# Status on the gtx 10xx cards on FreeBSD?



## aimeec1995 (Oct 15, 2017)

Firstly, I apologize that all of my posts on this forum so far have only been me asking for help and not giving any in return.

Secondly, I want to ask about the status of cards like the nvidia gtx 1070 and up working on FreeBSD. 
Is it good? bad?


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## Sevendogsbsd (Oct 15, 2017)

Currently running a GTX 1050 Ti with x11/nvidia-driver (385.90) and I had to add a couple of options to /boot/loader.conf but all is well now. I initially had an issue with the monitor going into DPMS mode whenever I dropped out of X so I set: 
	
	



```
kern.vty=vt
```
 This was when I was running version 375 of x11/nvidia-driver. Once I upgraded to 384.90, I had the issue of graphics corruption whenever I dropped out of X so I added  
	
	



```
hw.vga.textmode=1
```
 to /boot/loader.conf and all is well. Can't speak to the 1070+ series, sorry.


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## Sensucht94 (Oct 15, 2017)

aimeec1995 said:


> Secondly, I want to ask about the status of cards like the nvidia gtx 1070 and up working on FreeBSD.
> Is it good? bad?



Aimeec I have Slack  and FreeBSD in dual boot on my desktop, and  my 1060 has better performance and  *far better*  stability with FreeBSD's driver than Linux Nvidia proprietary driver.
According to Nvidia site yours is supported as well, so there's no reason to believe otherwise.

As predictable, Nouveau does not support 'well' or 'at all' Pascal GPU generation (hopefully just not yet ), so Linux+nouveau and NetBSD are out of question; OpenBSD nv driver is all the more far by supporting something like that. Dragonfly has only vesa to offer for Nvidia cards.

So FreeBSD is highly likely the wisest choice you can pick out, outside of Windows.

Being a recent card, just remember to load both nvidia and nvidia-modeset modules in loader.conf (they should also call on and load CentOS 6 linux module along with them), and place line:

```
kld_list="nvidia-modeset"
```
 in rc.conf.

A basical configuration file placed in xorg.conf.d, just pointing  the "nvidia" driver for your device should be enough, though if you run into trouble there's always x11/nvidia-xconfig (I didn't need it).


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## SirDice (Oct 16, 2017)

Sensucht94 said:


> Aimeec I have Slack and FreeBSD in dual boot on my desktop, and my 1060 has better performance and *far better* stability with FreeBSD's driver than Linux Nvidia proprietary driver.


All NVidia drivers are actually the same. The only real difference is some kernel glue. But the functional part of the NVidia driver is exactly the same on Windows, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.


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## aimeec1995 (Oct 16, 2017)

Sensucht94 said:


> Aimeec I have Slack  and FreeBSD in dual boot on my desktop, and  my 1060 has better performance and  *far better*  stability with FreeBSD's driver than Linux Nvidia proprietary driver.
> According to Nvidia site yours is supported as well, so there's no reason to believe otherwise.
> 
> As predictable, Nouveau does not support 'well' or 'at all' Pascal GPU generation (hopefully just not yet ), so Linux+nouveau and NetBSD are out of question; OpenBSD nv driver is all the more far by supporting something like that. Dragonfly has only vesa to offer for Nvidia cards.
> ...



Thank you for that bit of advice and your reply. I used to load just modeset, now that I load both I can freely exit X and switch ttys without corruption.


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## aimeec1995 (Oct 17, 2017)

SirDice said:


> All NVidia drivers are actually the same. The only real difference is some kernel glue. But the functional part of the NVidia driver is exactly the same on Windows, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.



I wonder why they still make solaris drivers. When I checked it let me download gtx 10xx drivers for solaris.. that's neat and all, but who spends time to make this shit? no one games on solaris


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## redpill (Oct 17, 2017)

Relative to platforms like Windows, one can argue that nobody games on FreeBSD either. However, there are use cases for high performance GPUs outside of rendering pixels to your screen. Modern GPUs are well-suited for a number of massively parallel tasks, as long as they don't involve a lot of boolean logic.

Presumably, NVIDIA has enough paying customers using Solaris to fund ongoing development of the driver for that platform. As SirDice already pointed out, there is really only a single driver at the core anyway, so porting to Solaris probably doesn't entail as much as you think it does. Heck, on the userspace side, with Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris all using Xorg--at least until Wayland becomes a thing--there's probably very little difference indeed.

I'm not sure how much longer we're going to see Solaris support from NVIDIA, but judging by their exploratory efforts over the past few years (e.g., UNIX Device Memory Allocation), I'd say they're pretty intent on keeping things as unified as possible going forward regardless of what operating systems they decide to support. Which I hope is good news for fans of FreeBSD like you and me.


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## Sensucht94 (Oct 17, 2017)

SirDice said:


> All NVidia drivers are actually the same. The only real difference is some kernel glue. But the functional part of the NVidia driver is exactly the same on Windows, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.


SirDice, just out of curiosity, does this apply to any other cross-platform proprietary driver? In this case what is the main difficulty  in writing that 'kernel glue'? (Maybe the fact most of times there are no drivers for Linux/BSD/Solaris, and a windows driver reverse-engineer has to be carried out first?)
And (not asking for Linux support) why would ever on Linux (I'm speaking of Slack and Void):
- Xorg ecounter much more impasses before correctly using the Nvidia driver
- resolution need to be constantly adjusted
- multimedia programs complain about missing libraries
- system experience kernel panics after launching 3D games?
Probably it's just my fault 


aimeec1995 said:


> I wonder why they still make solaris drivers. When I checked it let me download gtx 10xx drivers for solaris.. that's neat and all, but who spends time to make this shit? no one games on solaris


Well Aimeec, albeit being ignorant,I bet there are various usages for a good GPU at workplaces and in super computers.
On the other hand, many people of my acquaitance need an expensive graphic card, despite not being gamers. I can list you the most recurrent:
- Engeneers and engeneering students are required powerful GPUs so as to use Mathlab, AutoCAD, ANSI and other programs
- Architects and related students whom are expected to use AutoCAD, Adobe Creative Suite and others
- computer scientist and related, in order to run programming software and 3D video rendering programs like Blender
- In medicine we use powerful GPU in laboratories thus to build computerized HQ/multilayer-CTs, to process SEMs images, to calculate 3D molecular drug models
- people using a 4K resolution monitor to watch movies, videos
- People using more than 2 monitors.
- Amateurs who like making short films, tuning with recorded videos so as to make more appealing presentations and use Adobe Premiere, Director Suite and other software for that

Regarding Solaris, I do not know what's the market share of Oracle Solaris+SmartOS+OmniOS, but I think it's still no tinier than FreeBSD's.

Given what you stated, I would dear to say you've  probably never used Solaris.
 I've had OpenSolaris on my old Desktop, after Corel Linux (around the period 2006-2010) and in my opinion it was THE BEST at the time.
It's a shame Oracle has led Solaris to the ruin, and that OpenIndiana has so few active developers.
Nonetheless, that Desktop today runs Tribblix, and still goes pretty fine, in spite of the age


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## SirDice (Oct 17, 2017)

Sensucht94 said:


> SirDice, just out of curiosity, does this apply to any cross-platform proprietary driver?


I'm not aware of any other driver, I only know this is the case for the proprietary NVidia driver.


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