Radeon and GhostBSD

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NevilleGoddard
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Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by NevilleGoddard »

Does anybody know how well AMD graphics cards perform on GhostBSD? I've got an R9 270X lying around and I wondered if it would work well in GhostBSD. I did have an nvidia gt 740 but it doesn't work anymore. I'm now using an old gt 430 card which is OK, but I was wondering if there would be a performance boost with the R9 270X which is a much higher specification card. I believe Radeon graphics has much improved on FreeBSD lately. I only need a card for watching DVDs and youtube videos etc. No 3D gaming or 3D CAD software.
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Re: Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by ASX »

NevilleGoddard wrote:Does anybody know how well AMD graphics cards perform on GhostBSD? I've got an R9 270X lying around and I wondered if it would work well in GhostBSD. I did have an nvidia gt 740 but it doesn't work anymore. I'm now using an old gt 430 card which is OK, but I was wondering if there would be a performance boost with the R9 270X which is a much higher specification card. I believe Radeon graphics has much improved on FreeBSD lately. I only need a card for watching DVDs and youtube videos etc. No 3D gaming or 3D CAD software.
If I'm matching your radeon correctly (volcanic island) you are out of luck:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics
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NevilleGoddard
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Re: Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by NevilleGoddard »

Thanks for your quick reply.
But what about this:


https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?que ... &sektion=4

Specifically:

SUPPORTED HARDWARE
The radeon driver supports PCI, AGP, and PCIe video cards based on the
following ATI/AMD chips (note: list is non-exhaustive):

R100 Radeon 7200
RV100 Radeon 7000(VE), M6, RN50/ES1000
RS100 Radeon IGP320(M)
RV200 Radeon 7500, M7, FireGL 7800
RS200 Radeon IGP330(M)/IGP340(M)
RS250 Radeon Mobility 7000 IGP
R200 Radeon 8500, 9100, FireGL 8800/8700
RV250 Radeon 9000PRO/9000, M9
RV280 Radeon 9200PRO/9200/9200SE/9250, M9+
RS300 Radeon 9100 IGP
RS350 Radeon 9200 IGP
RS400/RS480 Radeon XPRESS 200(M)/1100 IGP
R300 Radeon 9700PRO/9700/9500PRO/9500/9600TX, FireGL X1/Z1
R350 Radeon 9800PRO/9800SE/9800, FireGL X2
R360 Radeon 9800XT
RV350 Radeon 9600PRO/9600SE/9600/9550, M10/M11, FireGL T2
RV360 Radeon 9600XT
RV370 Radeon X300, M22
RV380 Radeon X600, M24
RV410 Radeon X700, M26 PCIe
R420 Radeon X800 AGP
R423/R430 Radeon X800, M28 PCIe
R480/R481 Radeon X850 PCIe/AGP
RV505/RV515/RV516/RV550
Radeon X1300/X1400/X1500/X1550/X2300
R520 Radeon X1800
RV530/RV560 Radeon X1600/X1650/X1700
RV570/R580 Radeon X1900/X1950
RS600/RS690/RS740
Radeon X1200/X1250/X2100
R600 Radeon HD 2900
RV610/RV630 Radeon HD 2400/2600/2700/4200/4225/4250
RV620/RV635 Radeon HD 3410/3430/3450/3470/3650/3670
RV670 Radeon HD 3690/3850/3870
RS780/RS880 Radeon HD 3100/3200/3300/4100/4200/4250/4290
RV710/RV730 Radeon HD
4330/4350/4550/4650/4670/5145/5165/530v/545v/560v/565v
RV740/RV770/RV790
Radeon HD 4770/4730/4830/4850/4860/4870/4890
CEDAR Radeon HD 5430/5450/6330/6350/6370
REDWOOD Radeon HD 5550/5570/5650/5670/5730/5750/5770/6530/6550/6570
JUNIPER Radeon HD 5750/5770/5830/5850/5870/6750/6770/6830/6850/6870
CYPRESS Radeon HD 5830/5850/5870
HEMLOCK Radeon HD 5970
PALM Radeon HD 6310/6250
SUMO/SUMO2 Radeon HD 6370/6380/6410/6480/6520/6530/6550/6620
BARTS Radeon HD 6790/6850/6870/6950/6970/6990
TURKS Radeon HD 6570/6630/6650/6670/6730/6750/6770
CAICOS Radeon HD 6430/6450/6470/6490
CAYMAN Radeon HD 6950/6970/6990
ARUBA Radeon HD 7000 series
TAHITI Radeon HD 7900 series
PITCAIRN Radeon HD 7800 series
VERDE Radeon HD 7700 series
OLAND Radeon HD 8000 series
HAINAN Radeon HD 8000 series
BONAIRE Radeon HD 7790 series
KAVERI KAVERI APUs
KABINI KABINI APUs
HAWAII Radeon R9 series <------
MULLINS MULLINS APUs
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NevilleGoddard
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Re: Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by NevilleGoddard »

I think I'll try it on Monday if I have time I'll try it tomorrow.
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Re: Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by ASX »

NevilleGoddard wrote:Thanks for your quick reply.
But what about this:


https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?que ... &sektion=4
KABINI KABINI APUs
HAWAII Radeon R9 series <------
MULLINS MULLINS APUs
Hehe ... guess you have more luck than me! ;)
Look like the wiki is outdated, and I'm glad for you it should work. :)
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NevilleGoddard
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Re: Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by NevilleGoddard »

I'll try it out and post the results. Having a graphics card fail on you is not fun. My computer was self-rebooting, freezing, beeping, booting to a blank screen and generally playing up. I didn't know what was wrong. I thought it was RAM or perhaps my motherboard. Since I have put in the new card my system has been running perfectly. :D

I hope all goes well when I switch cards. I guess all I have to do is comment out nvidia-modeset and the radeon kernel modules should load automatically. I might need to edit xorg. I don't know. If I can't get it to work properly I suppose I'll have to buy a new card. ;)

Thanks for answering.
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Re: Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by ASX »

NevilleGoddard wrote:I'll try it out and post the results. Having a graphics card fail on you is not fun. My computer was self-rebooting, freezing, beeping, booting to a blank screen and generally playing up. I didn't know what was wrong. I thought it was RAM or perhaps my motherboard. Since I have put in the new card my system has been running perfectly. :D
Hmm ... consider also a possible power supply problem, eventually, assuming the current card use less power than the previous one.
I hope all goes well when I switch cards. I guess all I have to do is comment out nvidia-modeset and the radeon kernel modules should load automatically. I might need to edit xorg. I don't know. If I can't get it to work properly I suppose I'll have to buy a new card. ;)

Thanks for answering.
Best thing for radeon cards is to remove (or rename) xorg.conf in my limited experience.
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NevilleGoddard
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Re: Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by NevilleGoddard »

I put in the R9 270X card and the results are very impressive! DVD playback is as good as nvidia. There doesn't seem to be any drawback whatsoever in using Radeon for web surfing watching videos etc. I played a DVD for about 10 minutes and there was no tearing whatsoever.
This is how it went:
I took out the nvidia card and installed the amd card.
Booted GhostBSD.
Everything went fine until slim. Slim wouldn't start so I logged in and did command "startx". This didn't work it only got me back to the login screen. I suppose "exec startxfce4" would have been better. ;)
I then logged in as root and rebooted. Then slim started up no problems. :D
I thought I'd try to play a game to really test the graphics so I installed supertuxkart and tried it out. It wouldn't start.
From the terminal I got :

Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display "unix:0.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display "unix:0.0".
[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 2: No GLX support available. OpenGL driver will not work.

[warn ] [IrrDriver Temp Logger]: Level 3: Fatal error, could not get visual.

I then (after some fiddling around) deleted the package nvidia-driver and then tried "X -configure" to generate an xorg.conf file. I got an error saying the server is already running or something like that. So I booted as single user and ran the commands
"/sbin/mount -u /" and then "X -configure". This then generated the xorg.conf file in /root/. I then copied this to /etc/X11/. I then tried supertuxkart and it started ok but it's pretty slow but much better than before.
It's running great and I think I'll keep the R9 270X in the computer and run it for a while.

By the way ASX it looks like my power supply is OK. It looks like the card was the problem. My PSU is a Corsair 550 gold so it's a good one and this new card uses much more power than the old one and everything is running fine.
For anyone who is interested the output of glxears is:

3637 frames in 5.0 seconds = 726.928 FPS
3741 frames in 5.0 seconds = 748.123 FPS
3893 frames in 5.0 seconds = 777.575 FPS
3879 frames in 5.0 seconds = 775.701 FPS
3915 frames in 5.0 seconds = 782.460 FPS

I don't know if this is good or not. :?:
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NevilleGoddard
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Re: Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by NevilleGoddard »

Oops.I forgot to mention that I renamed xorg.conf before I started anything.
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Re: Radeon and GhostBSD

Post by ASX »

I can only be glad that the new radeon worked, of course. :)

About the PSU, it was just a though that crossed my mind ...

glxgears is not the best tool to measure graphics performance, but your results looks good anyway.
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