Video Card/CPU requirements for decompression

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 8:56 am

I plan to build a new "quiet" (not "silent") machine later this year. However, I'm really not sure how to spec required CPU & video performance. I'd like to be on the "trailing edge" of technology in order to keep costs and noise down.

Usage: Primarily Linux with occasional Windows, streaming video, downloaded video, DVDs, web surfing, email, light programming. No HDTV, video editing, heavy graphics processing or gaming.

I find that my aging (very noisy!) AMD Duron 900, 512 MB RAM, ATI Rage Pro 128 AGP 4 system has difficulty handling "highest quality" Real video formats. CPU is maxed out, according to Gnome System Monitor.

Question: How much does the choice of video card affect CPU requirements for decompression of video? (WMV, RM, Quicktime, MPEG, etc.)

Question: What would be a reasonable AMD CPU choice for this type of system? Sempron in Socket 754?

Question: ATI and Nvidia drivers are often binary-only, which can be a problem for Linux users. What are my alternatives? (I'd prefer not going Intel, although the GPUs are well-supported).

Pointers to articles, etc. would be appreciated.

TIA,

Doug

Captain John · Post by **Captain John** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 9:56 am

With regard to video decompression, I don't think that video chipset actually has much to do with it. I think that having a CPU that supports SSE/SSE2/SSE3 is more important.

I would probably recommend the slowest socket 939 processor, either a 3000+ or 3200+, depending on where you're shopping, preferably the venice core, a NForce 4 or Via based mainboard, and a passive Nvidia 6200 TC or the like. This should give reasonable performance, a good place to upgrade from if you so decide, and reasonable Linux compatibility.

If you go with socket 754, you'll be stuck with socket 754. Perhaps neat Turions will come out, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Otherwise, innovation is happening on socket 939, and will for a little while more.

-John

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:23 am

Any CPU on the market today can handle all the tasks you've listed. There's no point in adding any GPU acceleration.

At this point, GPU acceleration seems to be targetted at getting HD playing well, which is one thing that some modern CPUs still struggle with.

As long as you're not into HD, the lowest end system on the market with integrated graphics should suit your needs just fine.

That said, not all integrated graphics yield a very good 2D video signal, so you may want to find one with a DVI port or invest in a cheap video card for image quality purposes. I picked up a Radeon 9250 for my HTPC at ~CDN$40 which I am perfectly happy with.

stupid · Post by **stupid** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:32 am

The video card has everything to do with video decompression. Any GPU that was least within the last two years from ATI or nVidia will offload some/most of the video decompression from the CPU to the GPU, even budget cards. The current generation of GPU will also decompress H.264 video which is very processor intensive.

ATI typically offers better overall quality than nVidia. Subjective opinions may differ from person to person, but on technical specifcations and testing ATI wins. That doesn't mean nVidia sucks though.

As to which one offers better support for Linux, I don't know since my profession is not in the IT field.

You should be able to get away with a Sempron 64 3000+, they run pretty cool compared to the Athlon 64 series and especially against the Pentium 4 and Celerons. Performance wise a S754 Sempron 64 3000+ is about as powerful as an Athlon XP 3200+ when it comes to general business apps and media. Gaming wise it should be faster than that. Socket 754 is definitely trailing edge so a CPU & mobo combo should be fairly cheap. S754 is actually dead since no more newer CPUs will be released for it.

The fastest Sempron 64 you can get is the 3400+, but for $10 more you can get the S939 Athlon 64 3000+ which should offer a little better performance, but more importantly you have a better upgrade path. The cost difference between a S754 Sempron 64 3400+ & mobo combo versus a S939 Athlon 64 3000+ & mobo combo will be around $20 - $30. That considering a budget mobo.

Devonavar · Post by **Devonavar** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:01 am

stupid wrote:The video card has everything to do with video decompression. Any GPU that was least within the last two years from ATI or nVidia will offload some/most of the video decompression from the CPU to the GPU, even budget cards. The current generation of GPU will also decompress H.264 video which is very processor intensive.

As I understand it, this is only true if you have software that supports it, which is far from widespread. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that hardware decoding is the norm except for special, intensive applications.

On top of that, why bother with a video card at all if any CPU on the market is capable of handling standard video footage (not HD) without acceleration? What does the VGA card give you aside from more heat and another potential source of noise?

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:16 am

Devonavar wrote:As I understand it, this is only true if you have software that supports it, which is far from widespread. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that hardware decoding is the norm except for special, intensive applications.

Pretty much all video cards since the ATI Rage II have been doing some of the steps in MPEG2 decoding. This used to be a big deal when the fastest CPU you could buy was 300MHz. The original Radeon added adaptive deinterlacing of video. Some newer video chips are able to assist H.264 decode which is the most computationally intensive MPEG4 decoding.

On top of that, why bother with a video card at all if any CPU on the market is capable of handling standard video footage (not HD) without acceleration? What does the VGA card give you aside from more heat and another potential source of noise?

Actually having the video card do the work probably decreases heat compared to having the CPU do the work. GPU's are very efficient at video deconding while CPUs are very inefficient.

Doug, an nVidia 6100/6150 IGP motherboard and a Sempron 64 will be just fine for what you want. I have heard that nVidia is a little better than ATI for Linux support, but you need the newest Linux to get support for the 6100/6150 motherboards. I am not sure how much (if any) video acceleration the linux drivers allow for any card.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:36 am

If you’re not concerned about upgrade potential and are happy to save a few bucks then I would suggest the following:

Sempron 64 3000+ (the slowest Sempron that supports CnQ; at least this was true with the 32 bit versions).
NForce 3 motherboard: Get one that supports Speedfan, so that you can control the CPU fan through software. i.e. Asus boards with Q-fan support Speedfan.
NVidia FX5200 VGA: low cost, low power, passively cooled. Will accelerate MPEG2 decoding.

This is all from personal experience.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:52 am

smilingcrow wrote:NVidia FX5200 VGA: low cost, low power, passively cooled. Will accelerate MPEG2 decoding.

I'd avoid a FX5200 like a plague. It is not at all power efficient. If you want to go with an old AGP card get a Radeon 8500 or GeForce 4 Ti 4200. I think you'd be better served with an nVidia 6100 or ATI Xpress 200 IGP motherboard.

Another option for a new extremely efficient video card would be this Mobility Radeon 9600. That is supposed to use about 1W at idle.

This article talks about power consumption of a lot of video cards.

Also an image from Anandtech

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:10 pm

Appreciate the help.

Turns out that being just a little "trailing edge" is good for Linux driver support. Both the Radeon 9250 (Devonavar's suggestion) and the nVidia 6100 (QuietOC's suggestion) are well supported in current Ubuntu Linux.

Especially appreciate the tip to consider the socket 939. I guess I missed the introduction of budget 939 mobos.

My friends and I have had great luck with ASRock mobos, which are the Asus budget boards. Very reliable, but they don't have the hackability or great support resources on their website that Asus has on its website.

It would appear that I can get an nVidia 6100 socket 939 mobo for less than USD$70 (newegg.com). Supports AMD Cool'n'Quiet & PCI Express X16 (should I ever need it) --
http://www.asrock.com/product/product_939NF4G-SATA2.htm
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... etailSpecs

Newegg doesn't show any Semprons for 939, but I hope that will change soon. They do have an Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice) for $USD127. That plus 1 GB of memory should give me a system that will meet my needs and be easy to cool quietly.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 12:18 pm

dougz wrote:Newegg doesn't show any Semprons for 939, but I hope that will change soon. They do have an Athlon 64 3000+ (Venice) for $USD127. That plus 1 GB of memory should give me a system that will meet my needs and be easy to cool quietly.

I'd get that A64 3000+ S939 today if I were you. In fact, I think it was cheaper yesterday.

Don't expect any cheaper chips for socket 939. There are OEM Socket 939 Semprons, but I haven't been able to find any of them for sale, but I've been told they are occasionally on eBay.

My most recent ASRock build the motherboard (K7S41GX) died after a year and a half. I will recommend the Biostar TForce 6100 boards, but if video playback is important to you a 6150-based motherboard is best. I haven't been having good luck with either ASUS or ASRock recently. So I do NOT recommend either of them.

Good luck with your new system!

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 12:13 am

QuietOC wrote:I'd avoid a FX5200 like a plague. It is not at all power efficient. If you want to go with an old AGP card get a Radeon 8500 or GeForce 4 Ti 4200. I think you'd be better served with an nVidia 6100 or ATI Xpress 200 IGP motherboard.

I’ve measured the power usage of my system at idle/load with various AGP cards and found the FX5200 to be an excellent compromise for my needs. The only card that I’ve tested that consumed less power was an old Radeon 7000 32MB, which choked when playing certain video formats but would be fine with MPEG2.

Taking the FX5200 as a baseline, a Radeon 9250 128MB consumes an extra 5W and a nVidia 6600 256MB an extra 10W. I don’t have the Radeon 7000 figures at hand.
I’d like to see some figures for onboard graphics power consumption if anybody has a link.

BTW, the power consumption of the cards in gaming mode is not relevant here as the OP stated that the machine will not be used to play games.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 5:37 am

smilingcrow wrote:Taking the FX5200 as a baseline, a Radeon 9250 128MB consumes an extra 5W and a nVidia 6600 256MB an extra 10W.

A better comparison would be a Radeon 8500 or Geforce 4 Ti 4200. Both those older cards are much faster than the 5200 and cooler running. All the 5200 ever had was "DX9," but the card had no real ability to use it. There was always better, cheaper, cooler, and faster alternatives to it.

eternizer · Post by **eternizer** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 7:05 am

QuietOC wrote:I'd get that A64 3000+ S939 today if I were you. In fact, I think it was cheaper yesterday.

Have you changed your mind? I remember you recommended me to go for s754.
AFAIK, the s939 A64 3000+ is 1.8 GHz (btw, $127 one is E3 and E6 one is $146 @ newegg) while $121 s754 A64 3000+ (this one is E6) is 2.0 GHz. Didn't you say the frequency is more important for video streaming?
I'd be very interested in your new reasoning~

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 7:40 am

eternizer wrote:
QuietOC wrote:I'd get that A64 3000+ S939 today if I were you. In fact, I think it was cheaper yesterday.
Have you changed your mind? I remember you recommended me to go for s754.
AFAIK, the s939 A64 3000+ is 1.8 GHz (btw, $127 one is E3 and E6 one is $146 @ newegg) while $121 s754 A64 3000+ (this one is E6) is 2.0 GHz. Didn't you say the frequency is more important for video streaming?
I'd be very interested in your new reasoning~

No, I am just saying that he might end up paying more if he waits.

I believe I recommended that a Sempron 64 + 6100 will be plenty for what he wants to do. Someone else recommended S939. I can't see that S939 will get him anything other than $100+ poorer, but that is his choice. The 6100 is a little better at gaming with S939, but that doesn't appear to be an issue here--maybe it is.

Yes, the S754 A64 3000+ will perform better with video streaming than the S939 version. The S939 A64 3000+ will run slightly cooler than the faster clocked S754 version. Video performance per Watt is probably equal. Video performance per Dollar is better with the S754 version.

Personally, I would get the S939 A64 3000+ over the S754, but that is because I would overclock either of them, and could care less about the stock clock speed. However, being too cheap for any Athlon 64, I am upgrading to a 1.4GHz Sempron 64 2500+ that I hope will be very, very fast--much faster than my 2.4GHz overclocked Sempron 2800+.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 9:38 am

QuietOC wrote:
smilingcrow wrote:Taking the FX5200 as a baseline, a Radeon 9250 128MB consumes an extra 5W and a nVidia 6600 256MB an extra 10W.
A better comparison would be a Radeon 8500 or Geforce 4 Ti 4200. Both those older cards are much faster than the 5200 and cooler running. All the 5200 ever had was "DX9," but the card had no real ability to use it. There was always better, cheaper, cooler, and faster alternatives to it.

3D performance is NOT an issue here at all if you look at the original post, so I’m not sure why you continue to mention it!
AFAIK, your argument for the cooler running of the other cards is spot on, but they are no longer generally available to buy new, at least from my suppliers. The FX5200 is still available new as are the other cards that I chose to compare it with.
If you can recommend current AGP cards that runs cooler and uses less power than an FX5200 then please let me know as I would find that information useful, as maybe would others. Mention if it has DVI and the maximum RAM as those are relevant even for non gamers.

I’m not trying to pick an argument with you, but you seem to have got it in for the FX5200 for some reason and I don’t feel that you’ve put forward a coherent objective argument as for why this card sucks and what current product is a significantly better solution.
I’m not exactly an FX5200 groupie and it does seem to run quite warm for what it is. But, I can’t quite see why it needs to be ‘avoided like the plague’ as you suggested!

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 10:08 am

smilingcrow wrote:Mention if it has DVI and the maximum RAM as those are relevant even for non gamers.

Why does it need a lot of memory???

I’m not trying to pick an argument with you, but you seem to have got it in for the FX5200 for some reason

When the FX5200 first came out I knew several people who bought FX5200's to replace cards like the 8500/GF4 Ti 4200. I also tested a Gainward FX5200 passive card myself and discovered that, not only was it slower than a MX400, the card would overheat and stop working--as in it got very, very hot. I would avoid them. Your card may be okay for what you want or need.

Since you can get DVI using an IGP, that is what I'd recommend.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 10:30 am

QuietOC wrote:
smilingcrow wrote:Mention if it has DVI and the maximum RAM as those are relevant even for non gamers.
Why does it need a lot of memory?
I’m not trying to pick an argument with you, but you seem to have got it in for the FX5200 for some reason
When the FX5200 first came out I knew several people who bought FX5200's to replace cards like the 8500/GF4 Ti 4200. Your card may be okay for what you want or need. I just don't see how it can be considered efficient. It consumes less power than a 9250 or 6600. Well, fine, but those aren't power efficient either.

Since you can get DVI using an IGP, that is what I'd recommend.

Please please please tell me what is an efficient current discrete GPU by your standards as otherwise I have no reference point for your observations. If you can back it up with links to hard facts then all the better. I ask because the last VGA comparison that I looked at (Xbitlabs) considered a Nvidia 6600 an entry level card and ignored anything slower than that. It may well be considered an entry level gaming card but I’d like to see some figures for an entry level non-gaming card.

I found a 32MB Radeon 7000 to be fine for general 2D work but when playing back certain types of video formats it just couldn’t handle it. Since an FX5200 handled it easily and that is a pretty basic card I deduced that the issue was VGA RAM size as I was not aware of the video codec used being accelerated by the FX5200. I think it was WMV9 and possibly HD video at that. I may have been wrong on this count though!

Also, Vista will certainly struggle with small amounts of Video RAM according to many reports.

It is good to see IGPs with DVI support finally becoming available, although still in very limited numbers AFAIK. I can’t personally recommend IGPs from my own experiences with them although they may very well be fine for the OP’s requirements. He may not even care about DVI support anyway; I was asking more from my own interests. The limited choice of motherboards with an IGP with DVI may also be an issue for some, especially if you are looking for a particular mix of features.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 11:45 am

smilingcrow wrote:Please please please tell me what is an efficient current discrete GPU by your standards as otherwise I have no reference point for your observations.

Why does it have to be a new card?

The former high-end/mid-range cards avaialble when the FX5200 was first released used less energy and performed better.

Yes, it does look like most current cards are power hogs for 2D work. If it has to be a new card, I would say the Mobility Radeon 9600 sounds like a nice combination of performance/Watt, but I can't find any reviews to back that up. VIA/S3 seems to be the only one interested in low wattage discrete video. An S3 DeltaChrome S4? Maybe a Radeon 9550?

Edit: Here's the graph from the TechReport article linked to above:

Definitely the Radeon 9550.

For PCIe it looks you might want a 6200TC:

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 12:41 pm

QuietOC wrote:
smilingcrow wrote:Please please please tell me what is an efficient current discrete GPU by your standards as otherwise I have no reference point for your observations.
Why does it have to be a new card?

It doesn’t, but I’m probably not alone in that when I build a new system I don’t particularly want to have to trawl eBay for a second hand VGA card when the rest of the system will be brand new. For me it’s about the convenience and ease of ordering everything from one place and knowing that it comes with a full warranty.

QuietOC wrote:The former high-end/mid-range cards avaialble when the FX5200 was first released used less energy and performed better.

I’m quite happy to buy a second-hand part if I feel that it has something to offer that current products don’t; would you please give a link that shows the comparative 2D power consumption for older VGA cards versus the FX5200 or other more recent cards. It can be very hard to compare power consumption of older PC components as platform changes make like for like comparisons difficult.

In the context of the OP’s specification, in what way do these older cards perform better than an FX5200? You seem to be dragging gaming performance back into the equation again!
Also, are the two cards that you mentioned generally available as passively cooled as stock? This is important in the context of the OP.

QuietOC wrote:If it has to be a new card, I would say the Mobility Radeon 9600 sounds like a nice combination of performance/Watt, but I can't find any reviews to back that up.

Well, even if you can find reviews, I’m wondering whether any board manufacturers have actually released desktop cards using mobile parts!!!
I really wish they would or even better, start using the same technology across the board in all their GPUs.

QuietOC wrote:VIA/S3 seems to be the only one interested in low wattage discrete video. An S3 Chrome S25?

This seems to be another old card and the current card (!) S27 is more power hungry than a 6600 at idle according to xbitlabs.

QuietOC wrote: How about this S3 card?

It may fit the OP’s spec, but I can’t comment on Linux support for such an oldie. 16MB will be problematic for certain video codecs though, as previously mentioned.

QuietOC wrote:Maybe a Radeon 9550?

As I mentioned earlier, the Radeon 9250 uses 5W more than a FX5200 at idle. I’m rightly or wrongly assuming that the 9550 is a faster part, but it may be built on a more power efficient process, so this may be a winner.

I know I’m giving you a hard time, but I’m just trying to point out that you aren’t backing up your assertions with many hard facts and therefore they don’t come across as being very objective. You may be correct, but I’m just asking you to prove it.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 12:49 pm

smilingcrow wrote:Well, even if you can find reviews, I’m wondering whether any board manufacturers have actually released desktop cards using mobile parts!!!

I linked to the actual card for sale at Newegg above. There are also versions with DVI I believe

Found some better graphs with the lowest Wattage discrete PCIe cards and the Xpress 200. I still think The VIA UniChrome is the coolest IGP though.

From TechReport again

Pretty self explanatory.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 1:35 pm

QuietOC wrote:Here's the graph from the TechReport article linked to above…..:

This refers to the FX5200 Ultra rather than the vanilla FX5200, so it’s really not directly comparable.

QuietOC wrote:
smilingcrow wrote:Well, even if you can find reviews, I’m wondering whether any board manufacturers have actually released desktop cards using mobile parts!!!
I linked to the actual card for sale at Newegg above. There are also versions with DVI I believe.

Aagh no, I didn’t see a link to desktop card using the mobile Radeon part!

QuietOC wrote:Found some better graphs with the lowest Wattage discrete PCIe cards and the Xpress 200. I still think The VIA UniChrome is the coolest IGP though.

The Xpress 200 system does sound very low power even for a system with an IGP. Unfortunately, to quote TechReport, ‘Keep in mind that our Radeon Xpress 200 system uses a different motherboard and power supply, so its results don't isolate the impact of the graphics card (or lack thereof) as well.’

The power consumption of the discrete graphics solutions in the same roundup isn’t so impressive though. My system which consists of an X2 3800+, 2GB PC3200, 3x 250GB Samung P150s, FX5200 128MB, PCI WiFi card, idles at lower power than ALL the systems with discrete graphics even though it is heavily disadvantaged with the extra hardware. I’m not clear if they are using CnQ in their tests though!
PCIe chipsets seem to be power hogs compared to my VIA AGP chipset, which might explain this. As a non-gamer, PCIe just seems like a backward step at the moment from the chipset power consumption perspective.
That’s why I still think that the FX5200 is still a pretty good solution

I still prefer discrete graphics, especially when using a dual core processor that is bandwidth hungry for RAM and would prefer not to share it with an IGP.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Thu Mar 30, 2006 1:57 pm

smilingcrow wrote:As I mentioned earlier, the Radeon 9250 uses 5W more than a FX5200 at idle. I’m rightly or wrongly assuming that the 9550 is a faster part, but it may be built on a more power efficient process, so this may be a winner.

Wrong assumption--maybe I'll find some proof later. The 9550 is an underclocked 9600, which is already a fairly low-heat chip. The 9250 is somehow related to the 9000 (and 8500). Judging by clockspeed probably not as low heat as some other versions of the 9000.

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 8:54 am

Looks like there is some life in 754 after all, at least for "trailing edge" users like me. This might change the value analysis for some.

AMD's existing socket 754 will be outlasting the more complex socket 939....

According to AMD documentation, all socket 939 processors will stop shipping Q2 2007 with final orders occurring nearly half a year before end-date....

For socket 939 processors, the first to fall off the charts will be Athlon 64 processors based on Venice core, with last orders occurring in the Q2 of this year and shipments stopping by the end of Q4. Athlon 64 processors based on San Diego will see similar results starting in Q4....

Processors based on socket 754, such as AMD's Sempron will be continuing to ship well into 2007 and cease near the end of the year....

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1554

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 9:13 am

smilingcrow wrote:This refers to the FX5200 Ultra rather than the vanilla FX5200, so it’s really not directly comparable.

Valid, but the 9550 is really in a faster 3D class too.

smilingcrow wrote:Aagh no, I didn’t see a link to desktop card using the mobile Radeon part!

myself wrote:Another option for a new extremely efficient video card would be this Mobility Radeon 9600. That is supposed to use about 1W at idle.

Hope this helps!

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 9:27 am

Devonavar touched on a good point early in the thread; while there's a lot of support for MPEG2 and certain tasks, your milage may vary with hardware acceleration and bleeding edge features. The state of hardware acceleration is sort of a half-truth, IMO.

For example, our company produces a video surveillance application. Our codec is WMV9. We actually had to disable DXVA because it was simply too buggy and unpredictable (there were wild deviations/bugs in ATI/NVidia drivers, which often resulted in corrupted video) to be useful in a consumer product. Reliable is more important than fast.

Furthermore, the API for DXVA is so nascent that we didn't "disable" it so much as we fooled it, because there is no interface exposed that allows companies to disable it--the functionality is built right into the interactions between the decoder and renderer. There are also several other limitations of the current implementation of DXVA that make it almost impossible to use in our product anyways. Hopefully the next iteration will be more useful; the current implementation really isn't.

Since our product is Win32, I don't have any idea of what the situation is like in Linux, but I'd wager it's no better. So, IMO, hardware acceleration sort of works, but I wouldn't expect too much. New features always take some time to really work themselves out.

All that being said, if you wanted to future proof yourself as best as possible, I'd suggest either an ATI Radeon x1000 series card (in particular, some of the passive x1300 cards and the passive x1600 Asus model are enticing, and both relatively low power), or an NVidia 7000+ series card. The XFX 7600GS that comes overclocked w/passive HS looks like an outstanding deal to me. Both series support a full barrage of image processing stuff, like 3/2 pulldown, inverse telecine, deinterlacing, etc., and do so for HD resolutions. Some of the lower-end models support those features, although not for HD.

Were I to purchase a card right now, it'd either be the cheap Sapphire x1300 ($69 on newegg after rebate), or the XFX 7600GS ($148 on newegg).

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 9:38 am

Beyonder wrote:Were I to purchase a card right now, it'd either be the cheap Sapphire x1300 ($69 on newegg after rebate), or the XFX 7600GS ($148 on newegg).

While I agree the X1x00 seems have the best video features (Edit: under Windows XP). It really doesn't look like even the X1300 is all that cool running. Maybe an underclocked X1300 would be better than this card:

Until ATI realeses a new IGP the 6150 IGP is probably the best low heat + video features solution. The VIA UniChrome IGP might be better, but I haven't found extensive video tests of that IGP.

How about the 7300GS?

The 7300GS sound like a 6200TC built on a 90nm process with all the video features of the 7x00 line. The 550MHz core speed is probably not great for heat, but one of the cards on Newegg lists a 400MHz core speed--unforunately not a passive heatsink on that card.

Beyonder · Post by **Beyonder** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 9:59 am

Don't go anywhere near any Via/S3 video solution, or unichrome graphics. The compatibility headaches alone are not worth it (for example, unichrome is not compatible with the VMR9, which is ridiculous). I promise: you'll regret it. I know this from first-hand testing.

I guess I tend to think of cards in a general sense; I wouldn't get a 6150 because gaming on it would be a chore. Gaming on an x1300 isn't great, but it runs circles around an on-board 6150. The 7600GS would be preferable, regardless.

shadestalker · Post by **shadestalker** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:01 am

The arguments above hold a little less relevance given that a requirement here is cross-platform support (linux / Windows). The FX5200 is supported well by the nVidia binary drivers (no, they're not open source) and is the latest AGP model afaik to support XVMC, the internal name for their MPEG2 decoding. A passively cooled-major branded one can be had for around USD40 or less, assuming you don't want / need dual-head output along with your s-video. If you *do* want dual-head, nVidia's drivers directly support TwinView under XFree and Xorg.

I highly recommend looking at the mythtv web site, wiki and users' mailing list as a resource for choosing HTPC type components for linux. The "which video card" and many other debates are long-established within this community.

QuietOC · Post by **QuietOC** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:08 am

shadestalker wrote:The FX5200 is supported well by the nVidia binary drivers (no, they're not open source) and is the latest AGP model afaik to support XVMC, the internal name for their MPEG2 decoding.

Are you saying that video acceleration is not supported under Linux for the newer nVidia AGP/PCIe cards, or are you just suggesting the FX5200 because it is AGP and still available?

dougz · Post by **dougz** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:50 pm

QuietOC asked

Are you saying that video acceleration is not supported under Linux for the newer nVidia AGP/PCIe cards, or are you just suggesting the FX5200 because it is AGP and still available?

Not to try to speak for shadestalker, but I found this about MPEG-2 acceleration in the nVidia proprietary binary Linux driver -

This driver is full featured and actively maintained and developed directly by Nvidia Corp.

Source - http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/XvMC

This raises a question of whether there would be any impact on non-MPEG formats like Real, Flash, WMV, or Quicktime, as I wondered in my original post. More from the same article -

...XvMC, is a part of The X Window System which allows video programs to offload motion compensation and iDCT (Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform) portions of MPEG2 decoding to the GPU hardware. XvMC can greatly reduce CPU utilization when playing back MPEG-2 video. In theory it should also reduce bus bandwidth requirements. Savings will be most dramatic with slow CPUs or when playing HDTV. SDTV will benefit as well, but most modern CPUs can already play back SDTV without XvMC. MythTV can be compiled to use XvMC for native playback. External players such as Xine and Mplayer can also be compiled to support XvMC.

Currently, only MPEG-2 is supported. This is usually a hardware limitation....

From everything that I've been able to find, for my purposes GPU acceleration is not useful and I just need a faster CPU and new mobo (for better memory bandwidth), as Captain John and Devonar suggested. GPU hardware acceleration appears to be useful for gaming, SDTV with slow CPUs and HDTV, if I'm understanding correctly.

Video Card/CPU requirements for decompression

Video Card/CPU requirements for decompression

Re: Video Card/CPU requirements for decompression

Re: Video Card/CPU requirements for decompression

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