Will we ever see an amd64 NVidia driver for FreeBSD?

[zander]

The writeup linked to earlier in this thread (and on the Wiki page Harvey Pooka pointed out) describes what NVIDIA feels is needed, and why, in detail. The FreeBSD i386 and amd64 platforms share a number of limitations, but the impact of these limitations on the NVIDIA FreeBSD graphics driver differs between i386 and amd64. We do not feel that a driver of acceptable quality can be made available for the FreeBSD amd64 platform at this point.

[sjss]

Well, first I have to applaud you at nVidia for taking concern at driver quality. It's one of the reasons that I find there's no real competition in the market. ATi drivers tend to be excercises in pain and suffering, and Intel chips might have decent drivers (that <I>don't</I> turn on all the features), but the performance is horrible. The open source drivers for either option are better than the closed source drivers.

nVidia on the other hand hand has always produce excellent drivers, and I really don't use anything else on my systems. But now I'm building a multimedia box and don't want much down-time - I'll want to start it in 64 bit. The nv driver is flaky at best in 64 bit. It takes less time to put in a new card and install it than rebuild the OS. As such I have to take either ATi (not a chance) or some onboard Intel thing (guess I won't be gaming much). There is really no point in me getting an nVidia card for this computer.

I guess what I'm getting to (and trying to back up with), is sometimes, it's better to lower your standards a bit, to make your customers happy. Sure, it won't be up to the usual nVidia quality - but it can't be as bad as ATi (lack of stability/reliability, hard to get things to work with it) or Intel (lackluster performace) can it? As long as it is stable and performs better than an Intel graphics chipset, that's what will make me happy.

Sorry to be pushy, I just had to put my 2 cents in, I don't want to be stuck with an Intel graphics chip any longer than I have to. I'd like to play my games, and Wine+FreeBSD+nVidia drivers do that.

[AndrewM]

Can be organize the petition -- that developers would accelerate creation of necessary functions in a kernel? ;-)

I like FreeBSD and the video-devices from Nvidia (and I would recommend only those devices to any person)... But absence of drivers for the amd64 - afflicts me, because I cannot increase memory at the x86-computer.

With huge gratitude - to Nvidia developers!
I very much hope, that you will not leave FreeBSD users.

[Petz02]

Hey,

Just want to congratulate Harvey Pooka for taking the initiative to setup the wiki page so everyone can quickly see the progress made on this issue. I hope its kept up to date. Given the support and openness of Zander and Nvidia thus far I don't see why this would not be the case. Thanks guys

I wish there was a little more involvement from the FreeBSD dev team here though. I know they are probably working on certain aspects of the features Nvidia needs but I always find FreeBSD Dev info hard to come by(searching mailing lists is not my idea of fun, I guess they are busy coding). Has anyone got some links they could post so I can watch the progress in more detail? Or tips on finding this info?

If only I had the skills to do kernel Development to help but I would hazard a guess that my coding skills are less than capable of such a task.

[Petz02]

Hey Zander,

Were similar problems encountered creating the Solaris x86 and x64 drivers do you know? Just curious as I know the BSD(s) have been able to use code from Solaris as the projects have compatible licenses. As such perhaps the BSD community need not develop these kernel features from scratch but could port existing implementations from Solaris(or at least use them as a design reference/guide). Any thoughts? I can see that the supported card list on Solaris is alot shorter(Quadro cards only) is this because it is affected by similar problems or is it just because of the infancy of the drivers?

[zander]

Yes and no. The required interfaces already existed in some form or another on Solaris 10, but didn't work correctly in all cases (see e.g the gfx_private module for more information). The Solaris graphics driver has feature parity with the Linux graphics driver; although only Quadro GPUs are supported by it, the Solaris graphics driver can drive the same set of GPUs as a Linux graphics driver with the same version.

[Harvey Pooka]

Hey,

Just want to congratulate Harvey Pooka for taking the initiative to setup the wiki page so everyone can quickly see the progress made on this issue.

I am happy that you like the wiki page, but I did not write it. :)