Video-card is necessary?

fender0107401

fender0107401

Hi all,

Recently, I want to buy a new computer, and run FreeBSD_release on it, but nvidia does not release the amd64_driver.

So I think if the vidoe card is not necessary I can build an headless computer.

The handbook chapter 2 provides some information about headless installation, but my friends told me that for x86 and x86_64 architecture video card is necessary for boot up the computer.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-advanced.html

I think maybe someone can give me some suggestion about this.
 
You can use the open source 'nv' driver under amd64. It'll give you 2D acceleration but no 3D acceleration. No need to go headless.

Adam
 
And yes, your friends are probably right: Most x86 and amd64 motherboards won't boot without a video card of some sort. You don't need X support to get a working console, though; near enough any video card you can physically connect will do that.

If you're thinking of a server setup, I'd suggest finding a MB with an integrated graphics controller, just for the convenience.
 
Thank all for the reply,

I google this problem, I find that boot the system without video card need bios support and some motherboard have this feature.

I know the nv driver from xorg, and I don't need any 3d_acceleration, I just want a perfect video solution, as a result, I want to remove it from my system and use ssh to access the headless system.

I want to learn C and OpenMP deeply, so I think the AMD phenom processor is good enough for me, and FreeBSD have a mature SMP support, run FreeBSD on phenom is very cool!

For a picky desktop user, the video card driver is nightmare, maybe the open source nv driver is the only solution for amd64 architecture now. :(
 
If you haven't bought your system yet, I would suggest doing as djn suggests and get a board with integrated video. The vga(4) driver will give you a text console to do the install, and after that you can use ssh to connect to it.

I just picked up a Phenom X4 9650 as well, at a very nice price. Will be installing it in an existing ASUS M2N-E motherboard (integrated video!) along with a memory upgrade to 6 GB and an OS upgrade to 7.0 next weekend. Four cores for US$150, on a two-year-old consumer motherboard -- now that's good value.
 
Yes, I haven't bought any thing, I just plan and design my new system.

I want a phenom 9550 or 9650 cpu, amd 770 chip set motherboard(integrated video will share my main memory and integrated vidoe with video_memory is expensive),

8g*800mz ram(ram is very cheap now),

160g or 320g harddisk(for ftp server or other service),

DVD-rw(for born FreeBSD cd image and backup system),

nvidia video card(temporarily use the nv driver and waiting for the official support),

I can study OpenMP on this cpu, and with my old computer I can study how to set up a server(ftp nfs and others) and test firewall rule by myself.

It will be very interesting!
 
Actually I have tried that 2 times on different machines, just for the test
I mean running FreeBSD without video card
and it worked both times without any problems
I just installed FreeBSD and then removed the video card
 
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