which graphics card?
hi, i'm about to build a new system and obviously it would be nice if everything worked nicely. my plan is to one of the asus A8V motherboards, but i've just spent a while reading nvidia forums and it seems there aren't any amd64 drivers for freebsd, or even any plans to release them. i need to have direct rendering and dual head dvi. in 2006, decent 3d performance doesn't seem unreasonable, even if it is just to run a swanky screen saver. i've got an xfx geforce 6800GT sitting around here that i'd like to use, but it seems this is currently impossible on amd64. it seems like a huge waste to run the i386 version on an amd64 machine, but can anyone comment on the performance difference? my hope is to build a freebsd based video editing workstation using kino and friends. if nvidia aren't supporting freebsd on amd64, are there any other options? any help gratefully recieved. cheers, ke ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which graphics card?
On May 4, 2006, at 12:28 PM, Kep Woof wrote: it seems like a huge waste to run the i386 version on an amd64 machine, but can anyone comment on the performance difference? Sure. For the most part, if you don't have more than 4GB of RAM, there is little point to running in 64-bit mode. A more fine-grained analysis: You can still take advantage of PAE and more than 4GB process address space on, say, a machine with 2GB of RAM, by using a lot of swap space or running a large 64-bit aware database. However, if you don't have more than 4GB of RAM [1], it's entirely possible that applications will run faster in 32-bit mode than in 64-bit mode, but it depends on the specific things you are running. IPv4 and character-related stuff (ie, byte fiddling/string copying) tend to be faster in 32-bit mode; things like SSL cryptography and big databases can prefer 64-bit mode even on machines without more than 4GB of RAM. -- -Chuck [1]: The real number is actually somewhat less than 4GB, more like 3GB or 3.5GB, since the kernel itself and hardware devices consume some of the top of the physical memory address map. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which graphics card?
Kep Woof wrote: i need to have direct rendering and dual head dvi. in 2006, decent 3d performance doesn't seem unreasonable, even if it is just to run a swanky screen saver. i've got an xfx geforce 6800GT sitting around here that i'd like to use, but it seems this is currently impossible on amd64. it seems like a huge waste to run the i386 version on an amd64 machine, I can't comment on the difference because I didn't bother with amd64 for the very reasons you mention. But, for me, A8V plus single core AMD 4000 + 6800GT is plain bloody fast. Most regular work things I run on it go faster than a single CPU 2.8Ghz Dell 2850, and though you can beat a 6800GT these days, the only way to really *trounce* it is to run two graphics cards with SLI and I'm not sure FreeBSD supports that yet. It'll certainly run your screen saver :-) Runs cool too. There might be better mobos than an A8V these days - I got mine a year ago - but pretty much everything on it works. COM2 needs some kind of expansion but I only needed one. You can always switch to amd64 if NVidia ever do provide drivers. You could also me too on their message boards which might make some tiny difference. --Alex ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which graphics card?
hi, On 5/4/06, Alex Zbyslaw [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can't comment on the difference because I didn't bother with amd64 for the very reasons you mention. But, for me, A8V plus single core AMD 4000 + 6800GT is plain bloody fast. It'll certainly run your screen saver :-) Runs cool too. that's really promising, as soon as i get a new mobo i'll try it out. i've never used x with dvi before. i'm guessing that with the nvidia drivers on i386 dual-head should work properly on both screens? whenever i buy new hardware i often find that it doesn't work like i imagined, and i can imagine something silly like direct rendering only working on one screen, or not being able to get both screens working over dvi at the same time, or that sort of sillyness. still, there's a fine line between questions and therapy ;) thanks for your help. kep ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which graphics card?
On May 4, 2006, at 1:25 PM, Kep Woof wrote: Sure. For the most part, if you don't have more than 4GB of RAM, there is little point to running in 64-bit mode. A more fine-grained analysis: I think I get it now.. having seen loads of adverts and hype (particularly from apple) bigging up 64bit, I think i misunderstood (or never bothered to try to understand more likely). I thought it meant the bus (or something like that - i obviously know very little about hardware) was twice as wide and so twice as much data could go through at once, so it was similar to being twice as fast, or something like that(!). This impression is partially true, but the subject is complicated. The AMD64 or Intel EM64T platforms do have a better bus, in the case of AMD, HyperTransport is a fairly new and fast backplane which is 16- bits wide at a nominal 1000MHz bus speed, not 64-bits wide or anything like that. The older 32-bit AMD or Intel platforms tended to have a 400-to-533 MHz FSB memory bus (Intel's quad-port architecture, VIA's quad-pumped V-link, etc), and the newer 64-bit Intels are 800MHz FSB mostly w/ 533MHz DDR2 memory bus. Are you saying that it just means you can address more memory? No, the CPU registers and the address bus can be wider (not just the memory bus) with Intel EM64T or AMD64 architectures, and can get more work done per clock for some tasks, but can also be slower for some common tasks, too. Again, if you have more than 4GB of RAM, using the CPU in native 64- bit mode is probably the way to go; if you've got less, using the CPU in 32-bit mode might very well work better, but it really depends upon the type of processes you run. -- -Chuck ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: which graphics card?
Charles Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Are you saying that it just means you can address more memory? No, the CPU registers and the address bus can be wider (not just the memory bus) with Intel EM64T or AMD64 architectures, and can get more work done per clock for some tasks, but can also be slower for some common tasks, too. Again, if you have more than 4GB of RAM, using the CPU in native 64- bit mode is probably the way to go; if you've got less, using the CPU in 32-bit mode might very well work better, but it really depends upon the type of processes you run. In our experiments, we found that a 32-bit PAE kernel allowed us to access all the memory we had in the machines, and performance was better than a 64-bit kernel. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
