadioButton - time:  2.12
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 33.44
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 53.23
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 39.57
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time:  4.74
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 11.96
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time:  0.77
 --- 
Total time: 162.55
```

So almost the exact same   In the end, you are right: everyone should be able to choose whatever driver they feel works best for them.

I'm curious if there are any other benchmarking utilities anyone can think of available via the ports tree?

Adam


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## blah (Dec 31, 2008)

Apart from binary blob there is open source *nouveau* driver. It still lacks up to date DRM support on BSD side. There is even an old snapshot available through pkgsrc and a patch against src/sys/ with a few tweaks aplicable to freebsd before DRM was updated.


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## gcooper@ (Jan 1, 2009)

Contrary to popular belief, Creative did write a X-Fi compatible driver for FreeBSD that supposedly worked for 7.x. I never tried it though (I switched my desktop OS from FreeBSD over to Linux to Vista, and now I'm going back to FreeBSD because there are workarounds for the games I want to play again). See: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=990&num=1. I believe a compatible version is available via audio/oss.

Then some dev's coded up the driver in ALSA, and I need to reprod them to use OSS because apparently someone missed the note about ALSA having an OSS compatibility shim; Linux's implementation of OSS without vchan support shouldn't be a shortcoming for other OS'es which implement OSS properly .

That's what one gets for prodding the Creative folks at least (huzzah!).

Also, I've started inquiring about what's needed to post a bounty and donate towards fixing up the nVidia feature request items. These should be done not just for nVidia but for ATI, Intel, and other various 64-bit driver support which we need moving forward for FreeBSD to remain a worthwhile desktop and server platform.


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## adamk (Jan 1, 2009)

gcooper@ said:
			
		

> Also, I've started inquiring about what's needed to post a bounty and donate towards fixing up the nVidia feature request items. These should be done not just for nVidia but for ATI, Intel, and other various 64-bit driver support which we need moving forward for FreeBSD to remain a worthwhile desktop and server platform.



Ahhh, maybe you know, then, how those features would benefit the current ATI and intel drivers?

Adam


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## SirDice (Jan 2, 2009)

> While the following is focused on the NVIDIA FreeBSD graphics drivers, *we believe the interfaces discussed below are generally applicable to any modern high performance graphics driver.*


Try reading..

http://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hackers&m=115157983106569&w=2


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## adamk (Jan 2, 2009)

It still doesn't explain specifically how the current open source drivers would benefit from those changes...  Besides, would you actually expect nvidia to say "These changes, outlined below, will only benefit our ability to port our drivers to FreeBSD/amd64, but we'd like the FreeBSD developers to spend their time implementing them anyway?"

I'm not saying they aren't good changes.  I'd just like a technical explanation, preferably from someone who understands how the open source  drivers work, as to how those changes are going to benefit drivers open source drivers for FreeBSD/amd64 that are already available.  Otherwise, there really is no reason to believe that's the case.

Adam


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## SirDice (Jan 2, 2009)

AFAIK those features aren't in 6, only 7 and 8. Since 6 is still supported that might be the reason why it's currently not being used in the ATI driver.


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## none (Jan 3, 2009)

SirDice said:
			
		

> AFAIK those features aren't in 6, only 7 and 8. Since 6 is still supported that might be the reason why it's currently not being used in the ATI driver.



those features that would make a amd64 nvidia driver possible are already in 7 code ? or 8 ?

so the driver is just a matter of time and nvidia efforts (or lack) ?

none


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## dhtodorov (Mar 25, 2009)

*FreeBSD 7.0.2 x86 ( Problems ) - thread merged*

Hello, I'm Dimitar and i have some questions and i hope i write in the right forums 

My English is not good but i hope that you will understand me and help me.

I am working with FreeBSD 7.0.2 x86 and i have problem with video drivers. I have nVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT (512MB) and have downloaded drivers from http://www.nvidia.com/object/freebsd_173.08.html.
But when i started installing my terminal it says : error this drivers are not supported for FreeBSD 7.x version.
Please help me to fix this problem. Now i am using Vesa drivers but.. i don't know my resolitions.. and my shrift sux... This is big problem for me... Please give me some help.
Write here or dhtodorov@gmail.com.

Thank you !


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## DutchDaemon (Mar 25, 2009)

1. are you familiar with the ports tree, which has a perfectly working NVIDIA driver for 32-bit FreeBSD 7 (nvidia-driver-180.29 )?

2. do you have compat5 installed, which NVIDIA needs (compat5x-i386-5.4.0.8_9)?


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## dhtodorov (Mar 25, 2009)

1. Yes, but i am with 64-bit FreeBSD.
2. No, i have not found compat5 in ports and i am have not installed.


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## DutchDaemon (Mar 25, 2009)

Something like "x86" doesn't identify a 64-bit system. Anyway, there are no NVIDIA drivers for 64-bit FreeBSD. If you don't really need a 64-bit system (in other words, if you don't need more than 3 GB RAM), go with 32-bit FreeBSD.

(thread "FreeBSD 7.0.2 x86 ( Problems )" merged with this one)


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## tangram (Mar 26, 2009)

Instructions on how to install and configure NVIDIA drivers on a i386 system: http://linux-bsd-sharing.blogspot.com/2009/03/howto-install-and-configure-nvidia.html.


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## SirDice (Mar 26, 2009)

none said:
			
		

> those features that would make a amd64 nvidia driver possible are already in 7 code ? or 8 ?


Some, but not everything.



> so the driver is just a matter of time and nvidia efforts (or lack) ?


There are still a few things missing.

http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests


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## tim-m89 (Mar 29, 2009)

Is anyone working on the mmap task or will there be anyone doing so for google summer of code? I may have a go at it if not.


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## knotabot (Mar 29, 2009)

Zander Nvidia corporation said:
			
		

> FreeBSD/amd64 presents a different environment to the driver, (some of) the workarounds employed on FreeBSD/i386 do not work or are insufficient on this platform. As stated before, it is our belief that the NVIDIA UNIX graphics driver stack cannot work reliably on FreeBSD/amd64.


NVNews


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## knotabot (Mar 29, 2009)

Zander Nvidia Corporation said:
			
		

> There's really nothing NVIDIA can do at this point. As I said earlier, the NVIDIA UNIX graphics driver team is not staffed to take on FreeBSD kernel development work at this time, and it doesn't make sense to speculatively develop for the missing pieces - especially if there's no telling if/when these missing pieces will fall into place (I don't have any information you don't have with respect to this). As stated before, the remaining features (especially the mmap() interface update(s)) are considered prerequisites for a FreeBSD/amd64 driver port. FWIW, I don't think it would take very long to provide a BETA driver for FreeBSD/amd64 if the necessary kernel support was available.


Post #382


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## knotabot (Mar 29, 2009)

What gets me is people saying their is a lack of customer base for the drivers to be developed.
If you look at the forum topic FreeBSD AMD 64 driver, you will see 385 posts and 115,000+ views. Not only is this an extreme amount of posts for a single topic but is a large amount of views as well.
I havent seen threads this large for conficker on security forums.

It appears that this is a very important issue and many people are actively waiting somewhat impatiently.


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## adamk (Mar 29, 2009)

385 posts is, frankly, nothing.

Adam


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## Erratus (Mar 29, 2009)

adamk said:
			
		

> 385 posts is, frankly, nothing.
> 
> Adam



385 = 0  | frankly
    + 1  | me       >>     frankly < me


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