AMD's UVD2-based XvBA Finally Does Something On Linux

[gbeauche]

Random curiosity.. Do the 780G/785G have UVD2 onboard, or is that UVD1, or some weird hybrid of the two?

Yes, RS780G has UVD2 and works since this is my dev machine. The others are Radeon HD 4870 (M98) and 4650 (M96) but those are too noisy to work with. I don't know for other chips, people will have to try themselves.

[Kano]

So for all Debian/Ubuntu users i updated my scripts to autoinstall the needed files. As it requires fglrx 9-10 final driver best solution is:

rm -f /etc/X11/xorg.conf*

then run first my script to install fglrx:

http://kanotix.com/files/install-fglrx-debian.sh

then run my script for mplayer vaapi - which works on nvidia to - ideal for comparison! in theory psb too, but could not test.

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/mplayer-vaapi-latest-1.txt

Have fun with h264 L5.1 material. Best install mediainfo too:

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en/Download/Debian

or

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en/Download/Ubuntu

to avoid those, you will figure out why

[Hasenpfote]

At the end of the day it's nice that UVD2 is finally usable on Linux (assuming no driver bugs), considering that the original ATI Unified Video Decoder was never supported, but it's still not as nice of an implementation as NVIDIA's VDPAU that is well supported and can handle a variety of different formats and can be used in a variety of different multimedia programs.

Sorry to be an a**hole again, but:

Is it possible that AMD is doing something better than a competitor (in this case Nvida) one day again? I remember days when AMD played with Intel (times of Athlon64). I would really like to have those days back!

[Veerappan]

Yes, RS780G has UVD2 and works since this is my dev machine. The others are Radeon HD 4870 (M98) and 4650 (M96) but those are too noisy to work with. I don't know for other chips, people will have to try themselves.

Sounds great. I've got a 780G in my mythbox as mentioned, a 785G in my main system's motherboard, and a radeon 4770 as my main system's primary video card. I usually leave the 785G disabled, but if I decide to give fglrx another shot (I might, as r600 3D is still just a little too unstable for me), I'll test them all.

[Kano]

@bridgman

Did you ever look there:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder

There are UVD 2.2 chips mentioned with parallel decode of 2 streams. Do you think that will ever work on Linux?

[bridgman]

Yes, I actually updated the technical details on that page a couple of times, although my updates were reverted because they didn't match gossip on other forums. Yay.

As always, can't comment on unreleased features.

[dosenpfand]

R600 doesn't have UVD. It was a pretty big chip already and it had enough shader power and bandwidth to do a fair amount of decode acceleration on the shaders.

Ok but RV630 and RV610 are UVD enabled, unfortunetly they dont seem to be supported.
Same goes for UVD+ Devices.

Dont get me wrong its nice to have something like XvBa finally but why so limited compared to Nvidias solution ?

[evanjfraser]

So for all Debian/Ubuntu users i updated my scripts to autoinstall the needed files. As it requires fglrx 9-10 final driver best solution is...

Hi Kano, I'm sorry if I'm being a dumbass, but do you have any idea if the stream beta driver (8.67) works with these steps?

My 5750 doesn't work with the fglrx 9-10.

Thanks, Evan.

[evanjfraser]

Dont get me wrong its nice to have something like XvBa finally but why so limited compared to Nvidias solution ?

Nvidia only supports Geforce 8xxx and newer for their Linux VDPAU support, whereas the 7xxx (and maybe 6xxx) cards had video accell support under windows too.

(And I had a 7900 GS grr)

So AMD/ATI aren't that different here, except that it took them a lot longer to make it happen.

Maybe the opensource drivers will make it happen for older cards one day.

[dosenpfand]

The Hd Vid decoding support on GF7xxx Cards under Win is kinda limited, but annyway Nvidia supports more Generations of Cards with VDPAU