Got Any Questions For NVIDIA About Linux?

[curaga]

Why not release documentation freely for old / very old products? As mentioned, Geforce 1/2 can not be used with the latest Xorg.

[Kano]

gf 2 mx does work, gf 2 gts does not.

[tmpdir]

"newer NVIDIA GPUs now support decoding MPEG-4 Part 2, DivX 4, and DivX 5 formats. In order to use VDPAU with these formats, a NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M, GT 240M, G210M, GTS 250M, or GTS 260M is required. For these GPUs there is now also a higher quality video scaling algorithm that's used by the driver. Owners of other NVIDIA hardware are unaffected by these VDPAU changes."

will the new formats and higher quality algorithms become available for the other (newer) hardware as well?

[deanjo]

"newer NVIDIA GPUs now support decoding MPEG-4 Part 2, DivX 4, and DivX 5 formats. In order to use VDPAU with these formats, a NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M, GT 240M, G210M, GTS 250M, or GTS 260M is required. For these GPUs there is now also a higher quality video scaling algorithm that's used by the driver. Owners of other NVIDIA hardware are unaffected by these VDPAU changes."

will the new formats and higher quality algorithms become available for the other (newer) hardware as well?

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=138336

No, the HW features required are specific to GPUs with VDPAU feature set C. -Stephan Warren

[Ex-Cyber]

Why not release documentation freely for old / very old products? As mentioned, Geforce 1/2 can not be used with the latest Xorg.

My guess would be some combination of:

- Documentation doesn't exist in an organization/format suitable for release

- Legal concerns ("old" by PC standards is still a lot less time than a patent term)

- These GPUs may still have some things in common with newer ones, thus releasing docs may reveal information about newer GPUs

- From a business standpoint, why bother going to extra trouble/risk to support hardware that they haven't been selling for years?

[deanjo]

My guess would be some combination of:

- Documentation doesn't exist in an organization/format suitable for release

- Legal concerns ("old" by PC standards is still a lot less time than a patent term)

- These GPUs may still have some things in common with newer ones, thus releasing docs may reveal information about newer GPUs

- From a business standpoint, why bother going to extra trouble/risk to support hardware that they haven't been selling for years?

Not to mention that there are not that many of those cards still in use. Even the ones that are out there still in use, I doubt they are running cutting edge releases simply because the machines that those are running on would lead to a unsatisfactory desktop experience running the latest kde/gnome etc for example. That's quite a bit of work for such an extremely small group.

[tmpdir]

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=138336

Thanks Deanjo.

---

The G210 and GT220 are missing in this list. These cards are available as oem and will be in retail next month. Looking at the features my guess is these will be class c as well.

[Kano]

Ok, in that case it should be possible to get a test card. Those slow cards are sure on ebay as they are sold in lots of OEM boxes. Feel free to send me one

[mibo]

CUDA compatibility for WINE and GPU-Folding

Something in CUDA of the "newer than" 180.xx linux driver was changed so that they are no more compatible with the windows driver. That can be seen when trying to run the windows executable of GPU-Folding@Home and a dll-wrapper.
Is this a bug in the linux drivers that will be fixed, or is it an intended difference between the platforms?

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=105878

Cheers,
mibo

[Gamester17]

More VDPAU related questions (btw, thanks NVIDIA for VDPAU, my HTPC loves it!),...

Will NVIDIA developers assist FFmpeg with patches to get them supporting VDPAU's new MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX 4/5, etc.) decoder support?

This question is interesting since loads of open source multimedia software projects out there for Linux uses FFmpeg demuxer and codec suit.

In addition, I like to know why did NVIDIA create VDPAU instead of use/extend VAAPI nativly?

Also, does NVIDIA ever plan on bringing VDPAU to Mac OS X? and if so will it then have a public API so third-party software like XBMC Media Center could use it on Mac OS X?


Another thing already mentioned here that I too would be interesting to known if there an official Gallium 3D driver is planned? and if so, will that driver will have VDPAU support?