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Current video accelaration state as of 2013

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  • Current video accelaration state as of 2013

    It is the end of the year again so i can fiddle with my linux HTPC once more. I am trying to decide on my video out solution for my linux HTPC. I'm trying to grasp the current state of video acceleration but it is rather confusing and i definitely need some help.


    One thing i'd like to do is to use the open source drivers. Mostly out of principle, but also because i wouldn't like users of my projects using something else and not contributing with bug reports at least Also i have horror stories from using catalist/nvidia when needing to do dual head setup, so i'd really like to avoid those even if now i won't use those features, i dread the day i'd need to do anything with that kind of "support", and i think my time should help the open source drivers. e.g if everyone was using catalyst and praying for ATI, this[0] would never happened

    [0] http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174854
    "After AMD proprietary department did not care for XvBA for more than 2 years now [...] with the AMD OSS devs [...] Within just 2 weeks, we got more working than we ever hoped"

    What i think i understand so far:

    VDPAU is required for video out. Some places claim support for nvidia/intel/ati [1], others says it is never present in ATI and that i should look for xvba[2] instead. is this now just semantic and all the video accell is called vdpau now? i did found this on Wolfgang Schup repo "WARNING: XVBA is deprecated as of october 2013, this PPA is not updated anymore! you should switch to the OSS radeon driver with vpdau support" [3]

    [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VDPAU

    [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Video...m_Acceleration

    [3] https://launchpad.net/~wsnipex/+archive/xbmc-xvba


    nvidia:

    anything with VDPAU support, but reports with nouveau driver are non-conclusive as far as i could research.



    cheapest card would be a GeForce GT 220. ~$50
    (210 would have performance problems[4]. also read that source for info on deinterlacing and other things which are not directly linked to VDPAU video decoding. i don't think i fully grasp it though.)

    [4] http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/myth...ay/315729.html


    AMD/ATI

    aparently 2d video accel on open source is better than proprietary, but power saving and 3d is much worse. I can't make much sense of the various drivers (r600, evergreen, etc), or get conclusive information. every amd/ati thread is derailled with people recommending nvidia... anyway, this all seems to be outdated. the end of 2013 status is that we should use the OSS driver! huray!



    anything over UVD 2.2[5] should start to get you going [0]

    [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified...D_enabled_GPUs

    mpeg2 and h264:
    cheapest card would be Radeon HD 5450 ~$20

    mpeg4:
    cheapest card would be Radeon HD 6450 ~$50

    note: you may get audio as well, but i don't have need for it.

    Intel



    This is the only one i can test so i will not add much source as i am it

    people claim[6] blueray out with even a HD3000, but i have a HD4000 and i can play videos just fine in debian using VLC.

    I wouldn't use anything less than an HD3000 nowadays. but feel free to add info here.

    cheapest HD4400 is a i3-4130 ~$100

    (ironically, a hd4000 is cheaper then getting a hd3000 today. Also intel will be launching HD5000 with 4k support anytime now)

    The question i have for the intels, am i missing something? or is this true video nirvana?

    [6] http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/31...ufficient-htpc

  • #2
    Intel is definitely the way to go if you just want something that works. The upcoming Broadwell GPU will be superb for video decoding and the hardware will have 4K video over HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.2 with MST for the upcoming 4K monitors that ship this year, beginning in April.

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