# AMD(ATI) HD 6850 support?



## ahavatar (Mar 29, 2011)

Could someone tell me the status of AMD HD6850 X.Org support on FreeBSD? I'd like to know if 2D acceleration and 3D are supported. The newest 6.14.1 xf86-driver-ati's radeon(4x) man page lists HD6850 but I'd like to double check. Thanks.


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## wblock@ (Mar 29, 2011)

Newer Radeon drivers require KMS (kernel mode switching), which is not yet available on FreeBSD.  It may work, but without acceleration.


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## adamk (Mar 29, 2011)

It should almost certainly work with the vesa driver but, as wblock said, you won't have acceleration.  You will also be limited to only basic vesa modes.

Adam


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## wblock@ (Mar 29, 2011)

If you've already got a 6850, it would do no harm to try both the radeon and vesa drivers.  If you're looking at buying, consider a 4850 or 4650.


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## morcar (Aug 14, 2012)

Just wanted to know if this has changed somewhat because I was thinking about switching over to freeBSD and I have one of these cards. Linux gives me all kinds of headaches so I am living in hope that maybe BSD was better.

The last post in this thread was over a year so fingers crossed.


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## adamk (Aug 14, 2012)

There is no acceleration or modesetting (beyond vesa modes) for the HD6850.

Adam


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## Crest (Aug 14, 2012)

The free Radeon driver requires GEM, KMS and TTM. FreeBSD only supports GEM and KMS as of FreeBSD 9.1. From the mailinglists it sounds like kib@ had suffered enough porting GEM and KMS. So don't expect newer AMD graphics cards to work any time soon.


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## maximini (Aug 15, 2012)

> The free Radeon driver requires GEM, KMS and TTM. FreeBSD only supports GEM and KMS as of FreeBSD 9.1.


Does that mean that the GEM and KMS developed for Intel GPUs also work for AMD GPUs?

Hopefully TTM is planned for FreeBSD 10, is it?

Maximini


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## zeissoctopus (Aug 15, 2012)

maximini said:
			
		

> Does that mean that the GEM and KMS developed for Intel GPUs also work for AMD GPUs?
> 
> Hopefully TTM is planned for FreeBSD 10, is it?
> 
> Maximini



No, Intel GEM and KMS are not work for ATI as well as NVIDIA and no planning for porting TTM to FreeBSD 9, 10.


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## wblock@ (Aug 15, 2012)

zeissoctopus said:
			
		

> No, Intel GEM and KMS are not work for ATI as well as NVIDIA and no planning for porting TTM to FreeBSD 9, 10.



Rather, there is desire to get the ATI cards working, and in fact the Foundation has expressed interest in funding that work, but so far no one has had the combination of knowledge, time, and desire to do the work.  Help spread the word!


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## PageDir (Aug 15, 2012)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> Rather, there is desire to get the ATI cards working, and in fact the Foundation has expressed interest in funding that work, but so far no one has had the combination of knowledge, time, and desire to do the work.  Help spread the word!



It's nice to hear that, I have both ATI 3470 and Intel 4500HD on my laptop, and the later one works well with KMS now.
But there are so many error messages in dmesg, I have to use "hw.dri.debug=0" to turn off them.
Also, syscons with KMS is not completed yet, FBSD still have a long way to go.


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