Hardware Requirements

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Hardware Requirements


Minimum System Requirements

At a bare minimum, you need to have the following computer hardware in order to install GhostBSD.

  • Pentium III or higher
  • 256 MB of RAM
  • 10 GB of free hard drive space
  • Network card
  • Sound card

Recommended System Requirements

The following are the minimum recommended requirements. The faster your computer hardware, the better your computing experience:

  • Pentium 4 or higher
  • 1024 MB of RAM
  • 20 GB of free hard drive space
  • Network card
  • Sound card
  • NVIDIA 3D accelerated video card

Supported Processors

GhostBSD should install on any system containing a 32-bit (i386) or 64-bit (amd64) processor. The amd64 name refers to 64-bit processor architecture and does not refer to a specific processor manufactured by AMD. The FreeBSD 9.0 Hardware Notes and The FreeBSD 10.0 Hardware Noteslist the i386 and amd64 processors known to work.

Supported Video Cards

Like most open source operating systems, GhostBSD uses X.org drivers for graphics support. GhostBSD will automatically Configure the supported video drivers.

Support for the major graphic vendors is as follows

NVIDIA: if you want to use 3D acceleration, NVIDIA is currently the best supported as there is a native driver for GhostBSD.

Intel: 3D acceleration on most Intel graphics is supported. Due to the current KMS support, you will not be able to switch between the graphical console and a virtual console using Crtl+Alt+F#.

ATI/Radeon: 3D acceleration on most ATI and Radeon cards is supported.

Optimus: at this time Bumblebee[2] has not been ported to FreeBSD, meaning that there is no switching support between the two graphics adapters provided by Optimus. Optimus implementations vary, so GhostBSD may or may not be able to successfully load a graphics driver on your hardware. If you get a blank screen after installation, check your BIOS to see if it has an option to disable one of the graphics adapters or to set “discrete” mode. If the BIOS does not provide a discrete mode, GhostBSD will default to the 3D Intel driver and disable NVIDIA. This will change in the future when the NVIDIA driver supports Optimus.

Wireless Cards

GhostBSD supports some wireless networking cards - not all are supported. You can check if your card has a FreeBSD driver. If it does, it should "just work". Currently there are some missing wireless drivers, typically for Broadcom and newer Realtek series. N.B. USB wifi sticks may or may not be supported, it will depend on the chip used.