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Old 25th October 2008
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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As stated, there are 2 primary NVIDIA (Where did the 'e' come from?)
  • nv - AKA, the Xorg "xf86-video-nv" driver, open source, accel 2D only.. Xvideo is supported.
  • nvidia - The proprietary vendor-supplied binary-only blob driver, it supports accelerated 2D and 3D, buggy.. only works on a handful of "supported" OS's and architectures.
There is also a project aimed at reverse engineering nVidia chipsets, it's called "Nouveau", but it's in the early stages.. BSD support is kinda hit and miss.. 3D is still a W.I.P.

http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/nv
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/

I personally, along with many others, would never use the vendor supplied driver if had the chance of doing so.. avoid it if you can, save up and invest in a good ATI/AMD card. (The vendor is releasing documentation!).
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