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Here's a snippet from their README.txt, its an example configuration for X.

Section "Device"
Identifier"Device"
Driver"nvidia"
VendorName"NVIDIA"
BoardName"GeForce2 Go"
EndSection

It's there. You pick "Graphics Driver", "GeForce and TNT" and "FreeBSD", press "Go" and you get to the FreeBSD driver page
If you still can't find it click here for a direct link to the driver

It's there. You pick "Graphics Driver", "GeForce and TNT" and "FreeBSD", press "Go" and you get to the FreeBSD driver page
If you still can't find it click here for a direct link to the driver

Ah...NO... the links you mention do NOT exist. At least not that I can see in, or above, the 3rd step. For those that are wondering, the link above will warp you to a page with three steps: products, part#, and OS. Looking in the Linux area only shows stuff for Finux distro, and there is not mention of FreeBSD!

So at this point, this still looks like a hoax to me! However, is is well known that nvidia IS working on a FreeBSD native driver. It just doesn't look like its finished yet. No Nvidia people have posted anythign to the -STABLE mailling list yet. Mind you no employee's of Nvidia have. Other post's there could be from the same people trolling this hoax.

You were saying?

Dinivin

We BSD folk have been waitting for this, because we like to play Quake too! The bad part is where are the drivers? Nvidia's web page only show's the Finux variety. Hopefully the website will update soon. There is no mention of this on the FreeBSD -stable mail-list from any Nvidia folks, so I'm a bit skeptable. The only mention on the FreeBSD list thus far is also pointing to the same website, with not metion of FreeBSD driveres.

Oops, forgot the obligatory link to the nView page: nView Multi-display Technology

This page outlines some of the improvements made for nView 2.0 over nView v1.0.

You might want to check out nVidia's Detonator 40 download page ( XP/2000, 95/98/ME ). Here's a blurb on Detonator 40:

Detonator 40 is the beta graphics driver for all NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Detonator 40 supports 2D graphics, DirectX 8.1, OpenGL 1.4, nView Desktop Management software version 2.0, NVRotate. NVKeystone, Digital Vibrance Control and includes a new control panel and the CineFX emulator. Through NVIDIA's Unified Driver Architecture, Detonator software supports all GPUs below in a single driver.

Note the nView _2.0_ in that description. Perhaps it has what you're looking for.

You might want to check out nVidia's Detonator 40 download page ( XP/2000, 95/98/ME ). Here's a blurb on Detonator 40:

Detonator 40 is the beta graphics driver for all NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Detonator 40 supports 2D graphics, DirectX 8.1, OpenGL 1.4, nView Desktop Management software version 2.0, NVRotate. NVKeystone, Digital Vibrance Control and includes a new control panel and the CineFX emulator. Through NVIDIA's Unified Driver Architecture, Detonator software supports all GPUs below in a single driver.

Note the nView _2.0_ in that description. Perhaps it has what you're looking for.

Graphics cards are expensive because they don't sell in large quantities. The supply of high-end video cards is low so price is high. The supply is low because demand is low. Very few people other than a few gamers per town has a geforce 4. Most people with dells and gateways have whatever old card comes in there. And a whole crapload of pre-built machines come with on-board video. And for the needs of the vast majority of people a TNT2 is more than they will ever need.

My current PC is a Pentium III 450mhz with a TNT2 32MB video card. I bought this machine when the TNT2 first came out. There have been 4 geforce cards since then. And the only games that don't run on my computer are the new UT and America's Army. Every other 3D game runs just fine on my machine.
I plan to buy a new PC soon. So I can encode movies faster and play Doom3. But I'm probably going to buy a motherboard that has the nforce2 chipset. Sure it's a crummy built in video card. But it's a geForce 4 built in. Even though the board probably wont be as fast as a KT400 with DDR400 and a video card in the AGP slot, it's a deal you can't beat. Motherboard, sound card, ethernet card, and video card for the price of just a motherboard. I probably wont use the built in sound card often, but all the operating systems I use fully support having 2 sound cards and using them simultanously, so I dont' see where I can go wrong.
To read more about the nforce2 chipset check out
Nvida or
anandtech

It wont make the fastest gaming machine, but it will still make a good enough one, for a low low price.

The drivers on the NVIDIA page for Mandrake 8.2 contain the driver in the file /lib/modules/2.4.18-6mdk/kernel/drivers/video/NVdr iver, so they only work with the 2.4.18-6mdk kernel.

You need to rebuild the source package, and you'll get the right one: /lib/modules/2.4.19-16mdk/kernel/drivers/video/NVd river

So NVIDIA are to blame, because they don't provide the right binary drivers for MDK 9.0.

Actually, the nforce2 chipset itself would be ideal for gamers, media/graphic designers etc..because of the fact that nvidia produces a superior memory bus controller. While it is true that SiS and VIA are playing catch up in the Dual channel DDR field, who was the first to provide this? Furthermore, who was the first to provide the 128bit DDR interface?

On the contrary, Nvidia does invest into such "bleeding" technology with it's DualDDR R&D(giving intel based 1066RAMBUS chipsets a run for their money). On The Athlon side of things this is the best chipset at present when it comes to memory bandwidth and speed.
To covers basic(bleeding edge) facts:
1. nforce2 platform will support 8x agp
2. The system platform Processor(SPP Northbridge) version will not have integrated graphics
3. Otherwise the mobos will have integrated geforce4 mx running at 250MHz (similar to geforce4 mx 420) using the IGP northbridge.
4. slapping in some sticks of the PC3200 ram in a nforce DDR400 board, in combination the latest Athlon XP's, will allow an intel spanking 6.4/gb per sec bandwidth for that Athlon over clocking a$$.
5. nvidia was one of the first to support standards such as AMD's Hypertransport. The MCP(Southbridge) is connected to the IGP/SPP northbridge using a Hypertransport link.
6. Nforce2 processors are in production NOW

NVIDIA nForce2 Engineered to Deliver Outstanding Performance for AMD Athlon CPUs

"Teamed with the fastest Athlon XP processors to date, nForce2 and Athlon XP is dollar-for-dollar the best gaming platform on the market, and we look forward to building blazing fast systems around these innovative and impressive technologies."Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest.

"NVIDIA's new nForce2 AMD AthlonXP-based platforms with advanced 333FSB support outperforms any platform available in the market today," said Oskar Wu, Head AMD Board Designer at ABIT
-Jason

According to this, the new nForce2 chipset features either a GeForce4 MX or a GeForce2 MX.

I have a GeForce4 MX, and have zero problems with it. It plays all my games flawlessly.

Sure, it still may not be enough for you 'hardcore gamers'...

but Shuttle computers and nVIDIA are planning on releasing an integrated GeFORCE 4 MX motherboard. This will be particularily cool for shuttle itself, who makes relatively small (and attractive) barebones systems. Not having to leave space for an AGP card will help them a lot. (btw- I have nothing to do with either of these companies)

Their joint press release

Also, I don't think the purpose of these integrated cards is generally to keep gamers happy, they'll want to upgrade every few months anyhow. Integration is there to make it cheaper for the rest of us to get decent graphics on a cheap box.

I believe that because of NVidia licensing you have to get the NVIDIA drivers from NVidia themselves. They're binary drivers but they're well documented. The RPMs for 8.0 aren't there yet, but you can build the drivers from source RPMs which are on that page too.

Here's their latest release

Enjoy!

Costyn.

Nvidia gives out its linux driver sources, goto: http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp And select your card, the source is available at the top for GLX, and at the way bottom of the kernel

Square USA has nothing even close to this; Dell is silent as hell. even square japan has nothing at all:

the only press release i can find is here but it just says Nvidia chips are used for testing and with the "best way to play" logo -- so does Unreal Tournament 2003 -- it says nothing about GeForce being the ONLY playing video-card (as all directX compatible (OpenGL?) should work okay. (just like UT2k3 runs just fine on my radeon)

besides this is all for japan anyway. There are rumors (Electronic Gaming Monthly) that says there may not ever be a FFXI release because of the massive amount of support square will have to burden -- and if EA does not want to do it, they may just skip it. (can't find online version of article)

small side note: i remember back in the days when FF7 supported every videocard *except* nvidia TNT... haha... but eventually nvidia gained enough popularity / people bitched about it and they released a patch to allow nvidia. (they even had software rendering back then!) i bet if us radeon users bitch enough they will make a patch for it too.

another small side note: again. back in FF7 pre-nvidia-patch days -- the software rendering was so slow it was possible to predict the slot-machine thingy for one of the mini-games. i actually did much worse in that mini-game after the patch was installed. -- so i finished that part with software rendering, and played the rest with the patch.

If by "slow", you mean file accessing and what-not, I'd be willing to bet that Windows 98 is far slower at file access than any linux distribution, even the crapiest. WinXP, NT or 2000? It's a close call, I'd have to see the data.

But if by "slow" you mean the FPS on your graphic applications, well then, you have a valid point. If you're fortunate enough to have an NVIDIA based video card, you'll want to jump on over to the NVIDIA website and check either the Linux Display Drivers or the IA64 Drivers, whichever applies.

If by "slow", you mean file accessing and what-not, I'd be willing to bet that Windows 98 is far slower at file access than any linux distribution, even the crapiest. WinXP, NT or 2000? It's a close call, I'd have to see the data.

But if by "slow" you mean the FPS on your graphic applications, well then, you have a valid point. If you're fortunate enough to have an NVIDIA based video card, you'll want to jump on over to the NVIDIA website and check either the Linux Display Drivers or the IA64 Drivers, whichever applies.

"I have a 2 Ghz P4 with an IDE drive and a $300 nVidia card. GIVE ME BACK MY OLD PC. Disk swapping alone is killing me; with the disk work shifted to the processor, I'm doing so much foot tapping it's just silly."

Someone bought you the wrong PC. Trade in for an IBM Intellistation M-Pro which ships with a real workstation card, a Quadro4. The whole machine is $3500. Please tell me where you can get an SGI or Sun machine that matches this performance for under $20k.

"Incidentally, I'd take a single processor Ultra Sparc III box at 1.05 Ghz over a 2.0Ghz PC, even running *nix, any day of the week. As a matter of fact, I usually do."

My Intellistation MPro blows the doors off of the Sun Blade 1000 machines we have in the office at any imaginable task, and does so at 1/5 the cost. It also destroys the G4 I have sitting next to it, which I generally set to Sorenson encode video one day and check back the next.

I'm a huge Mac fan, and all my databases are on Sun boxes, but when it comes to workstations, Intel owns the market.

Funny, you've been asked twice now and declined to provide links.

Here's mine:

FreeBSD Driver Initative
Announcement of collaboration between NVIDIA, SGI, and VA Linux
NVIDIA press release
And another release
Tom's Hardware discussion

Oh, and SGI isn't the only proprietary code either. There's also a cross licensing agreement with S3 for the S3TC (S3 Texture Compression) algorithms that NVIDIA doesn't have the right to disclose.

NVIDIA and SGI drop lawsuits

Funny, you've been asked twice now and declined to provide links.

Here's mine:

FreeBSD Driver Initative
Announcement of collaboration between NVIDIA, SGI, and VA Linux
NVIDIA press release
And another release
Tom's Hardware discussion

Oh, and SGI isn't the only proprietary code either. There's also a cross licensing agreement with S3 for the S3TC (S3 Texture Compression) algorithms that NVIDIA doesn't have the right to disclose.

NVIDIA and SGI drop lawsuits

Did you also read the license agreement? Part of that driver is a precompiled object file. Do you look before you post?

Do you look before you post?

Nvidia's driver page clearly has source tarballs for the GLX and kernel drivers.

Epic made the call to only support the newer nVidia cards in the demo

nVidia's newest Linux drivers claim to support up to 16 monitors. I'm not sure of the performance though.

Why are you slamming ATI for releasing binary-only drivers, while hailing Nvidia? Nvidia does exactly the same thing.
What do you think the 1MB 'Module-nvkernel' file in their NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-nnnn.tar.gz is?

NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-2960> file Module-nvkernel

Module-nvkernel: ELF 32-bit LSB relocatable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

You didn't seriously think the few snippets of C code in that package was the complete driver, did you? That's just a kernel wrapper for their binary blob.

FileFront
Nvidia
3D Gamers
Beyond Unreal
The Shack
HomeLan Fed
Aus Gamers
File Planet
Faster Files
Blue's News
Gigex
FragLand
GameSpot.

And the fastest mirror that I've tried yet was Nvidia's, though you have to download six split files and run a script to recombine them.

...they also have a fast mirror.

The Creature demo. Hit the spacebar to hear their tribute to Dr. Evil.

Not to mention they provide great drivers for both Windows and Linux. There is a CVS repository you can download other great stuff from. They support open standards such as OpenGL (we won't mention the whole Cg fiasco...I mean nothing).

Now compare that to the competition.

Disclaimer: I do not work for nVidia, nor own any stock.

OpenGL supports reading back the screen buffer mostly so that the OpenGL validation suite can check the rendering accuracy. For that, it doesn't have to be efficient. And if you read back in some format other than the actual structure of the framebuffer, every pixel gets converted in software and performance will be awful.

This article reads like it was written by an overclocker, not a graphics developer.

Nvidia writes their own Linux Driver. I'm using it, and it works great.

I have one of these working in a small form factor Compaq/HP. Quadro 4

NVidia has released a compiler for their GPU's, Cg (C for graphics). I had great fun playing with it and see different effects (charcoal, dynamic fur, ...) in real time (pixel & vertex shading). It's even open source :P

See http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=cg_main and www.cgshaders.org.

Sack the sigs.

According to nvidia's geforce4 page, the geforce4 does 1.23 trillion operations per second. ATI's 9700 is even faster and fully floating point, so a next gen chip getting 1 trillion floating point ops per sec seems reasonable.

The .pdf didn't indicate (it's a PR/marketing piece,) so I'm assuming that the new extensions will be contributed to the OpenGL folks for inclusion. Is this correct? If so, a very nice contribution by the Apple folks!

Most of these are extensions already existing for Windows and other OpenGL ports. NVidia example. ATI example. What they're basically saying is that the Mac drivers are caught up, and/or use of the extension is new to Jaguar's version of the Quartz engine.

There are a few Apple-specific extensions in there, but they're very specially purposed to Quartz' preferred data formats. Essentially, they're just a way to reduce the portability of the system (restricted pixel formats) in favor of some speed boosts, which is a pretty fair tradeoff if you're a company like Apple who only deals with a pocketful of vendors who make special concessions. You wouldn't want these back in OpenGL main.

There's some damned fine engineering going on at Apple, as always. But there's also the familiar nice spin, though. I wish they'd keep that much out of the technical presentations, or at least would more clearly mark it as such.

Wait another couple months. The SN40 is coming. It's based on the nForce2 chipset, but otherwise expect similar specs to the SS51.

• nVidia press release
• VIAHardware nForce2 article
• Small Form Factor forum (search for SN40)
• or Google it yourself

When a new card comes out, check nvidia's website and see if they have a link to it if it's another pre-order type of thing...

2. The lanugae is not truely Turning complete. Which could have been fixed by taking some more time and making the language more complete.

On what basis do you make this claim? Turing (note spelling) completeness can be achieved in very simple languages (for example: Iota) and judging by the Cg language spec. I can't see any reason to doubt that Cg is.

Was there something specific you were thinking of?

I've read the article, but I believe I'm not enough of a graphics geek to understand it

I'm not sure if it will help, but you can read more about Cg Here.

We, 3dfx owners know how a company they are... Since we are without new drivers since nvidia bought 3dfx.

No need to describe, I guess 3dfx owners with a clue understood what kind of a company they are... In hard way...

Oh me? When it ships (or shipped already), I am buying it... I won't buy from a company which left me in "digital cold" just because they bought my card/chip maker...

mod me as you wish, I couldn't stand not saying this stuff...

You've not got the slightest idea what you're talking about. Nvidia did not buy 3dfx. They bought the intellectual property of 3dfx. They bought most of the 3dfx design work, technology, patents, etc. They didn't buy any of the office space, manufacturing plants or employees. They bought the IP because they thought that there was something in it that would be useful in their future chip designs.

3dfx Interactive is still a company and is still in business, in a manner of speaking. If you want more info on the nVidia purchase of 3dfx IP, you can read about it here, here, or here. But don't go blaming nVidia because your favorite graphics card company stopped producing and supporting your product.

We, 3dfx owners know how a company they are... Since we are without new drivers since nvidia bought 3dfx.

No need to describe, I guess 3dfx owners with a clue understood what kind of a company they are... In hard way...

Oh me? When it ships (or shipped already), I am buying it... I won't buy from a company which left me in "digital cold" just because they bought my card/chip maker...

mod me as you wish, I couldn't stand not saying this stuff...

You've not got the slightest idea what you're talking about. Nvidia did not buy 3dfx. They bought the intellectual property of 3dfx. They bought most of the 3dfx design work, technology, patents, etc. They didn't buy any of the office space, manufacturing plants or employees. They bought the IP because they thought that there was something in it that would be useful in their future chip designs.

3dfx Interactive is still a company and is still in business, in a manner of speaking. If you want more info on the nVidia purchase of 3dfx IP, you can read about it here, here, or here. But don't go blaming nVidia because your favorite graphics card company stopped producing and supporting your product.

We, 3dfx owners know how a company they are... Since we are without new drivers since nvidia bought 3dfx.

No need to describe, I guess 3dfx owners with a clue understood what kind of a company they are... In hard way...

Oh me? When it ships (or shipped already), I am buying it... I won't buy from a company which left me in "digital cold" just because they bought my card/chip maker...

mod me as you wish, I couldn't stand not saying this stuff...

You've not got the slightest idea what you're talking about. Nvidia did not buy 3dfx. They bought the intellectual property of 3dfx. They bought most of the 3dfx design work, technology, patents, etc. They didn't buy any of the office space, manufacturing plants or employees. They bought the IP because they thought that there was something in it that would be useful in their future chip designs.

3dfx Interactive is still a company and is still in business, in a manner of speaking. If you want more info on the nVidia purchase of 3dfx IP, you can read about it here, here, or here. But don't go blaming nVidia because your favorite graphics card company stopped producing and supporting your product.

C for graphics (Cg for short) is a language currently in development to solve some of the problems your having with visualizing programmable shaders as you're creating them. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but you can read the white paper from NVidia hereThere's also article in the August issue of Maximum PC that explains it a bit more simply.

As for modelling, go with what you're comfortable with. Personally, I like TrueSpace, but that's just my opinion.

Are you a serious gamer?

Someone who likes to kick ass?

Maybe even cross-platform ass?

Well don't miss out! The new GFORCE 4 is calling your name!

Don't delay! Buy an NVIDIA card today!

[This has been a paid comment advertisement. For details and bulk pricing, please contact CowboyNeal.]

This is incorrect. The chipset includes a TV Encoder, i.e. supports "TV Out" - S-Video or composite out to a TV. From the press release:

NVIDIA nForce2 Platform Processors offer a staggering array of features including:

* TV-encoder and HDTV processor for optimal visual quality

It does not include a TV Tuner capable of receiving broadcast TV. You'll have to add one yourself.

BTW, if you're wondering, the HDTV processor simply means it is capable of decoding HDTV-format MPEG2 video. You would still need an HDTV tuner/receiver to get the signal first.

DirectX 8 did, but no earlier than OpenGL. nVidia developed the programmable pixel/vertex shading hardware, licenced the IP to Microsoft, and added extensions to support it in OpenGL at the same time.

Good eye!
I didn't catch that missing 12th file (army.11)

The file is on their site, but the link is missing.

Here it is:
http://download.nvidia.com/downloads/Army/Split_ fi les/Army.11

If you keep having trouble with the mirrors, try a peer2peer search.
The files are already showing up on Kazaa.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=army_download

I've had the best luck with the split files.
Search for These files on Kazaa:

Army.1 (19.5MB)
Army.2 (19.5MB)
Army.3 (19.5MB)
Army.4 (19.5MB)
Army.5 (19.5MB)
Army.6 (19.5MB)
Army.7 (19.5MB)
Army.8 (19.5MB)
Army.9 (19.5MB)
Army.10 (13.5MB)
Merge.bat (1KB)

run the merge batchfile to combine downloads