Best FreeBSD hardware

yaslam

yaslam

I am looking for a GPU that is compatible with FreeBSD and has decent graphical acceleration, any recommendations? I plan for this system to be able to play 1080p 60FPS videos smoothly, it will also have 16GB of DDR4 Ram, and probably a Ryzen 5 3600, thanks.
 
From my personal experiences, I can recommend anything Nvidia.
Nvidia provides official FreeBSD drivers and they work extremely well. I had great success on FreeBSD with Nvidia GeForce and Nvidia Quadro GPUs.
You can find a list of all currently supported Nvidia GPUs at Nvidia's driver page: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/196725/en-us/

Intel integrated GPUs work well too. Just don't go for the latest Xe Iris Pro. They are a bit flaky sometimes (especially in suspend/resume).

Your requirements (playing 1080p 60fps videos smoothly) is something that any GPU from the past 10 years should be able to handle well (including intel integrated).
If this is your only requirement, I'd recommend picking up some used Nvidia Quadro GPU.
 
Hello,
I recommend you too NVIDIA.
Now FreeBSD have support for Nvidia Optimus.

I have Thinkpad T530 with Intel and NVS 5400 NVIDIA Card, and everything works well.
 
My RTX-3080 works fine but that might be a bit overkill (not to mention expensive). Based on the current driver version I'd say get something based on the Pascal architecture, a GTX-1080 for example. That should last you a couple of years with the latest NVidia drivers.
 
A GT(X)-9xx series should be fine too. But that architecture might be on the chopping block with the latest drivers. Then again, there are plenty of 'legacy' versions of the driver still available. But you might run into problems in the long run. I still have a Zotac SFF PC with a GT520, still works fine with the x11/nvidia-driver-390 legacy version of the driver. Those legacy versions might end up breaking though, this has happened to the 309 version for example.
 
jbo said:
From my personal experiences, I can recommend anything Nvidia.
Nvidia provides official FreeBSD drivers and they work extremely well. I had great success on FreeBSD with Nvidia GeForce and Nvidia Quadro GPUs.
You can find a list of all currently supported Nvidia GPUs at Nvidia's driver page: https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/196725/en-us/

Intel integrated GPUs work well too. Just don't go for the latest Xe Iris Pro. They are a bit flaky sometimes (especially in suspend/resume).

Your requirements (playing 1080p 60fps videos smoothly) is something that any GPU from the past 10 years should be able to handle well (including intel integrated).
If this is your only requirement, I'd recommend picking up some used Nvidia Quadro GPU.
Click to expand...
Great, smooth 1080p 60FPS video is basically my only requirement as I wont be using this system for gaming that much (a little bit of horsepower for that would be great though).

Also, how about AMD, are they also well supported under FreeBSD?
 
SirDice said:
A GT(X)-9xx series should be fine too. But that architecture might be on the chopping block with the latest drivers. Then again, there are plenty of 'legacy' versions of the driver still available. But you might run into problems in the long run. I still have a Zotac SFF PC with a GT520, still works fine with the x11/nvidia-driver-390 legacy version of the driver. Those legacy versions might end up breaking though, this has happened to the 309 version for example.
Click to expand...
Nice, thanks.
 
Alain De Vos said:
I recommend Radeon/AMD.
Because "Fuck you Nvidia". Quote Linus Thorvalds.
Click to expand...
Meanwhile everybody else provided some empirical facts to support their recommendations.
Please don't forget that simply not posting is also an option if you don't want to go the extra mile of adding some substance to your content ;)
 
I use AMD/Radeon with FreeBSD and it works fine.
I found this on the internet,
Compared to Nvidia's open source driver there is better support for newer graphics cards. This is partially due to AMD's support for the open source community, providing documentation and manpower for driver development.

I like to dis-advice against integrated GPU/CPU as found in many laptops.
 
Alain De Vos said:
Compared to Nvidia's open source driver there is better support for newer graphics cards.
Click to expand...
The NVidia driver isn't open source. Unless you're referring to the Nouveau driver (not made or endorsed by NVidia), which isn't even available on FreeBSD. Besides that, I will argue that the NVidia driver is updated fairly frequently and will support all the latest NVidia cards. Apart from CUDA support the FreeBSD NVidia driver is on par with the Windows version of that driver.
 
Alain De Vos said:
I recommend Radeon/AMD.
Because "Fuck you Nvidia". Quote Linus Thorvalds.
Click to expand...
That was back in the day when he could get away with such things - before his corporate paymasters stepped in some years later and muzzled him and imposed a CoC...

Also, Nvidia, unlike Intel and AMD, were not big donors to the Linux Foundation - even now usually being "silver" or below donors. And probably no Nvidia reps on the board of directors or technical committee at that time as well...

So yes easy to say that to Nvidia at the time, as a "PR stunt", not so easy to say the same thing to Intel, google, IBM or Oracle for example... (and nowadays, add Microsoft, Meta, vmware and a quite a few more to that).

As to the nvidia driver - I'm on the fence. Yes it's proprietary, yet so is the hardware and firmware - and so is Intel and AMD's hardware and firmware.
 
It's simply the question:
Who offers the best/most recent drivers?

I always was a fan of AMD - supporting alternatives, not paying extra for the brand's name.
Never had anything else but CPUs and graphics adapters by AMD only.

In spring this year I assembled me a new desktop PC.
Of course both AMD (Ryzen 9 and Radeon RX 6600 Dual)

After fumbling annoyed around for weeks I realized:
I will not get this Radeon run until there will be a driver released.
When?
Nobody knows.

So I sold that brandnew Radeon for half price and (again) bought another graphics adapter (GeForce RTX 3050)
violá, full graphics, no problems.

In the first half of this year NVidia officially announced to also publish drivers for FreeBSD,
while AMD still hesitates to stand fully behind anything but Windows,
and you depend on people to port Linux drivers to FreeBSD....

So for me it's simple:
If you don't need anything fancy, the latest available, you may also chose any older AMD model which is supported under FreeBSD.
But if not:
NVidia.
 
P.S.:
DO NOT install drivers from NVidia's webpage under FreeBSD, even if they are newer than the ones you'll find under packages - unless you really know what you're doing.
Stick with the drivers you install via pkg!
It's the easiest way without the least (no) problems, and you'll get enough power from your card anyway.
Otherwise the next update may bring you lots of probs, 'cause of inconsistency of your system's packages.

(Again, this rule of course does not apply if you know what you're doing and why.)
 
Last year, I assembled a rig with a Ryzen 7 5800x and an RX 6900 XT, but it took until summer of 2022 before I could run FreeBSD wtih Wayland on that. And even then, I don't have the most stable setup, software-wise. Sometimes, I can get the little details to line up and give me a usable desktop, and there are times that a few days later, that same setup fails, and I have to go in and mess with settings again. I change the settings, take notes - but even then, what works today may not be the same thing that worked last time. From my experience, I can say that RX 6800 XT or RX 6900 XT will work with sienna_cichlid driver, but anything newer (hardware-wise) than the 68/69 is not advisable right now. :/
 
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