NVIDIA VDPAU Benchmarks

[hdas]

A new driver always gets me excited.

My little nice experience. I have a Dell Vostro 1400 notebook with Core 2 Duo T5270 @ 1.4GHz and NVidia 8400M GS. Running Ubuntu 8.10 with nvidia 180.06. Installed mplayer-vdpau using the source package as announced in nvnews linux forums (just downloaded mplayer-vdpau-3076399.tar.bz2 and ran the script checkout-patch-build.sh as said in readme). Running a 1080i hdtv video with normal mplayer (from medibuntu) with vo=xv, cpu usage is 50-55%, with mplayer-vdpau and *only* vo=vdpau (software accel) is 60% and looks blocky, and with vo=vdpau, vc=ffmpeg12vdpau is 35-40%. So its quite a big drop in cpu usage . Quality seems to be a little better with xv.

Great start, god speed .

[bash]

I still wish the three main vendors of graphic cards, AMD, Nvidia and Intel would sit down together and work on one standard to implement video decoding. Guess I'll have to keep wishing as for the moment it looks like everyone is coming up with their own solutions.

[Uber]

holy crap! from the looks of things, as soon as the video got loaded the CPU just sat there and twiddled its thumbs!

Seriously. AMD. I want to love you. I really do. But now you're back to playing catch up.

Amen.. But at least fix the worst bugs for the remaining Linux ATI/AMD users..

[tbroderick]

Yes. It would be great if Phoronix tried a few different cards as well to give us a feeling about how powerful the GPU needs to be. How does the much simpler integrated GeForce 8200 compare?

I would also like to know if a cheap a CPU, like a Sempron LE-1150, can still be capable of smooth playback.

[deanjo]

I would also like to know if a cheap a CPU, like a Sempron LE-1150, can still be capable of smooth playback.

No reason it wouldn't be able too.

[Kano]

Well I would not call it "working", it is a first step in the right direction, maybe could be used by commericial blue ray players, don't know if the driver already supports hdcp and macrovision - which is also a requirement for official players I think. A free way to play blue ray would be also cool. It is right now very restricted in the h264 support, I highly doubt that you easly find suited media in the wild besides some test videos.

[echs]

A new driver always gets me excited.

My little nice experience. I have a Dell Vostro 1400 notebook with Core 2 Duo T5270 @ 1.4GHz and NVidia 8400M GS. Running Ubuntu 8.10 with nvidia 180.06. Installed mplayer-vdpau using the source package as announced in nvnews linux forums (just downloaded mplayer-vdpau-3076399.tar.bz2 and ran the script checkout-patch-build.sh as said in readme). Running a 1080i hdtv video with normal mplayer (from medibuntu) with vo=xv, cpu usage is 50-55%, with mplayer-vdpau and *only* vo=vdpau (software accel) is 60% and looks blocky, and with vo=vdpau, vc=ffmpeg12vdpau is 35-40%. So its quite a big drop in cpu usage . Quality seems to be a little better with xv.

Great start, god speed .

could you test h264 playback?

i tried this on a X2-4200+/1GB/8600GT system with the h264 testfile from mplayerhq (grey.ts) and i got around 5-6% cpu usage for mplayer (total about 10-12). i didnt test mpeg2 yet but i'd think if h264 runs that good mpeg2 should not produce such a "high" load.

it may also be of interest to everyone that none of the h264/aac matroska videos i tried worked. all i got was a green picture and in some cases my system just crashed.. seems to me the beta status is no understatement


but i'm very happy that this finally happened. and with intel following soon i really look forward to a bright linux-mce future
this will surely be a boost for Linux adoptation.

if AMD can get the same thing working with their XvBA AND release proper drivers i might buy an AMD card next time. they are clearly more efficient per watt. it seems like nvidia forgot efficiency in their arms race.. 280 watt? wtf?
with about 10 Systems running all day it makes a big difference if the graphics card uses 20 watt (HD4350) or 40 watt (8400GS).
i still find it very interesting that the geforce7 series still is the most efficient when it comes to power usage. if high end and dx10 gaming is not of interest to you a 28 watt 7600GS seems much better to me than a 48 watt 8600GS even if performance is not exactly the same.. who needs DX10 features when you're using linux? ok ok wine will be there sometime, but until then a 7600GS would do.. if it weren't for that VDPAU.. damn you nvidia

[sloggerKhan]

I'm hungry for more information...
Using this do you get better upscaling and less video tearing and other playback problems?

[echs]

I'm hungry for more information...
Using this do you get better upscaling and less video tearing and other playback problems?

actually upscaling is not implemented yet but it can be done, you'll just have to wait for the developers to catch up

video tearing (vsync) is still a problem but this could be fixed in time for the final release. we'll see..

[Moustacha]

So will we see a finalised version by the time they release non-beta 180.xx drivers for linux, or will it be an ongoing effort that will stay beta WITHIN the drivers?