[mythtv-users] ATI AVIVO

[Mike Choy]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 07/02/2006 02:21 AM, Mike Choy wrote:
>
>   
>> Ivan Kowalenko wrote:
>>  
>>
>>     
>>> On Jun 30, 2006, at 18.23, Mike Choy wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>>> Have enabled ATI AVIVO Support on my laptop , seems to work, has  
>>>>> anyone
>>>>> else got any experience, say vs XvMC.
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>> Uhh, I'm not totally sure it's going to work. AVIVO (http://
>>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIVO) seems to be purely software. Not sure  
>>> there's any Linux support on that. Even if it is, I doubt you're  
>>> going to see any improvement versus XvMC. The purpose of XvMC is to  
>>> offload some of the MPEG-2 decoding to the GPU.
>>>
>>> AVIVO doesn't have a thing to do with the GPU, but relies entirely on  
>>> the CPU for work. High-Def MPEG-2 is straining enough to the CPU, so  
>>> I doubt you're going to see ANY improvement. Besides, AVIVO does  
>>> ENcoding. XvMC does DEcoding.
>>>
>>>       
>> Sadly Wiki pedia is out of date.
>> Avivo provides accelerated Video playback using the 3DGPU, for any
>> application that uses XV and xorg 6.9 and above (standard in SUSE 10.1),
>> which gives it huge compatability vs XvMC.
>>
>> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=442&num=12
>>
>>     
>
> But also means--in that mode--it's only doing the same acceleration that 
> Xv does, but doing it with 3D hardware instead of 2D hardware.  
> Therefore, AVIVO does not decode the stream or any part of it--it simply 
> accelerates moving the image to the display once the CPU decodes it.  
> Basically, it's a marketing thing to say it's there.
>
> If Myth wanted to use AVIVO to decode the stream, Myth would have to 
> send the undecoded stream to the card using ATI-proprietary API's 
> (because AVIVO itself is ATI-proprietary).  So, I don't think it will 
> happen.
>
> Mike
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>   
Granted, but some quick benchmarks  of  playing back  Elephants Dream at
720P in mplayer show  the following, using top

1. Standard ATI XV Overlay   -average CPU utilization  show 35%-40%
2. Using ATI AVIVO Overlay -average CPU utilization  show 18-25%

I believe that the average gains using XvMC are about 20% ?
Of Course with an ATI card, there is no Option of XvMC.

If anyone knows of a better way to benchmark this please let me know.

Mike C