Try PCBSD
This is really quite amazing that in this entire long thread there's not a single mention of
PCBSD. All the trouble of installing FreeBSD, KDE4, etc is eliminated by PCBSD, and the community is VERY responsive for getting bugs fixed, and dealing with hardware issues.
DesktopBSD is all but dead - forget it.
PCBSD gives you all the advantages of the port/package system plus the ultra convenience of the PBI system. And now with the inclusion of the runports script, your own ports tree is completely isolated from the PCBSD ports tree, so you can't screw up the system by accidentally updating some port or accidentally deleting some package.
I just installed the latest version (7.1.1) using the 64 bit version on a new Intel i7 processor with 6GB RAM, on an ASUS P6T motherboard, with RAID-0 on a pair of 750GB SATA drives, and an HD-4850 Radeon VGA, all crammed into a
super slim box. I installed the OS in 15 minutes and everything worked - zero hardware problems. Admittedly the VGA is overkill for what I'm doing and I haven't tried any 3D stuff or games with it, but I think it would work from what I've read. There's been a very recent upgrade in the Nvidia drivers to fix a lot of issues too. I was also investigating the AMD64 driver from Nvidia and was told by them it won't be available for some time because of some hardware problems, though it is actively being worked on (requires some kernel changes I believe that might not make it into FreeBSD 8). There's a
thread on that at the Nvidia forums (
http://www.nvnews.net).
You generally won't find the 64bit version any faster. I did it only because I'm running a server in a jail simultaneously with PHP and Drupal development, etc, etc, on the main machine so I wanted lots of memory, otherwise I'd recommend the 32 bit version and maxing out at 3GB RAM. You'll also find that a lot of the ports have not been compiled into 64 bit packages, and Wine is not yet available for AMD64, should you want to run Windoze programs. That said, the vast majority of available PBIs are available for 64 bit. Have a look at the selection
here.
Getting FreeBSD to work complete with all the bells and whistles like a firewall, is no picnic! It will literally take you weeks and that's if you're extremely knowledgeable, not to mention the hassle of upgrading and maintaining the installed packages. That's exactly why PCBSD exists. Check it out!
...Jeff