NVIDIA vs AMD video card on new desktop build?

C

chessguy64

I'm thinking about building a new desktop PC, and I was wondering if anyone here has a preference based on what has been proven to work well and be reliable for them in FreeBSD. It will likely be a Ryzen 9 series cpu, with specs close +/- of a nvidia rtx 3070 for the video card. The sad thing is as great as FreeBSD is, I will probably have to be in Windows for some stuff, for software like 3D rendering / video editing and to try out some new games. But if I can make a purchase that is more compatible with FreeBSD, that'd be ideal. Also don't want to buy a card that isn't very compatible and performs worse with the OS. Any recommendations are appreciated.
 
I use a separate very cheap passively cooled accelerated radeon card.
Code: 
device     = 'Caicos [Radeon HD 6450/7450/8450 / R5 230 OEM]'
Works perfect with Windows & FreeBSD.
 
I choose an Intel graphics on my newest box, because it is easier to configure for me. Just put kld_list="${kld_list} i915kms" in your /etc/rc.conf and it works.

Must confess that I mainly do text processing and some surfing, no heavy graphical.

wondering if anyone here has a preference based on what has been proven to work well and be reliable for them in FreeBSD
Click to expand...

My preference and it works well, reliable on FreeBSD.
 
meine said:
I choose an Intel graphics on my newest box, because it is easier to configure for me. Just put kld_list="${kld_list} i915kms" in your /etc/rc.conf and it works.

Must confess that I mainly do text processing and some surfing, no heavy graphical.
Click to expand...

seriously ? Yeah if I wanted to do stuff that didn't require any gpu power at all I'd just stick with the nvidia card I have now. Not sure why ppl are posting here that their old stuff works, when I stated specs and that I'm building new. I'm not spending $2000+ to use intel i915 lol.
 
Since FreeBSD 13.1 now has AMDGPU support from linux kernel 5.10, I looked in the table in the Gentoo wiki when deciding on an AMDGPU card.
I use a RX 5600 XT card with good results.
I think this page contains some AMD equivalents to rtx 3070 that exist in the Gentoo table.
 
My AMD RX Vega 64 is working without any trouble and I am glad it's supported by FBSD. Sure It's an old 5 years card but it's well enough for what I do, my next card will probably be something like an RX 6600 or RX 6700 when the driver will be available for FBSD but I am not in hurry.
If I want to play games I reboot to Win10 and that's it.
I don't try to convert an OS to something it can't handle, it's a wasting time for everybody and that's not what I want it to do anyway.

From my point of view what meine suggested is probably not as useless as you think it is, you could buy a CPU with an APU included that you can use with FBSD while having a GPU that you will use with Windows or Linux for whatever that need its graphic power.
I don't know if some users here do that, it's just an idea.
 
I think RX 6900/6800 XT is the most recent AMD card supported under FreeBSD, by the sienna_cichlid driver... (I have a 6900 XT, and got it running - but anything newer would be trouble).
 
astyle said:
I think RX 6900/6800 XT is the most recent AMD card supported under FreeBSD, by the sienna_cichlid driver... (I have a 6900 XT, and got it running - but anything newer would be trouble).
Click to expand...
Nice it's good to know, I wasn't aware that some cards from the RX6000 series were already supported.
Are you on 13.1 or 14 current ?
 
gotnull said:
Nice it's good to know, I wasn't aware that some cards from the RX6000 series were already supported.
Are you on 13.1 or 14 current ?
Click to expand...
13.1 on the rig that has the 6900XT... BTW, it seems like 6700XT, 6600 XT, 6500 XT and 6400 XT are just too new for sienna_cichlid...
 
wow the support was quick for the flagship, I am a bit surprised tbh, in the good way.
Yeah for the rest of the RX 6000 series it will be another story as they came few months after, but I have good hope they will be ready for FBSD14.
 
astyle said:
I think RX 6900/6800 XT is the most recent AMD card supported under FreeBSD, by the sienna_cichlid driver... (I have a 6900 XT, and got it running - but anything newer would be trouble).
Click to expand...
Can you help me out with how you got it running?
I have a Powercolor RX 6800 Fighter and when I kldload amdgpu after both the driver and firmware were installed (using both ports and pkg) my screen looses signal and goes black. sysrc kld_list+=amdgpu fixes nothing. I have to go back in single user and comment it out so can have a shell.
Fresh install of 13.1
pkg ins x11/xorg
port and pkg install graphics/drm-510-kmod
port and pkg install graphics/gpu-firmware-amd-kmod FLAVOR=sienna_cichlid
sysrc kld_list+=amdgpu
Reboot and I get a black screen.
Am I missing a step?
 
Carbonbasedlifeform#7 said:
Can you help me out with how you got it running?
I have a Powercolor RX 6800 Fighter and when I kldload amdgpu after both the driver and firmware were installed (using both ports and pkg) my screen looses signal and goes black. sysrc kld_list+=amdgpu fixes nothing. I have to go back in single user and comment it out so can have a shell.
Fresh install of 13.1
pkg ins x11/xorg
port and pkg install graphics/drm-510-kmod
port and pkg install graphics/gpu-firmware-amd-kmod FLAVOR=sienna_cichlid
sysrc kld_list+=amdgpu
Reboot and I get a black screen.
Am I missing a step?
Click to expand...
For starters, if you get a black screen, I'd double-check the cables and hardware connections. It is a very heavy card, I had to buy a separate GPU supporter to avoid sagging.

Also, I'm personally leery of using sysrc kld_list+=amdgpu... I open up /etc/rc.conf in nano, and add a line by hand: kld_list="/boot/modules/amdgpu.ko". My reason for that is that last time I tried this (take a look at the dates on earlier posts), the installation part was a bit messy and unverified. Doesn't look like the situation has improved since...

Also, in my case, it really helped to have that line be the very last one in /etc/rc.conf - even though others on the Forums said it shouldn't matter.

One more thing: Can you SSH into your rig from elsewhere? if you can, that will save a LOT of pain with rebooting into single/multi-user modes.
 
astyle said:
Also, in my case, it really helped to have that line be the very last one in /etc/rc.conf - even though others on the Forums said it shouldn't matter.
Click to expand...
rc.conf is a shell script that only contains variables, it gets sourced multiple times when executing the rc(8) scripts. The order in which those variables are defined is irrelevant, except when you try to declare the same variable more than once, then only the last deceleration is the actual value of that variable.
 
astyle said:
For starters, if you get a black screen, I'd double-check the cables and hardware connections. It is a very heavy card, I had to buy a separate GPU supporter to avoid sagging.

Also, I'm personally leery of using sysrc kld_list+=amdgpu... I open up /etc/rc.conf in nano, and add a line by hand: kld_list="/boot/modules/amdgpu.ko". My reason for that is that last time I tried this (take a look at the dates on earlier posts), the installation part was a bit messy and unverified. Doesn't look like the situation has improved since...

Also, in my case, it really helped to have that line be the very last one in /etc/rc.conf - even though others on the Forums said it shouldn't matter.

One more thing: Can you SSH into your rig from elsewhere? if you can, that will save a LOT of pain with rebooting into single/multi-user modes.
Click to expand...
Greetings.
I've double checked everything that I can think of.
Fresh install of FreeBSD 13.1 with all the correct steps to get my AMD graphics working and when it loads the module, graphics fail. Screen flickers like it going to load and that is as far as it goes. Monitor goes black and the no signal box appears.
All penguin distros work out of the box.
Dragonfly and OpenBSD work.
I was hoping that maybe I had just overlooked something simple.
Does it need linux compatibility enabled? I just assumed it doesn't.
 
gotnull said:
My AMD RX Vega 64 is working without any trouble and I am glad it's supported by FBSD. Sure It's an old 5 years card but it's well enough for what I do..
Click to expand...
Got also discrete Vega 64. Works fine, plenty of power, unless you insist on 4K gaming (for 1080p/1440p it's plenty).
For gaming I'd reboot to W10.
 
I had nothing but trouble with Nvidia so switched to AMD and it worked perfectly, but this was a couple years ago and the AMD card (RX 570) was older. That may or may not be helpful...was using display port on a Dell U3415W ultra wide.
 
Are the binary NVidia drivers running on 14-current?

Over in Linux land that can be a real problem. Newer kernels invalidating the binary NVidia drivers and suddenly you have no driver for a while.
 
Intel has also started producing dedicated GPUs that are not built in to CPUs: the "Arc" series. I know squat about them. As a side note, my old i7 CPU with a built in HD630(?) GPU worked flawlessly with FreeBSD.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top