Re: Videocard

["Jonathan A. Kollasch" <jakllsch%kollasch.net@localhost>]

On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 11:59:14PM +0300, Dima Veselov wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I wish to buy a new dual-head videocard for my NetBSD installation and wish 
> to know what chipset is best practice for using on NetBSD 5.1/amd64 and 
> NetBSD-current. The main purpose is mplayer and simple terminal windows. 
> 
> Does anybody have an experience to share? 

Radeon HD 4k GPU/IGP devices are acceptable for that task.
My HD 4550 seems fine, though something causes that machine
to hardlock during video playback.

My RV370/380 cards (Radeon x300/x600) are rock solid, but
a bit aged.

Intel graphics, of the 915/945 vintage, also are acceptably
supported.  Anything beyond 9xx I don't know enough about to
say for sure, but I'd avoid anything newer as I think most
of the newer ones need kernel DRI/GEM/KMS support to run.

As jym said, avoid Radeon HD 5k and 6k, they at the very
least need DRI/TTM/KMS support we don't yet have.

I'd additionally suggest entirely avoiding Nvidia,
nothing recent has acceleration from nv(4), and
the DRM for noveau hasn't been ported either.

        Jonathan Kollasch