NVIDIA Calls It A Month With Five Driver Releases

[perpetualrabbit]

Re:

I think you'll need a Geforce 8 or higher for VDPAU.

Well, according to this document on NVidia's site, it should work. Check out the column under 7600GS, in the AGP section. It says h264 acceleration is supported. On the other hand, IDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform, a variant of the fast fourier transform) is not supported.

http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/11036/PureVideo_Product_Comparison.pdf

Am I correct thinking purevideo=~vdpau?

I would buy a better videocard if that was an option, but in AGP, the 7600GS is about the latest you can get. None of the geforce 8 and 9 series cards is made in an AGP version, only PCI-E, as far as I now.
I don't have the money right now to buy a new motherboard, processor, memory, cooler, etc. just to get an PCI-E slot.

[MaestroMaus]

I think you'll need a Geforce 8 or higher for VDPAU.

Yup, sry man, yours isn't going to cut it...
EDIT: The 7600GS isn't on the supported hardware list in the official NV forum.
May I ask why VDPAU it that important to you?

As a side note, I like how this thread hasn't turned out to be a which is best contest for a change.

[doctoren]

Well, according to this document on NVidia's site, it should work. Check out the column under 7600GS, in the AGP section. It says h264 acceleration is supported. On the other hand, IDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform, a variant of the fast fourier transform) is not supported.

http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/11036/PureVideo_Product_Comparison.pdf

Am I correct thinking purevideo=~vdpau?

I would buy a better videocard if that was an option, but in AGP, the 7600GS is about the latest you can get. None of the geforce 8 and 9 series cards is made in an AGP version, only PCI-E, as far as I now.
I don't have the money right now to buy a new motherboard, processor, memory, cooler, etc. just to get an PCI-E slot.

I don't know what to make of the PureVideo table but it seems to refer to Windows only. I know that some Gefore 7 GPUs did qualify for PV at the time but this may not apply to VPDAU.
Does your system have a regular PCI slot? BFG have made a PCI based 8400GS. It's a bit pricey considering you can get a PCI-E Geforce 9400GT for less but that of course in not an option in your case.

[yogi_berra]

I don't know what to make of the PureVideo table but it seems to refer to Windows only. I know that some Gefore 7 GPUs did qualify for PV at the time but this may not apply to VPDAU.
Does your system have a regular PCI slot? BFG have made a PCI based 8400GS. It's a bit pricey considering you can get a PCI-E Geforce 9400GT for less but that of course in not an option in your case.

I think you'll find that is just a mislabeled PCI-E card and not a PCI card.

@ Phoronix: at least this time it is insinuated that it is a stable release.

[perpetualrabbit]

Yup, sry man, yours isn't going to cut it...
EDIT: The 7600GS isn't on the supported hardware list in the official NV forum.
May I ask why VDPAU it that important to you?

As a side note, I like how this thread hasn't turned out to be a which is best contest for a change.

well, I have some movies and a series I like to watch in h264 format, in 1280x688 pixels. Also, more and more movies you can download are in higher formats these days. When I built my htpc, it had to be energy efficient and as quiet as possible. So I chose a Geode processor, but the mobo that came with it only had AGP, and PCI slots. Those are full though.
So the best AGP card was this MSI NX7600GS. On the box it says `HDTV ready?, and `PureVideo (tm) provides three dedicated video engines to perform the supreme video quality playback quality?.
Now vdpau is the unix api to support PureVideo, right? So I figured that it should actually work, or will work with a future vdpau update in the nvidia driver.
Maybe not.

[perpetualrabbit]

I don't know what to make of the PureVideo table but it seems to refer to Windows only. I know that some Gefore 7 GPUs did qualify for PV at the time but this may not apply to VPDAU.
Does your system have a regular PCI slot? BFG have made a PCI based 8400GS. It's a bit pricey considering you can get a PCI-E Geforce 9400GT for less but that of course in not an option in your case.

I also don't know what all the rows in that table mean, but apart from the IDCT acceleration, the 7600GS AGP seems to support most purevideo features. So, that probably means that the windows driver supports those feature for all cards mentioned in that table, and the linux vdpau driver not (yet).
So my conclusion is there is still hope.
I wonder if that 8400GS really is a PCI card, not a PCI-E card. Some webshops are a bit sloppy and get those details wrong. I think I read that geforce 8 and higher only come in PCI-E versions.

[MaestroMaus]

well, I have some movies and a series I like to watch in h264 format, in 1280x688 pixels. Also, more and more movies you can download are in higher formats these days. When I built my htpc, it had to be energy efficient and as quiet as possible. So I chose a Geode processor, but the mobo that came with it only had AGP, and PCI slots. Those are full though.
So the best AGP card was this MSI NX7600GS. On the box it says `HDTV ready?, and `PureVideo (tm) provides three dedicated video engines to perform the supreme video quality playback quality?.
Now vdpau is the unix api to support PureVideo, right? So I figured that it should actually work, or will work with a future vdpau update in the nvidia driver.
Maybe not.

Ouch, that hurts. I hope NVIDIA will give you a nice gift pretty soon (but I'm afraid not).

[doctoren]

I think you'll find that is just a mislabeled PCI-E card and not a PCI card.

@ Phoronix: at least this time it is insinuated that it is a stable release.

No, it is a PCI card. Check out the BFG site at BFG 8400 GS PCI

[perpetualrabbit]

Hi people,

I have been trying for weeks now to get vdpau working on my system, running ubuntu studio 8.10.

I have a lowly 1400MHz AMD Geode processor (single core, no hyperthreading), with an NVidia 7600GS (512MB, AGP) video card. On the NVidia website I think I found that this setup should actually work.
I have bought this rig expressly to save money on electricity, because it is always on, and the Geode uses only 15 Watts. At the time I bought it, there was no atom processor yet.

I am trying to play .h264 files, quite big: about 1280x768 pixels, so not quite HD yet, but big.

I have installed the latest NVidia driver and updated mplayer and xine.
Still, I get error messages in mplayer (stops in line such-and-such in mplayer.c and messes up my terminal) and xine works but is very choppy.

In short: vdpau seems not to be working. What is your opinion: 1. This will never work, get a faster computer, or 2. This could work once I get all drivers and xine/mplayer software right?

Some advice greatly appriciated.

I finally got this working. My system has no PCI Express slots, only AGP and PCI. There are no Geforce 8 or higher cards in AGP. But there are a few PCI versions.
I bought a Geforce 9400 GT (1GB) card, with normal PCI connection. I installed Karmic Koala (Ubuntu), and used the nvidia-vdpau PPA.
Now I can show the 1280x768 and even a 1920x1080 movie, with about 30% CPU usage.

The CPU is a 32 bit AMD Geode NX 1750, 1400MHz, single core, no hyperthreading.
The machine has 2 GB of RAM.

There you go, I just postponed buying a new computer by at least another year.

Is there anyone who got HD quality movies running on a machine with even lower specs than that?