# ATI driver?



## Dinchamion (Jul 1, 2009)

Hello,

I've been looking up on stuff before I make my choice to install FreeBSD. I ran into a problem, which was/is a pain under linux, but it seems becoming an obstacle here as well: I have an ATI HD3850 card, and the chances to change it to an NVIDIA, although I want to, are pretty slim. On the other hand, I play some Windows games (WoW and some others) via wine, which requires 3D acceleration.

Is FreeBSD has a propriatery ATI driver? (As far as I know, open-source drivers just don't cut it when it comes to playing games, but prove me wrong, so I could forget about that )


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## vivek (Jul 1, 2009)

They don't offer 3d accelerator driver for FreeBSD http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx. Only Linux version available. I suggest you go with NVDIA  http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html. I'm using Quadro FX 550 and it works like a charm.


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## aragon (Jul 1, 2009)

But keep in mind nVidia drivers are still limited to i386 architectures for now.


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## Oko (Jul 1, 2009)

Dinchamion said:
			
		

> (As far as I know, open-source drivers just don't cut it when it comes to playing games, but prove me wrong, so I could forget about that )



As for now and for the future NVidia or ATi do not cut when it comes to video games crap even on Windows. Get yourself a PowerPC based XBox or Sony Playstation3 or whatever new toy is on the market. You will save yourself a lots of frustration and be able really to enjoy your hobby. FreeBSD is not a toy.


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## Dinchamion (Jul 1, 2009)

Oko said:
			
		

> As for now and for the future NVidia or ATi do not cut when it comes to video games crap even on Windows. Get yourself a PowerPC based XBox or Sony Playstation3 or whatever new toy is on the market. You will save yourself a lots of frustration and be able really to enjoy your hobby. FreeBSD is not a toy.



As soon as they start to develop and port stuff I'm interested in (like WoW, EVE Online, and a bunch of other stuff, both online and single player), I might think about buying a console.

However, until then, I'm kinda stuck with my PC. And it's not even that, why shouldn't I use FreeBSD to whatever the hell I want to use it for? I play less and less these days, and I plan to go into programming and development deeper and deeper... but if there is an option to do all things on the same box (and there is, unless I missed something), why shouldn't I?

Anyway, I'll just buy an NVIDIA card, I was planning it anyway, but I wanted to check if I could avoid it by any chance. (I have some other things to shop for too)

Any news or horizons for the 64-bit NVIDIA driver available any time soon?

Thanks for the help to all!


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## adamk (Jul 1, 2009)

Dinchamion said:
			
		

> Any news or horizons for the 64-bit NVIDIA driver available any time soon?



The functionality needed in the FreeBSD kernel for a 64bit nvidia driver is making it's way into the kernel rather quickly. That functionality should be present in 8.0-RELEASE.  Then nvidia actually needs to port the driver...  

As of May 15th, Zander at nvidia said:



> It'll likely be a little while before everything falls into place, but a lot of progress has been made in the last month.



I'd guess that it will be another few months before beta drivers are available.

Adam


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## Dinchamion (Jul 1, 2009)

Thanks, that's a reasonable time, and I googled the issue, and was positively surprised on NVIDIA's attitude. (Again, it's quite possible I'm lagging behind the events, but it was nice to see collaboration from the company)


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