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

[gbeauche]

Meh, I don't believe in Nvidia I am thinking I am going to buy a Radeon HD 5450.

XvBA does not support Radeon HD 5xxx. And last time I asked, it was not planned to be fixed. So, if some developer has some spare time and is really willing to dig into this code, this could be interesting for users. Thanks. ;-)

[Kano]

@LinuxID10T

With that price range a NV 210 would be much better for video playback. You can not use both cards for new games anyway. Buying ATI for a Linux htpc is definitely the worst idea possible.

[gbeauche]

With that price range a NV 210 would be much better for video playback. You can not use both cards for new games anyway. Buying ATI for a Linux htpc is definitely the worst idea possible.

Besides, there are fanless G210 out there. So, this is the best choice.

[crazycheese]

Meh, I don't believe in Nvidia I am thinking I am going to buy a Radeon HD 5450.

This is what I have already done yesterday.
Because of:
a) Wine always playing catch up with windoze
b) Wine always performing slower than windowze
c) Wine not really doing anything for native linux stack, beside nvidia support
d) Wine exposing linux to windows vulnirabilities
(enough of wine, *cough* )
e) Nvidia being heavily supported, just because people play games on linux via wine and rarely native ones
f) Nvidia dropping lastest opensource
g) Nvidia showing no interest in linux, rather than remapping windows driver to linux
h) Ati investing time in opensource, slow, but they do it

I have desided to switch my Intel E5300 system, with Geforce9800GT completely to AMD(athlon x4 based), with AMD HD4770(R700, yet very economical).

I think Im gonna recieve it tomorrow, I will share some pictures

[Kano]

Well the ATI HD4770 is old enough to have good xv support with OSS drivers (only radeon NOT radeonhd) and also basic 3d. As you seem to dislike binary drivers you don't want to use xvba via vaapi do you? Because even if you wanted in the best case only h264 up to level 4.1 works. Using mplayer vaapi you can decode vc1 too, vlc git still crashes after playback of 1 vc1 file (same for nvidia however). xbmc seems to work with xvba/vaapi only with videos with size % 16 = 0 which may be often the case for 720p but not for 1080p. In case you install fglrx you can verify it using Debian/Ubuntu:

This script works as root only and globally install an optimizied mplayer with hotfixes for divx decode with latest nv dx 10.1/11 cards (not possible with ati) and also should work with psb (not tested, but the hack should work in theory which is needed there). Also for intel it should allow accellerated mpeg2 decode.

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

This script installs as root all build-depends and compiles ffmpeg vlc and some other usefull depends in the home when executed as user (clean up: simply delete dist folder or just remove sources, delete dist/src - there are also 2 lines appended in .bashrc).

http://kanotix.com/files/fix/vlc-vaapi-local.txt

As i don't have got any hd 5 card (only hd 4550) i can not say something about those.

[LinuxID10T]

Despite preferring ATI over Nvidia, I am still PISSED at ATI ending Catalyst support for so many cards. BELIEVE IT OR NOT, ATI, PEOPLE STILL USE GRAPHICS CARDS FROM 2006.

[LinuxID10T]

This is what I have already done yesterday.
Because of:
a) Wine always playing catch up with windoze
b) Wine always performing slower than windowze
c) Wine not really doing anything for native linux stack, beside nvidia support
d) Wine exposing linux to windows vulnirabilities
(enough of wine, *cough* )
e) Nvidia being heavily supported, just because people play games on linux via wine and rarely native ones
f) Nvidia dropping lastest opensource
g) Nvidia showing no interest in linux, rather than remapping windows driver to linux
h) Ati investing time in opensource, slow, but they do it

I have desided to switch my Intel E5300 system, with Geforce9800GT completely to AMD(athlon x4 based), with AMD HD4770(R700, yet very economical).

I think Im gonna recieve it tomorrow, I will share some pictures

Hey, if your getting rid of that 9800 GT, I wouldn't mind helping you... LOL. I might not like Nvidia much, but their proprietary Linux support is top-tier.

[DivineGrace]

This is what I have already done yesterday.
Because of:
a) Wine always playing catch up with windoze
b) Wine always performing slower than windowze
c) Wine not really doing anything for native linux stack, beside nvidia support
d) Wine exposing linux to windows vulnirabilities
(enough of wine, *cough* )
e) Nvidia being heavily supported, just because people play games on linux via wine and rarely native ones
f) Nvidia dropping lastest opensource
g) Nvidia showing no interest in linux, rather than remapping windows driver to linux
h) Ati investing time in opensource, slow, but they do it

I have desided to switch my Intel E5300 system, with Geforce9800GT completely to AMD(athlon x4 based), with AMD HD4770(R700, yet very economical).

I think Im gonna recieve it tomorrow, I will share some pictures

crazycheese, have fun with the new rig! Show us some pix! In the long-term, I think you made the right decision. AMD's quad core and triple core CPUs are second to none for Linux, and their graphics cards have come a long way. There is still room for improvement, but that will happen because as you pointed out, ATI is committed to open source while their competition is not.

[DivineGrace]

I could not get xvba to work with Gwenole's packages, Ubuntu 10.04 beta 1 and an HD 2600. I'll test my other cards and report back.

Almost forgot.....Ubuntu 10.04 beta 2 currently does not supply a libamdxvba1 library with the latest Catalyst 10.4 pre-release.
Since Squeeze does not utilize that library, I'll try to get XvBA working on that platform and share the results.

[gbeauche]

g) Nvidia showing no interest in linux, rather than remapping windows driver to linux

LOL but really lol. You probably have not looked at the current situation closer... On the other hand, it's better to start the day laughing rather than crying. Thanks.