ati or nvidia for openbsd?

[sasser]

Hello,

Which one has more support (drivers, documentation) for OpenBSD?
I want to make a OpenBSD 5.0 x64 desktop, mostly for learning OpenBSD, programing, web browsing.
I have the option of using either nvidia (tnt, geforce 2, FX5200, FX6200) or ati (radeon 9200,9600,9800).
The nvidia seems to have a better support, meanwhile the ati I've read that is "limited supported".

Thanks.

[dragoncity]

re: ati or nvidia for openbsd?

OpenBSD's online hardware information clearly says to avoid nvidia cards. See below.

I have just installed OpenBSD 64 & 32 bit versions on a HP dv6 laptop with a AMD A8 Quad Core CPU and a Radeon Dual Graphics card
and OpenBSd appears very happy with this hardware. I have KDE3 desktop running under 32 bit, have not installed KDE3 under 64 bit yet.
Hope this helps.


===== extract from hardware info section of www.openbsd.org ==========

OpenBSD/amd64

OpenBSD/amd64 runs on AMD's Athlon-64 family of processors in 64-bit mode. It also runs on processors made by other manufacturers which have cloned the AMD64 extensions. (Some Intel processors lack support for important PAE NX bit, which means those machines will run without any W^X support -- it is thus safer to run those machines in i386 mode).

Note that OpenBSD/i386 also runs on these processors, but in 32-bit mode.

X Window System support is available for most graphics cards, using the X.Org server. As with other free operating systems it is highly recommended that Nvidia cards are avoided since this vendor continues to show tremendous resistance towards releasing information that would allow X.Org to support their hardware properly.
=========== end =============

[DaemonFC]

Hello,

Which one has more support (drivers, documentation) for OpenBSD?
I want to make a OpenBSD 5.0 x64 desktop, mostly for learning OpenBSD, programing, web browsing.
I have the option of using either nvidia (tnt, geforce 2, FX5200, FX6200) or ati (radeon 9200,9600,9800).
The nvidia seems to have a better support, meanwhile the ati I've read that is "limited supported".

Thanks.

I've said it over and over, here it goes again.

The only real choice on BSD is Nvidia's proprietary driver. Anything else won't work or won't work very well.

[sasser]

Two very different opinions..

Will the nvidia proprietary driver for freebsd work for openbsd?

@dragoncity:
It's a pleasant surprise to hear that the openbsd is happy with such a new hardware, I always thought that the openbsd is a little slow in supporting new hardware.

[chithanh]

The Radeon cards which are supported in UMS should work. The 6000 series and later need KMS which is not available on OpenBSD yet.

[archibald]

ATI all the way - Evergreen and newer chips aren't supported (i.e. no Radeon HD5000+), but I've been running OpenBSD-current/amd64 quite happily on Radeon 4850 (and an X800XL) for a couple of years now.

I've not run a Radeon 9xxx card, but the man page lists it as supported.

Please ignore DaemonFC: there is no binary driver for OpenBSD, only FreeBSD, the FreeBSD driver cannot be used on OpenBSD.

OpenBSD can be a bit slow to support new things, but it's the usual question of manpower - they don't always have the latest thing but they get there in the end, and when they do it's rock solid.

If you're wanting to learn OpenBSD, you could do a lot worse than buying Absolute OpenBSD (by Michael W Lucas) - it is a bit dated but I found it immensely helpful when I started out.

[chithanh]

To my knowledge, Evergreen chips are supported in UMS. Only Northern Islands and the APUs aren't.

[dragoncity]

If you're wanting to learn OpenBSD, you could do a lot worse than buying Absolute OpenBSD (by Michael W Lucas) - it is a bit dated but I found it immensely helpful when I started out.

Agreed! A excellent book indeed! Pity its not been updated since 2003. I think M. Lucas has "gone over" to the FreeBSD camp with newer titles available for FreeBSD.
I was thinking about obtaining a copy, but had such a off putting experience with the FreeBSD 9.0 installer I have not bothered.