Which GFX card for playing HD videos

arnuld

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when I play HD videos like MKV format, i get frequent jerks, sometimes the video freezes. I guess its because of the on-board video card:

[arnuld@dune ~]$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M890 [Chrome9] Integrated Video (rev 01)
[arnuld@dune ~]$

I use Linux all the time. I am going to buy an ATI Radeon card for this video display problem. So do you have any specific one in mind, depending on my requirement. I will not be playing any games, just watching HD videos. I have selcted Radeon HD2400 PRO a smy card. what say ?


This is my current config:
AMD Athlon 68 2800+ (1.8 GHz)
ASUS K8V-MX Motherboard
2 x 512 MB DDR2-667 MHz RAM
Logitech Mouse/Keyoard
17 inces Samsung CRT Monitor
SONY DVD-ROM + LG CD-ROM
2 x 80 GB SATA (Samsung + Seagate)
SONY Floppy Drive
Netgear ADSL Modem
APC UPS

My MOBO has 1 AGP 8x (AGP 3.0) slot and 3 PCI slots. AGP can handle only 1.5 V based vards (not 3.3 V AGP cards)
(NOTE: I am going to buy a new 22 inch LCD monitor with DVI interface)
 

bharath1097

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ATI cards do not yet have video acceleration support for linux. That means you wont see any performance improvements right now though in future xbmc support will be properly implemented. But in windows you will see a performance difference. Nvidia recently introduced pure video support in linux. So you can probably get an 8400gs agp. But you have to use the latest nvidia drivers and also compile mplayer-svn from source with vdpau support. For more details check the below urls. Also you wont be noticing any improvements if you use any other player like vlc etc.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_180_vdpau&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_vdpau_gpu&num=1

 

arnuld

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I see from here that we have open Source drivers for both 2D and 3D graphics for 2400 and 2600 PRO cards. (I hope by Video Acceleration you meant 3D thing).




I don't like Nvidia much as we don't have Open Source drivers for them and for most of the rimes all I have seen is the weired troubles because of the proprietary blobs. If they don't have open source, I will not buy them.

Thanks for the help though
 

bharath1097

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I dont mean 3d drivers by video acceleration. Hd videos are very taxing on the cpu. So your cpu cant handle them. so you are getting jerky playback. The latest nvidia and ati cards have hardware decoders for hd video formats on them. But software and drivers need to be written to make use of them. These features are available in windows drivers for both nvidia and ati cards for a long time now. But in linux they are adding these features to their drivers only recently. Nvidias vdpau works perfectly in linux with their binary driver and mplayer compiled from source. ATI is calling its feature xbmc which does not work properly yet though it may work well in the future. So by getting a ATI card you wont see any performance difference while playing viedos in linux right now with any video player.
 

arnuld

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Which ATI graphics cards can use this driver?


The ATI Proprietary Linux driver currently supports Radeon 8500 and later AGP or PCI Express graphics products, as well as ATI FireGL 8700 and later products. We do not currently plan to include support for any products earlier than this. Drivers for earlier products should already be available from the DRI Project or Utah-GLX project.

I wonder what they mean by later than Radeon 8500 series, all I hear are HD 2400, 2600 , 4850 , 3000 series, X1550, X1600 etc. I did not find any 8500 model even on their web-site
 

zela

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_graphics_processing_units#Radeon_R200_.288xxx.2C_9xxx.29_series

I guess you can't go wrong with HD2400 especially if you consider its price.
 

arnuld

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1nd the HD 2600 PRO has GDDR3 and HD 2400 PRO has DDR2 while my system RAM is DDR2, so I need to compatible with my system RAM ?

2nd, I have 64 bit CPU, AMD Athlon 1.8 GHz , 2800+ and I will definitely install 64 bit Linux on it. Do these cards came in 32 bit and 64 bit versions ?


http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/linux64/linux64-radeon.html

Notes:
The drivers below support English only.
The display driver requires POSIX shared memory to be enabled on the system. Kernel Source package is no longer required if Kernel Header package is installed. 32-Bit packages must be installed for 64-Bit Linux drivers to install or work.
 

IH8U

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You could also do a refresh on your hardware. A new MB, RAM, and vid shouldn't cost much. And you could toss in a better HDD, and DVD or BR for cheap as well.

My $.02

MB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135089
$63 ECS A780VM-M2 (the onboard is better than your card, and has a PCI-X 2.0 slot)
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103255
$57 AMD X2 4850e
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231122
$40 G.Skill DDR2 800 2x2GB

Optional

HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152052
$55 Samsung spinpoint 500GB
DVD/BR: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106273
$90 Lite-On Blu-Ray player (OEM)
 

zela

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1st: No. Video card memory and system memory do not have to be of the same type.
2nd: Both cards should work in both 32-bit and 64-bit environments. Use appropriate driver for 32-bit or 64-bit kernel.

Note for enabling POSIX shared memory if you don't already know: edit your /etc/fstab file and add following line:

tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

 

arnuld

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Oh.. My... except of a 2.8 GHz Athlon X2 , I was going to buy exactly the same kind hardware :) But I am running very tight on money, I cna only spend a max of 3000-4000/- only while the MOBO+AMD combination causes itself 12,000/- of rupees . I will surely buy this hardware but it will take some years (around 2-3) , before I accumulate savings from my poor salary :(