NVIDIA 64-bit FreeBSD Graphics Driver Found

A week ago NVIDIA released the NVIDIA 195.22 Linux driver, but early this morning NVIDIA's Unix graphics team pushed out the FreeBSD 195.22 driver. This FreeBSD driver update basically brings it up to speed with the latest beta Linux driver with the VDPAU improvements, DisplayPort fixes, and other new support in this binary driver. The FreeBSD 195.22 beta driver announcement can be read over at NvNews.net where it was posted by NVIDIA's Christian Zander.

NVIDIA's announcement just makes note of the 32-bit FreeBSD driver but does not mention any 64-bit *BSD support. NVIDIA though has told us they will deliver a 64-bit FreeBSD driver before year's end. NVIDIA is only able to finally deliver a 64-bit FreeBSD driver now thanks to mmap() extension improvements in FreeBSD 8.0. However, a keen Phoronix reader has found NVIDIA's unannounced x86_64 driver for FreeBSD 8.0.

Over at this FTP location on NVIDIA's download server is a 64-bit build of the 195.22 FreeBSD driver. This is in fact a legitimate FreeBSD x86_64 driver for NVIDIA GeForce/Quadro hardware, but it has yet to be officially announced. We suspect NVIDIA will officially announce this new driver in a short while.