[mythtv-users] Why is OpenGL video renderer overheating my GPU?

[William Powers]

On May 9, 2012, at 11:21 AM, Gabe Rubin <gaberubin at gmail.com> wrote:

> What country do you live in?  My understanding was the 430 is not
> ideal for US broadcasts and VDPAU highest settings.  If that is not
> the case, can you tell me what card you have and how many slots it
> takes up (i.e., if the heatsink and/or fan would prevent me from using
> the PCI slot next to the video card)?

USA. I record and watch OTA ATSC, HD PVR and SD PVR-250 content. I have three frontends, all separate from the backend, ever since the day that X crashed and I couldn't recover the frontend without rebooting while my wife's favorite show was being recorded. Very low WAF day.

I have converted two of the frontends to OpenGL playback with Intel Sandy Bridge graphics. The main frontend is still on NVidia with VDPAU.  My 430, which is not currently in use, will do VDPAU decoding and rendering with Advanced,2x deinterlacing but with very little headroom. To get it to be 100% glitch free (zero per day) I had to have all the xorg.conf settings right per the wiki and I had to off load the GPU a little bit, either by setting Standard decoding with VDPAU rendering, or by setting VDPAUSKIPCHROMA, or by setting Temporal,2x. Other people have had better luck with 430's, possibly due to higher clock rates.

My primary frontend has a GT520 in it with a two-slot passive heatsink. There are one slot versions with fans.  I spent many hours comparing Advanced,2X vs Temporal,2X deinterlacing without ever being able to detect a difference. There are reports I believe from people who could see some differences with sports like basketball, but I never could. Once I decided Temporal,2X was acceptable, I went with the GT520 in the primary frontend because it uses relatively little power and runs very cool.