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FreeBSD, Ubuntu Offer Same NVIDIA OpenGL Support As Windows

Posted by timothy on from the next-year-windows-will-be-ready-for-the-desktop dept.

An anonymous reader writes "There's some good news if you use NVIDIA graphics on (Ubuntu) Linux or FreeBSD with their binary graphics driver: the OpenGL performance is comparable to Windows 8. Unfortunately, that's not the same for Intel graphics and AMD doesn't even offer a Catalyst driver for FreeBSD. FreeBSD offers a binary Linux compatibility layer to run games at the same (or better) performance as Linux, but unfortunately it's capped to running Linux x86 binaries and NVIDIA is the only GPU vendor with proper BSD graphics driver support."

3 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. AMD Shooting themselves in the foot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    AMD is missing out on that HUGE FreeBSD gaming market.

  2. Re:in 3... 2... 1... by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just wait for Windows 8.1 (with new Start button!). It will completely surpass FreeBSD in gaming market share.

  3. That's nothing, you insensitive clods... by Type44Q · · Score: 5, Funny

    Unfortunately, that's not the same for Intel graphics and AMD doesn't even offer a Catalyst driver for FreeBSD.

    I'm still trying to get the Tseng Labs ET4000 video chip in my IBM PS/2 ValuePoint to display more than 256colors. Apparently the chip itself is capable but there was a hardware bug in IBM's implementation (the chip is soldered to the motherboard, by the way) and it simply won't display 16 or 24bit color depths in Windows 3.1 without artifacting all-to-hell. I've tried calling IBM every year or so (since 1994) to see if they've released a patched BIOS for the problem yet but still no luck (however, now that Lenovo's in charge, things might finally shape up over there; my fingers're crossed...).