NVIDIA GeForce GT 520

[kaczu]

Do you use an outdated driver?

Don't believe so. Think it was built around Ubuntu 11.10.

[Kano]

Well i am currently unsure if current vaapi intel drivers are unstable only together with older ddx / mesa / xserver or in general. Basically when you get a cpu around 3 ghz or more you are not forced to use accelleration - you can enable it when it is fixed. Would be good if at least ivi bridge would be out together with a working driver/vaapi stack in a few months. It should fix a minor 24000/1001 fps issue as well.

[Kano]

Do you use an outdated driver?

[AlbertP]

According to http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/VideoDecoding, the NVD9 (= GT 520 and some laptop derivatives) has a different video decoding engine. Perhaps the drivers are just somewhat buggy on this, or the engine is less powerful than the GT 430 (NVC1) one.

[kaczu]

If your system with nv 520 did not decode well, then you used a bad media player (vlc maybe which needs even a wrapper and does not work at all since ffmpeg/libav is multithreaded) or it was not configured to use vdpau - mplayer needs an override if you dont know it.

This was in XBMC. The only thing that changed was the video card (from 520 to 430). If decoding wasn't working then I would have expected playback to stay the same. This wasn't the case. The stuttering during high action scenes went away immediately once the card was switched. Could it be the way the videos were encoded? Possibly. However, it cost less to go with a better card then to reencode all of that content.

[Kano]

That sounds a bit strange for me. Basically not much changed since geforce 210 in terms of video playback, only that newer cards can decode full hd h264 >= 50 fps better which is also good for 3d content. standard bd content should be a piece of cake for all of em. vc1 was a bit broken in the early days so that vc1 was decoded partly by the cpu but that handled even an atom cpu well with mplayer/xbmc (but no vlc). Also older cards with 8xxx have got no support for hdmi audio at all and should not be used to connect to a tv. The 9xxx cards can be used for hdmi audio but require a spdif cable from board to gfx card. since the 210 also divx decode is accellerated, but for the most commonly used 480/576p res this is a piece of cake to decode - about 25% load on atom, so forget about it. If your system with nv 520 did not decode well, then you used a bad media player (vlc maybe which needs even a wrapper and does not work at all since ffmpeg/libav is multithreaded) or it was not configured to use vdpau - mplayer needs an override if you dont know it.

[kaczu]

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.

[runrun]

I'd buy the absolute cheapest card from any vendor I could find, especially when we're talking about a dirt cheap lowest-end card like the gt520.

There's no advantage spending any more money on a card for an htpc, the only alternative value-wise are the perfectly suitable (bit hotter, hungrier?) older generations.

I've got a nice little amd fusion box (zotac ad10) that has been infinitely improved by the xbmc developers recently, but I'd still only buy nvidia for quality video acceleration.

[Panix]

I'll probably get one eventually. It's main (or only) use is a HTPC card but I think I might give up waiting for a $100 GTX 460 card. Comes around once in a while but is picked up so fast...

At least, the 520 cards are readily available under $100. I'm just not sure whether to buy the cheapest one as it seems it's mostly a choice of Gigabyte's v.s. Asus (I want the fanless version).

[xyzone]

I got mines for around 27 dollars, with gst and hst... was on a sale on newgee canada..
the card is amazing XD, I dont understand why people are bitching about it so much :/

It's also a small size, the price is right, and runs relatively cool which hopefully means long term life instead of the sudden death of power cards. I've also seen faster vdpau performance than in some beefy cards. They are bitching about it because they tried to run big games on high detail with it. I run mythtv with a pentium 4 pc with this card. I hate to sound like a commercial but it's true. If this card dies I give it average rating, much higher if it doesn't.