# Intel HD3000 2D and 3D support in FreeBSD 9.1



## rusted_planet (Apr 10, 2013)

I searched the forums, albeit probably not good enough , for what kind of support FreedBSD 9.1 (or even 10) has for the Intel HD3000 video chipset (or Xorg support). My new laptop should be here in a week and *I* am going to use it for Java development, watching some video and perhaps Minecraft.

I know Linux will work fine with the HD3000 chipset, but *I* would rather use FreeBSD on here.  Any input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Sean


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## wblock@ (Apr 10, 2013)

If it's just an HD3000 chipset, the KMS drivers should support it (untested by me, though).  See https://wiki.freebsd.org/Intel_GPU and http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=206841#post206841.

If it's Optimus, things get more complicated.


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## zspider (Apr 11, 2013)

I'm pretty sure the HD3000 works with the new drivers . Don't hold your breath about anything Optimus, it will probably never be supported without a blessing from Nvidia. Also getting Minecraft to work might be challenging (Java issues), though it's been quite a while since I last tried.


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## bkouhi (Apr 11, 2013)

If your laptop supports Nvidia Optimus, you can still use your integrated card with KMS but you must turn off your dedicated Nvidia card (to reduce system temperature and save more battery power). (Link) 

Special thanks to @cpu82.


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## wblock@ (Apr 11, 2013)

People have told me that they got an Optimus machine to work by simply not referring to the Nvidia card in xorg.conf, even without disabling it in the BIOS.  Which would be handy, since some machines don't have a way to disable it in the BIOS.  I have no way to test this, though.


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## YZMSQ (Apr 11, 2013)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> People have told me that they got an Optimus machine to work by simply not referring to the Nvidia card in xorg.conf, even without disabling it in the BIOS.  Which would be handy, since some machines don't have a way to disable it in the BIOS.  I have no way to test this, though.


Well, could you offer some details of what you said?


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## wblock@ (Apr 11, 2013)

If you auto-generate xorg.conf on an Optimus machine, it will be seen as having two video cards.  There will be Device sections for both intel and nvidia.  Remove the nvidia section, and other sections that refer to it, making the whole file only use the Intel video and pretending that it's the only one the computer has.

But again, I don't have the hardware to test this.


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## ksym (Dec 20, 2013)

*Re:*



			
				wblock@ said:
			
		

> If you auto-generate xorg.conf on an Optimus machine, it will be seen as having two video cards.  There will be Device sections for both intel and nvidia.  Remove the nvidia section, and other sections that refer to it, making the whole file only use the Intel video and pretending that it's the only one the computer has.
> 
> But again, I don't have the hardware to test this.



I have an Acer 5742g-384G50Mnkk laptop with Optimus as Intel 3xxx/nVidia GeForce GT 540M/1GB. I managed to get Xorg working by building it using WITH_NEW_XORG and WITH_KMS options in make.conf.

However, video playback stutters when using X11, XVideo, GLX (or some OpenGL variant) video output in VLC, or when using GStreamer framework that thinks it is smart enough to choose the right output method. The only way to play videos without stuttering is by playing it through libSDL. Unfortunately, most multimedia backends supported by multimedia capable browsers (such as Firefox or Chromium) cannot use libSDL as output, and thus their video playback performance is painfully bad.

I am not really a hacker good enought to figure out why only libSDL is the performant video output. Problem might be elsewhere too. I have not tested the Intel-KMS setup in any other device yet.

Maybe I should report this to the appropriate mailing list. But then again, my setup is not officially supported by FreeBSD yet.


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