HD Video Playback With A $20 CPU & $30 GPU On Linux

[deanjo]

Any other sources for this information? Has someone tried VDPAUs VC-1 decoding on them?


That listing doesn't separate VP2/3 though.

I'm trying to get a comprehensive list from my contacts at nv. When he replies I will post the list.

[bulletxt]

as always NVIDIA comes first and is the leader.

[deneb]

The 8200/8300 IGP's have VP3 as well

Any other sources for this information? Has someone tried VDPAUs VC-1 decoding on them?

EDIT: Here is a better feature list of the GPU''s/IGP's

That listing doesn't separate VP2/3 though.

[deanjo]

The 8200/8300 IGP's have VP3 as well

http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.homemedia.fr/actualites/3434-GeForce-8200-PureVideo-HD-VP3.html&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=5&ct=result&prev =/search%3Fq%3D8200%2Bvp3%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfiref ox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-USfficial%26hs%3Dtrn

EDIT: Here is a better feature list of the GPU''s/IGP's

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_43029.html

[DeepDayze]

G98-based GeForce 8400 GS models do have VP3. Most GeForce 9 GPUs only have VP2 as can be seen in the table behind your Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureVid...Purevideo_GPUs

Only G98 chips have VP3. This includes some of the integrated (mobile) GeForce 9 versions. The VDPAU announcement lists these and a more complete list that includes 8400 GS can be extracted from the drivers: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...32&postcount=3

Currently G98 GeForce 8400 GS is the only non-integrated graphics card that contains VP3.


G98 8400 GS is also manufactured with a 65 nm process.

I am sure later revisions of the 9xxx series will have VP3. Would an 8400GS be usable for playing games? Also why not use the low end X2 CPU's as some of them also are low wattage and I am sure the performance will be even better still without the excess heat

[deneb]

FYI, GeForce 9-Series graphics controllers features third generation PureVideo hardware which should offer better offloading of VC-1 and MPEG-2 than the older GeForce 8-Series graphics controllers hardware which only features the second generation PureVideo hardware.

G98-based GeForce 8400 GS models do have VP3. Most GeForce 9 GPUs only have VP2 as can be seen in the table behind your Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureVid...Purevideo_GPUs

Only G98 chips have VP3. This includes some of the integrated (mobile) GeForce 9 versions. The VDPAU announcement lists these and a more complete list that includes 8400 GS can be extracted from the drivers: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/show...32&postcount=3

Currently G98 GeForce 8400 GS is the only non-integrated graphics card that contains VP3.

Decoding of H.264 video should however offer similar performance with GeForce 8-Series and GeForce 9-Series hardware as long as the GPU and memory is clocked the same, but the GeForce 9-Series chips are usually clocked higher and they use a more modern manufacturer method thus will generate less heat at the same clock speed compared to the older GeForce 8-Series chips.

G98 8400 GS is also manufactured with a 65 nm process.

[DeepDayze]

Nice article, and VDPAU sure does have a lot of promise indeed. Playing accelerated HD videos on a lowend gfx card and lowend mobo/cpu does sound sweet in a way

BRB buying a cheapo system

[Yfrwlf]

Nice, well-balanced article, I liked the summary at the end about where everyone was at as far as video acceleration. ^^

Come oooooooon Gallium 3D, show us an example of what an awesome Linux API can be/do.

[Ex-Cyber]

Why overloading the CPU while playing the Videos? This is a non-sense : any poweruser that does two things at the same time while quickly learn to renice a process to make it only use the idle CPU.

It would be nonsense if most people weren't using modern desktop-oriented distros, where brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) CPU usage spikes can come without warning.

[CCob]

I would have like to have seen tests with 1080p streams like BBC-HD in the UK which are encoded using MBAFF. These type of encoded H.264 streams tend to bring most modern CPU's to their knees. Usually the CPU is 100% all the way through if HA is not present.