nVidia likely to remain accelerated video king?

[Rahux]

Hey guys - in the next few months I'll be looking into a new PC and my main priority is being able to watch 1080p movies and do a bit of gaming (but video is more important).

I invested in a nice large monitor as my new place will not have a TV. As far as I can see, ATI cards are performing much better overall but nVidia is the only one offering accelerated video (both local and flash).

Is this likely to remain the case in the next 6 months? Also I hear that the current crop of nVidia cards are very noisy - would I be getting nice video play at the expense of being able to hear the movies I watch? What's the outlook on blue-ray in linux too? Is the card likely to make a difference there?

I guess the question is really whether waiting will be worthwhile.

[rohcQaH]

keep your hands off of fermi. Unless you like headphones with your movies or move your computer to a separate room, they're too loud.


About ATI: video acceleration on the OS drivers will take longer. A shader-based implementation could have been done for months (the docs are out there), but nobody was interested in actually doing it. Or maybe everyone is waiting for the transition to Gallium3D.
I wouldn't bet on the OS drivers to do more than xv in 6 months, but I'm still hoping to be wrong.

Note that xv with the ffmpeg-mt patches should be enough for most HD content on a halfway decent multi-core CPU, even with xv. And you could even test it before buying a new GPU.

Also note that the OS drivers don't do much on evergreen GPUs yet, so this may not even apply for a few more months.


fglrx is a different issue. xv has tearing and slightly wrong colors, though I personally didn't notice either until someone told me. YMMV. openGL-output should fix both of these issues, but takes more CPU power.

They're working on XvbA for fglrx, but it's not officially supported yet and there's no official ETA. Maybe in a week, maybe in 6 months, maybe in 5 years. Those that know don't tell (for good reasons).


The other option is to get a pre-fermi nvidia card. Those available are pretty low-end compared to AMDs current offering (bad for games), but work fine with VDPAU (good for videos). If you can stand dealing with a company that's dispersed nothing but lies and hot air (literally) for years, and you don't mind being stuck with a proprietary driver forever, then that's an option.


Another option would be to re-use your old GPU in your new computer and wait until either video on ATI improves or nvidia gets it's act together and starts building usable GPUs again.

[Kano]

Or you can try intel i3 + h55. Could not test it yet, but thats would i would do first when you dont have got vc1 content - which is rare when don't have got m2ts.

[Rahux]

Sounds like the future looks bleak. That video makes Fermi sound like a jet..definitely not what you want to watch a movie to.

Has anyone tried watching a 1080p video on a modern ATI board using OpenGL or what have you?

And has accelerated flash on nVidia made much difference? Flash brings all my linux installs to their knees despite fairly decent hardware.

[Kano]

I don't get why Adobe can not use vdpau, vaapi or whatever on Linux. They managed to hack an accellerated Mac version together in just a few days and for Linux you wait for ages and nothing happens. xbmc + navi-x + a little patch is very cool for watching hd videos in fullscreen from youtube.

[deanjo]

I don't get why Adobe can not use vdpau, vaapi or whatever on Linux. They managed to hack an accellerated Mac version together in just a few days and for Linux you wait for ages and nothing happens. xbmc + navi-x + a little patch is very cool for watching hd videos in fullscreen from youtube.

nVidia offered to help out and show them how, Adobe refused and instead decided to say it couldn't be done.

[deanjo]

keep your hands off of fermi. Unless you like headphones with your movies or move your computer to a separate room, they're too loud.

As an owner of one, it's no louder then my GTX 275 and barely audible in my case. (Coolermaster Cosmos).

[kazetsukai]

As an owner of one, it's no louder then my GTX 275 and barely audible in my case. (Coolermaster Cosmos).

Yeah, I can confirm that. This rig sits no more than 4 feet from me while I watch movies on the crappy 1280x720 SAMSUNG panel you see in the picture. The two CPUs are water cooled, the GPUs are not, and don't make a peep.





It gets hot as hell in here in the Summer with no AC on, though (mostly because of the screens rather than the GPUs, to be honest).

[MU_Engineer]

Hey guys - in the next few months I'll be looking into a new PC and my main priority is being able to watch 1080p movies and do a bit of gaming (but video is more important).

I invested in a nice large monitor as my new place will not have a TV. As far as I can see, ATI cards are performing much better overall but nVidia is the only one offering accelerated video (both local and flash).

Both vendors' cards perform decently with the proprietary drivers and most of both vendors' offerings offer accelerated video. The difference is that the VDPAU acceleration API on NVIDIA's cards is much more widely supported than AMD's XvBA acceleration API. You can get either to work for you, but getting XvBA requires some work on your part to compile programs with explicit support for it and possibly also install the XvBA and VA-API libraries yourself (depending on what distro you run.)

Is this likely to remain the case in the next 6 months? Also I hear that the current crop of nVidia cards are very noisy - would I be getting nice video play at the expense of being able to hear the movies I watch? What's the outlook on blue-ray in linux too? Is the card likely to make a difference there?

A video card's noise depends more on what heatsink is installed than anything. Some of the high-end NVIDIA cards throw off a ton of heat and have to use a noisy blower heatsink, but so do some high-end ATi cards. If gaming isn't a top priority, get a midrange card (e.g. spend about a hundred bucks.) They produce a lot less heat than the $200+ high-end cards and still retain all of the video decoding goodness of their bigger brothers. Also, look for cards with aftermarket/non-reference heatsinks as they tend to be much quieter than the reference heatsinks.

I was in pretty much the same boat as you a week ago. My desktop's old Radeon x1900 decided to give up the ghost and I do some occasional gaming and watch videos pretty frequently. My desktop is far from new (socket 939 A64 dual-core) and the x1900's complete lack of video decode acceleration under Linux was a big PITA as I can't play H.264 at more than standard-def on this box with only CPU decode + Xvideo. Thus I went out looking for a midrange GPU with good video decode assist and found the following GPUs would work well:

1. NVIDIA GT240
2. NVIDIA 9800GT
3. NVIDIA 9800GTX+/GTS250
4. ATi HD 4850
5. ATi HD 5670
6. ATi HD 5750

I narrowed down my selection basically based on what value each particular GPU delivered for its price that week, plus what cooling arrangements that particular GPU had. The GTS250 and HD 4850 were the best performance deals, and I picked a GTS250 due to the particular card I bought having a massive, very effective, and very quiet twin-fan heatsink compared to a pretty typical heatsink on the HD 4850. You won't go wrong with either of those cards, just keep an eye on what cooling each card has and then choose based on price.

[Rahux]

Thanks for the well considered responses. I'll be sure not to just jump at the cheapest version of any board now :P Perhaps there really IS a difference between 'Sparkle' and 'Gigabyte' =p

I've managed to convince myself that I should wait till graduation (December) before splurging on a new PC so hopefully by then XvBA will be better supported and/or the reference heatsinks on the Nvidia have improved.

Out if interest - are there any particular graphics chipmakers who have a tendency to produce quieter boards? When it came to graphics cards in the past I always looked at the base chipset rather than manufacturer in the past.