NVIDIA GeForce GT 520

[kaczu]

No VDPAU here but after I built mplayer with some target arch optimizations it ran a lot better. There are other places I could tune for better performance if I wasn't so busy in silly forums all the time.

Using the correct driver would be part of setting the hardware up correctly to me.

It actually WASN'T a driver problem. The driver I used did in fact have support for the card. Hell if it wasn't I would have been stuck at VESA modes and I doubt the HDMI audio would have been there. BTW the card was used AGAIN this time with Ubuntu 11.10. Still the same problem.

I actually ended up finding what was causing this, largely because even after using the card with the latest version of Ubuntu I still had problems. Remember the benchmarks not too long ago regarding compiz? Well compiz was killing the performance (again the 430 doesn't have this problem) so even though I thought compiz was off, it wasn't. I had to completely remove it actually I uninstalled the ubuntu-desktop package entirely and went with Xfce. Bingo bango there was enough performance for decent video playback. Not unbelievable, but much better than it was. It was in fact usable. It's safe to say that it could be used for HD playback. However, it's just enough ...no more. There are still some very very rare cases where there's a dropped frame but it's largely not noticeable.

I would still keep my recommendation that since the price of the 520 is pretty damn close to a 430 I would take the 430 over it any day of the week. The 430 is an older card, but it is in fact more powerful.

[Paul Frederick]

When you're right you're right

I don't think you example card has got vdpau But he did not use a current nvidia driver so the card did not work for him. That's the simple reason why his older card worked and the new one did not.

No VDPAU here but after I built mplayer with some target arch optimizations it ran a lot better. There are other places I could tune for better performance if I wasn't so busy in silly forums all the time.

Using the correct driver would be part of setting the hardware up correctly to me.

lspci
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev a1)

pfred1@spot:~$ ls -l "ElephantsDream[DivX7].mkv"
-rw-r--r-- 1 pfred1 pfred1 570930953 2011-08-10 09:34 ElephantsDream[DivX7].mkv

pfred1@spot:~$ mplayer -benchmark -vo null -nosound "ElephantsDream[DivX7].mkv"
MPlayer SVN-r34780-snapshot-4.3.2 (C) 2000-2012 MPlayer Team

Playing ElephantsDream[DivX7].mkv.
libavformat version 54.2.100 (internal)
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0, Main title
[lavf] stream 1: audio (aac), -aid 0, -alang eng, English 5.1 Surround
[lavf] stream 2: audio (aac), -aid 1, -alang eng, English Stereo
[lavf] stream 3: subtitle (text), -sid 0, -slang eng, English
[lavf] stream 4: subtitle (text), -sid 1, -slang fre, French
[lavf] stream 5: subtitle (text), -sid 2, -slang ger, German
[lavf] stream 6: subtitle (text), -sid 3, -slang ita, Italian
[lavf] stream 7: subtitle (text), -sid 4, -slang pol, Polish
[lavf] stream 8: subtitle (text), -sid 5, -slang rus, Russian
[lavf] stream 9: subtitle (text), -sid 6, -slang spa, Spanish
VIDEO: [H264] 1920x1080 0bpp 24.000 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
TITLE: Elephants Dream
TITLE/URL: http://www.elephantsdream.org
ARTIST: Orange Open Movie Team
PRODUCER: Ton Roosendaal
COPYRIGHT: Copyright 2006, Blender Foundation / Netherlands Media Art Institute / www.elephantsdream.org
TERMS_OF_USE: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic License
TERMS_OF_USE/URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
COMMENT: Encoded in DivX 7
Load subtitles in ./
================================================== ========================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
libavcodec version 54.6.100 (internal)
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
================================================== ========================
Audio: no sound
Starting playback...
Unsupported PixelFormat 61
Unsupported PixelFormat 53
Unsupported PixelFormat 81
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [null] 1920x1080 => 1920x1080 Planar YV12
V: 653.7 0/ 0 145% 0% 0.0% 0 0


BENCHMARKs: VC: 947.839s VO: 0.079s A: 0.000s Sys: 20.668s = 968.586s
BENCHMARK%: VC: 97.8580% VO: 0.0082% A: 0.0000% Sys: 2.1339% = 100.0000%

Exiting... (End of file)
pfred1@spot:~$

The system this card is in is not doing it any favors either:

pfred1@spot:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 1
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.00GHz
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 1995.177
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm up pebs bts
bogomips : 3995.57
clflush size : 64
power management:


Linux, keeping old rust alive waaaaaay past its time ....

[Kano]

I don't think you example card has got vdpau But he did not use a current nvidia driver so the card did not work for him. That's the simple reason why his older card worked and the new one did not.

[Paul Frederick]

There is something wrong with your picture

I would stay away from the 520 and go with the 430 instead. At least in Linux, the performance of the 430 was far better for video playback. I was building another extender and saw a 520 in Microcenter and picked it up since it was a good deal. But when I installed it, it could barely play back HD content, while the 430 had no trouble with it at all. Maybe it's different in Windows, however for Linux use only the most boring HD content could be run without issue.

I can play HD with a 32MB MX400 which is the lowest of the $9.95 low, but you're saying a GT 520 can't? I'd sooner believe you don't know what you're doing setting the hardware up. I'm sorry! Granted rebuilding mplayer locally helped a lot, but still. What I mean to say is it takes a bit more than just dropping these things into machines in order to get out of them what they can do.

[Paul Frederick]

It is Nvidia or nothing on Linux for me

No, just unreasonable and near-sighted. I even said if one wants hardware video acceleration right now, nvidia is preferable. I also said that g3dvl is in its infancy and that AMD has hired more devs for open-source development. So, don't think that things will never change, but don't expect tough work to happen instantly either.

ATI is so poor that I consider it a rip off even when I get their trash for free! Time is money and it takes me time to pull that ATI junk out of systems. Nvidia is an honorable company and as such deserves respect from Linux users. AMD does have a lot of tough work ahead of them if they wish to earn anything from me. I'm shopping for a video card now and you can lay your last nickel on the fact that it'll say Nvidia on it.

[xyzone]

Keep in mind that the 520 is a low-end card. The 9600 GSO isn't low-end, though we might consider its 3D performance lower-end nowadays.

About card brands, those manufacturers often program their own clock speeds into the card's BIOS. If the card isn't clocked fast enough for HD video you of course run into problems. However, manufacturers usually overclock, lowering the max. clock speed is not that common.

The 9600 gso wasn't a high end card, either. The core clock was lower, and the 128-bit memory didn't help. I'm seeing similar performance - same settings and resolution - running darkplaces-quake1 on the gt 520. Not an intensive benchmark, but the point is it wasn't high-end. Also, the vdpau benchmarks were much lower on the 9600 gso.

[AlbertP]

Keep in mind that the 520 is a low-end card. The 9600 GSO isn't low-end, though we might consider its 3D performance lower-end nowadays.

About card brands, those manufacturers often program their own clock speeds into the card's BIOS. If the card isn't clocked fast enough for HD video you of course run into problems. However, manufacturers usually overclock, lowering the max. clock speed is not that common.

[xyzone]

I would stay away from the 520 and go with the 430 instead. At least in Linux, the performance of the 430 was far better for video playback. I was building another extender and saw a 520 in Microcenter and picked it up since it was a good deal. But when I installed it, it could barely play back HD content, while the 430 had no trouble with it at all. Maybe it's different in Windows, however for Linux use only the most boring HD content could be run without issue.

Might have been a problem with your system because I was able to watch any HD size video all the way back to a 9600 gso on linux. I always found the opposite true, on windows, less support for higher frame references for avc videos using mpc-hc, the only player I know of that can use unencumbered dxva for video files. Or maybe it depends on the card brand, although I doubt it.

[Kano]

I see no problem with 290.10, with 295.09 i had some issues with hdmi sound. Maybe U is crap

[AlbertP]

That'll be the 280 driver. There's also 290 available in the driver PPA from ubuntu-x-swat, but the changelogs of 285 and 290 (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...yir_2011&num=1) aren't too exciting. 290 feels laggy on my laptop (8400M GS), in LibreOffice it's even worse. Sometimes it takes seconds before the text I type appears on the screen with 290, while 280 does not have this problem.