[mythtv-users] X2 5000 enough to play HD?

[Owen Townend]

2008/8/28 kanetse at gmail.com <kane.tse at gmail.com>:
> On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Michael T. Dean
> <mtdean at thirdcontact.com> wrote:
>>
>> The big overlap on the two motherboards (and the big disconnect from the
>> previous) is the AMD chipset (versus the NVIDIA nForce on the previous
>> mobo).  The AMD chipset is only /very/ recently supported (sometime
>> after 2.6.21), so I'm starting to think that the chipset support is
>> still too immature for the kind of work a Myth HDTV frontend needs to
>> do.  I'm considering getting another mobo with an NVIDIA chipset.  (The
>> really annoying thing is each time I do, I have to get another AM2+
>> processor and some RAM so I don't waste the other mobo--which seem to
>> work more than well enough for a "normal" non-Myth computer.  Oh well,
>> the Biostar has become my new Myth dev box and was >>4x faster at
>> compiling Myth than my old Athlon XP 1700+ dev box. :)
>>
>> I'll let you know once I figure it out.
>>
>> In all the above configurations, I'm using Linux kernel 2.6.26.2 and
>> ALSA 1.0.17.
>>
>> Moral of the story, don't mess with a working Myth system... :)
>>
>> What chipset are you using?
>>
>
> I'm using a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H, which has, from what I read, is a
> recent AMD 780G chipset.  Based on my observation that my CPU
> utilization is nowhere near 100% on even one core of the CPU, that's
> what lead me to believe the poor playback is not CPU-related.

I'm using this motherboard for my current combined front/backend box
with only one remaining issue:
Changing between channels of different resolutions (SD->HD and back)
causes corruption (ATI 8.3 drivers, the more recent ones seems to add
more issues than they fix for me. There's another thread around here
about it.)
This has a Phenom 9500 and 4GB RAM using Ubuntu 8.04 64bit (for now...
I'll probably go back to debian when lenny goes stable - Ubuntu
saa7134-alsa issues).

To get smooth playback of all channels I am using 'ffmpeg & XVideo':
Decoder: Standard,
Max CPUs: 2,
Video Renderer: xv-blit,
OSD Renderer: softblend,
Primary DeInterlacer: Linear Blend,

MythFrontend uses ~35% of one core when playing back a HD channel.

This backend is also serving as my storage server and a VMWare Server host.
I have had no troubles using the onboard sound though am using the
analogue 3.5mm plugs and have not tested optical out or HDMI
audio/video.
The onboard network (Realtek 8168 Gigabit) works without issue such
that the HDDs become the limiting factor.

The motherboard & chipset work great for me. It may just be a matter
of picking the right playback options to get the same results.

cheers,
Owen.