[mythtv-users] nVidia card choices, and processors for HDTV playback

[Brad Templeton]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 05:08:56PM -0800, Scott Alfter wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 12:42:38PM -0500, Bill Smith wrote:
> A couple of brands that use passive cooling on their 5200s are Gainward (in
> my MythTV box) and Albatron (just bought one yesterday to replace an
> All-In-Wonder Radeon).  I bought both of these at Fry's; they're probably
> available elsewhere for a little less than the $70 I paid, but local
> availability is a Good Thing.  Drivers are available for both x86 and AMD64.  

I got a gigabyte one for $52 a while back, check with froogle or shopper.com
Passive cooling.  But unable to drive my HDTV over DVI, and others report
the same thing on other cards with the same chip.

I guess we need to ask, who is driving their HDTV with DVI at 1080i from
an Nvidia FX 5200?  Is everybody failing or is it just a few, ie. some
combination of the card/driver and the receiver chip in some TVs?
> 
> On a sidenote, I downloaded the HDTV samples Jarod Wilson (?) had put up a
> while back.  I was able to get the 1080i sample to play back smoothly for
> the first time yesterday on a Socket 939 Athlon 64 3500, once I replaced the
> AIW Radeon.  I suppose I could upgrade the MythTV box from its current
> Athlon XP 2400 to an Athlon 64, but (1) I'm having trouble getting
> mythfrontend running on Gentoo Linux for AMD64 and and (2) a processor
> upgrade would be cheaper and simpler.  If I just get the fastest Athlon XP I
> can find (Newegg lists a Barton-core 3200 with 512K cache), will this
> provide smooth playback of 1080i HDTV?  (The 2400 I have now plays 720p
> acceptably, but 1080i playback is jerky.)

So you have the myth player compiled for 64 bit?  Would be quite interested
in your processor idle times on the AMD64 with the 64 bit version and
the 32 bit if you are willing to try it.  Some programs way faster
on 64 bit, some programs run _slower_.

I have not tried the Ath64 myself, but experience right now has the
Pentium 4 (at 3ghz) blowing away the Athlon 3000 at 2.2ghz.  I expect
it to possibly be _worse_ on the A64-3000 which is at 2ghz, but would
be very interested in test results in both 32 bit and 64 bit mode to
see if this is true.

As you probably know, AMD puts "Intel mhz equivalent" numbers on their
processors but actually runs them much slower.  Their processors are
better designed and so can do many applications at the same speed as
the faster-clocked Pentiums.  But not all applications, and mpeg clearly
seems to be in the class of apps that do much, much better on a Pentium.


However, that said, the Athlon XP 3000 is able to play HDTV video clips with
about 20% spare CPU.  (The P4 plays them with 50 to 60% spare cpu, though
I am also getting better memory bandwidth on my P4 so that may be part
of the issue.)


Secondly, the theory is that before too long, MythTV will have nice
support for xvmc.   When it does, you will be able to play HDTV with
just about anything, perhaps even a cheap Sempron 2000 or 2ghz Celery D.
Perhaps even less than that.

I have run xvmc from mplayer, and it is clean and smooth and takes only 30%
of the CPU of the Athlon-3000.

If you have faith in that working, then in fact you want to cut back
on your processor, because more processor means more heat and more noise.

Which actually might reverse the advice about AMD vs. Intel!