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Old 18th January 2009
DrJ DrJ is offline
ISO Quartermaster
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Gold Country, CA
Posts: 507
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Broodjegehaktmetmayo View Post
Well, you see, here it gets confusing again. You say Nvidia works under X64, but earlier in this thread a lot of people have written Nvidia does not work under X64 Or does it work with the nv/xorg driver (and not with the binary one since that one hasn't been released by Nvidia) but then lacks (important) stuff?
There are two drivers for nVidia video cards that run on FreeBSD. One is the open source "nv" driver. Since it is open source, it can run pretty much anywhere, including 64 bit. The other is provided by nVidia, called (oddly enough) "nvidia" inside of Xorg. It is a driver that is comparable to the one provided for Windows, Linux and Solaris, and it works very well (at least for me). It works only on 32 bit systems. nVidia has requested support for various kernel features from FreeBSD to allow it to make a comparable driver for 64 bit systems. That has not happened (yet), and it probably will not happen any time soon.

So on 32 bits, you can use either "nv" or "nvidia." On 64 bits, you can only use "nv" if you want an nVidia card.

I'm not trying to endorse nVidia, BTW. It is just what I have used and what I know.
Quote:
I have very bad experiences with pre-assembled computers. I've learned they don't always put in A-quality components, so I will stick to made to order. Quality is more important to me than price.
I agree with that. It is amazing how many corners are cut on most preassembled computers, and it is rather hard to figure out what those are without a lot of research.
Quote:
That is the problem then for me: how to find out if an Ethernet chip is supported? I can't find anything on the FBSD-site about it
You have to find out what Ethernet chip the motherboard uses, and then check its compatibility on the FreeBSD site. There are also threads on this board that talk about this, so you might be able to find it here. The problem often is that the manufacturers make it hard to find out this information, since they assume you will be running Windows. Sometimes it helps to download the manual, and look for the hardware specifications.
Quote:
Yes, but that again is a problem: they don't easily specify what the bios can and can't do in the product descriptions.
That's right. You can find out this sort of thing on the web, though. For fan control, silentpcreview.com is an excellent site. Yes, this is a lot of work.
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