Octave Orgeron wrote: > Any recommendations on Nvidia PCI-E cards with 3d for opensolaris on x64? I > want to go out and buy a card today. > > *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* > Octave J. Orgeron > Solaris Virtualization Architect and Consultant > Web: http://unixconsole.blogspot.com > E-Mail: unixconsole at yahoo.com > *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Alan Coopersmith <alan.coopersmith at sun.com> > To: Frank Middleton <f.middleton at apogeect.com> > Cc: OpenSolaris Desktop Discuss <desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org> > Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 12:17:42 PM > Subject: Re: [desktop-discuss] (Open)Sol 10/nv106 on SB2000 w XVR-1200 > > Frank Middleton wrote: > >> As far as I know, for everyone who loads Solaris of any kind for SPARC, >> Sun knows who they are and has their email address. I bet they all also >> subscribe to the bigadmin newsletter. If I had known that someone >> was doing a port of the BSD/Linux drivers, I would certainly have >> volunteered to help in any way possible. >> > > Martin Bochnig has been posting to opensolaris-discuss, xwin-discuss, > indiana-discuss and various other lists about it for the past few years. > > >> The imminent demise of XSun >> (how imminent is it?) would undoubtedly be an incentive for others to do >> so as well! >> > > The current plans call for Solaris 10 to be the last Solaris release with > Xsun in, and to never include Xsun in any OpenSolaris distro release. > > >> Isn't there a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here, too? AFAIK Solaris >> never had support for xorg, so porting to xorg wasn't really interesting >> before. Anyway, we have the chicken now, so working on the egg seems much >> more worthwhile :-) >> > > The Xorg server for SPARC was added in Solaris 10 8/07, it's just not > had any usable drivers released for it on Solaris 10 yet. > > >> I'm only looking for afb and ffb. Are drivers for the OEM cards in the >> BSD/Linux port (I suppose they would have been reverse engineered)? >> > > Some are: > http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/fox/SPARC-Xorg/ > > The ATI-based PGX cards work with a port of the ATI Mach64 driver used on x86 > boxes for instance. > > >> Do you know if Sun will maintain XSun in the commercial version of Solaris, >> or will it go away there, too? If so, surely Sun should alert all their >> customers about this; >> > > Like all other Solaris features we're planning to remove, we've done that in > the standard fashion - published a notice in the Solaris 10 release notes that > it might not be in future releases: > http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-5245/eos-36?l=en&a=view#getgg > It's been there since Solaris 10 8/07 release. > > Future updates will add more of the SPARC graphics cards to the list of > drivers > not planned for going forward - right now only cg6 is listed, but more are > going through the end-of-support process now. > > XFX GeForce 9800 GT with current driver works fine with excellent performance, and would be overkill for compiz. An X3100 when dri issues are fixed would be the baseline for a decent compiz experience, though obviously less obvious is where to find these openish cards for PCI-E, thus dependence on NVIDIA unless a laptop. A lower tier 9000 series such as the 9400 is marketed for efficiency, and is really all you need to stay current for 3 years, with x600 series being mid-range, and x800 high-end (With tiers of GT/GTS/GTX affecting each, and presence of factory overclock as well).
I suggest the $60-120 range (512mb 9600gt/9800gt) for compiz and DVD playback with all the effects on, driving two 19-22" monitors at 1600x1200 would be suitable. I personally don't have a second screen except on my 8600gt, which drives only 1440x900, but my 9800gt certainly could draw two 1920x1200 monitors with its 670mhz ramdac and 1/2gb of vram. Anything more unless you work with CUDA (Not available to Solaris) is overkill, and that includes the 200 series especially. James
