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General Hardware General hardware related questions. |
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I'm easily convinced I notice I tend to follow Vermaden's and your advice, and go for the Core2Duo E8500 now. > video Quote:
Last edited by Broodjegehaktmetmayo; 12th November 2008 at 05:30 PM. |
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Well, now I am sort of stuck between the 7300GT that you mention and the cards that Vermaden mentions. Price is not the main issue here, but 'green computing', eg low energy consumption, is. Of course, I should be able to use my box in a nice way, so the card should be up for it. So remaining to be done: - The videocard - The mainboard (the chipset Q35 Vermaden recommends). Pfff, buying a computer was much, much, easier in the old days |
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If you use a separate video card, there is no reason to get the Q35. Get a P35 or P45 instead. The Q series is useful because it has on-board video.
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So then i could stick with the original mainboard I selected? (I hope Vermaden doesn't shoot me for it - ) So final step would be videocard. Cabal mentioned lower energy usage for the 7300 GT, that is important to me, and so, now, for the most stupid question of the year (): does anybody know where to look that up? - I get nothing back on nvidia.com - This nifty tool 'Google' doesn't seem to return anything useful either (how come: Google alwaysssss finds everything immediately ) Again, thanks for all your help (!) |
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The 7300 is no longer made. The 9xxx series is current; there probably is a 9300 that corresponds to the 7300. It is a low-power card. The best value is the 9500GT, but the added power is probably wasted on BSD. It really depends on how much you want to spend.
Honestly, unless you play any games, there probably is little difference between the on-board Intel video and a stand-alone nVidia or ATI. |
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>The 7300 is no longer made.
That's true, but that's not the point it was just an example for 'low power' and enough horse power for most things in FreeBSD - even for games. http://www.techspot.com/review/6-gef...nce/page3.html
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use UNIX or die :-) |
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I know you know that Oliver, but it seems that the OP is rather literal about and new to computer components. It is indeed difficult to get up-to-speed if you have not done it before, or have had a many-year break.
My suggestion, thinking more about it, is try the Q35/Intel video. Just make sure there is a 16x PCI-E slot so that a video card could be added later if on-board does not work out. There is one other thing to consider with video cards: the more powerful they are, the more power they consume and the more noise they make. The nVidia [7|8|9]300 usually is passive. The faster ones can be made quiet too, but you usually have to add a third-party heat sink. Then again, I am very sensitive to computer noise, and not everyone else is. |
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I hope for Intel Larrabee or Ati in the near future. More FOSS, less blobs. nVidias practice to abolish certain 'old' graphic cards from their drivers is something to consider while observing the half-life of consumer hardware.
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use UNIX or die :-) |
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That's all true, though I have had no issues with the legacy drivers. My hardware is old, and the video cards are of the 5xxx era.
I personally have no problem with blobs, but if a good open-source alternative is available, then of course I would go for it. I just don't think we are quite there yet. |
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All passive 7xxxx, 8xxx, and 9xxx models (So basically all models you can buy now) I've seen get pretty hot, if you look carefully at the packaging you'll see that ``A casefan is recommended''.
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UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. |
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I've used passive cooling on video cards without any problem. They key is to get a case that breathes well. The Antec Solo (and its equivalents) work pretty well for that, as well as enabling a quiet build. They do often get hot, but they have always stayed within nVidia's guidelines.
Heck, the computer I built for my wife has a passively-cooled 9600GT, and it works fine. The computer is nearly silent, too (but alas on Vista-64). |
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If you still have your old PC. I recommend you put linux or windoze (if you want to play games) in your new PC and make a BSD server out of your old PC.
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Hi
Well, contrary to what you might have expected this wasn't a 'hit and run'-user I've just been extremely busy, and hence I stalled buying a new box. As my wife's box is going down very quickly I now need to buy a new box for her fast, in addition to the one I planned to buy for myself. My wife will be using her box on XP, mainly because of legacy accounting software she needs, and access to corporate software, and she will play some games. So my plan is: A. Buy a new box for her, designed to meet both FBSD and XP (games) specs; B. Install FBSD on it to see if everything works; C. If B is the case, install XP on that box for her and order an exactly similar box for myself on which I will install XP exclusively. So, on reading back this thread (keeping in mind I am an absolute noob when it comes to hardware), I am facing difficulties in deciding about the mainboard/chipset on the one hand, and the videocard on the other hand. Mainboard/chipset The thing is, some people say 'take Q35', others say 'don't take it'. Now, this mainboard, Asus P5Q-E: http://www.informatique.nl/123175 has been described 'rather high class board' in some test I've read some time ago, but it has P45, not Q35. What should I do? Videocard-1 On rereading this thread it seems a lot of people are favoring ATI for multiple reasons. I have no problems switching to ATI, but there isn't a native ATI-driver? Googling I found out that xorg should have support for ATI, but then my confusion starts: 1. Xorg also seems to have support for Nvidia, so why is there a separate, native driver for Nvidia? (Or, phrased the other way: why isn't it important that there isn't a separate driver for ATI?) 2. Whereas the Nvidia driver doesn't support X64, does the Xorg-driver for ATI support X64 then? Or can ATI also only be used in X32? 3. The black window problem of Nvidia, doesn't that occur on ATI? Videocard-2 Some people say I shouldn't use passive cooling, others say I should use passive cooling. CPU So I decided for E8xxxx instead of Quad core, but now, two months later, Quadcore is even cheaper than dual core. Still take dual core? I must seem very ignorant to you all, and I apologize for that, but it's hard when at birth they decided to leave out the part of my brain that understands hardware ins and outs Again I appreciate your help in guiding me through this wood I can't seem to find my path in by myself. Thank you for that help Last edited by Broodjegehaktmetmayo; 18th January 2009 at 04:11 PM. |
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If you want identical computers, and one will be used for any significant gaming, you will *need* a discrete video card. The on-board chips are fine for routine work, but are terrible for gaming. FWIW, "gaming" does not include solitaire.
There is no binary ATI driver because ATI did not provide one for FreeBSD. nVidia did. That's why there is only one binary blob, and why it does not run on the 64 bit FreeBSD flavor. Don't hold your breath on getting a 64 bit nVidia driver any time soon. I understand that the open-source ATI driver is getting better (ATI is providing good support, but it takes time), but still does not have accelerated 3D. On FreeBSD you probably won't need it unless you too want to run some Linux games (or Windows games under Wine). Oh, and the "nv" driver is written by the xorg people, and is open source (and without much help from nVidia). It does work, but it is much more limited than "nvidia." On passive versus actively-cooled video cards, you have to decide how much quiet or silent computer operation is important to you. There are lots of good after-market coolers that are active and essentially silent. I'd suggest that you get the card you want, paying attention to reports of fan noise, and if it is too loud, get an after-market cooler. The passive ones work fine for less powerful cards, up to about the nVidia 9600, but the more powerful ones are hard to cool passively. You then have to pay a lot of attention to how well the case breathes, and how the air courses through your computer (and keep an eye on video temperatures when you debug the thing). How much are you spending, anyway? Are you overclocking or not? |
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So what should I do with the mainboard/chipset? Is the one I selected a good one? Or should I insist on Q35? And the CPU: still core duo, or quad? Thanks again DrJ |
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EDIT: I just find this, saying the mobo I selected doesn't work with Linux due to the chipset. Now I know BSD isn't Linux, but wouldn't it be expected it would give problems under Linux too, then?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=890604 EDIT EDIT ( :-)): it seems to work with the latest Ubuntu distro: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14808 How can I tell if the chipset will work with FBSD then? Or is this all rambling non-relevant for FBSD? Last edited by Broodjegehaktmetmayo; 18th January 2009 at 05:23 PM. |
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Overclocking with Intel chips is almost a no-brainer these days. I took a Q6600 from 2.4 GHz to 3 GHz easily; one did not even require a voltage change, the other one required only a modest voltage bump. If you do overclock, then you would be well-advised to get an aftermarket cooler. There are a number of good ones. That's one real advantage of building your own -- you can squeeze a lot more performance out of your computer. Otherwise, you might be better off buying a pre-assembled computer, particularly as the price goes down. A home builder really can't compete on price in the $500 range (give or take), though you can make sure that you get everything you want (slots, memory, various compatible chips). Quote:
Again, if quiet computing is something you seek, look carefully at how you can control the various fans from the BIOS. That's where Abit excelled -- the GB board had only one controllable fan header, and you could not adjust that one much. Quote:
This is particularly true on FreeBSD if you compile from ports. That is still a single task, though work to parallelize it is proceeding. For ports, raw CPU and disk speed matter more than number of cores. The OS world compilation is parallelized, so cores matter, but for most people compiling ports consumes a lot more time. Also note the various chip options. The newer generation are made using 45nm technology; they tend to run cooler, which is a good thing. On the other hand, keep an eye out for the virtualization features of the chip. The low-end ones usually don't have capabilities for hardware virtualization. You probably won't need that, since virtualization on FreeBSD is pretty terrible, and you did not mention any virtualization needs on the XP box. |
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