[mythtv-users] Just a bit more juice Re: VDPAU support on 0.21-fixes

[Gregg]

>> Speaking of VDPau.   My HD frontend is a now old P4-3ghz system with an
>> AGP slot in an SFF case.   Looks and works fine, plays HDTV just fine, but
>> sadly starts to groan under the weight of some h264 encoded HD videos.  So I
>> have to watch those at one of my computers, which while they have even
>> higher resolution screens, they are not 46" with a couch.
>>
>>
>> There were rumours of Geforce 8 possibly coming out on AGP.   With vdpau,
>> that might solve my problems.
>>
>> But I see no sign of it.
>>
>> Otherwise, it's a sad situation.   SFF systems don't readily support
>> motherboard upgrade to get a mobo with either faster CPU or pci-e slot.
>> There's only one PCI slot and it has a tuner card, so the PCI based
>> cards are out, if they would work.
>>
>> So it seems I leave myself within one inch of near system replacement ...
>> mobo, cpu, video card, ram, power supply, case -- preserving only keyboard,
>> dvd and hard drive.   What a shame to just squeeze out a bit more power.
>>
>> Or are there some other tricks for getting those x264 videos to play
>> smoothly on the P4-3ghz with 6200 video card?  (I could upgrade the 6200
>> card to a 7xxx series card, but I doubt that would do anything.)
>
> AGP card in 8 or 9 series seems impossible to find.
>
> I have my eye on a SFF machine with a low profile PCI-e slot and 2 PCI
> slots (HP DC7100). Its more or less an upgrade to the SFF machine I
> have at present (HP D530S which is AGP low profile and 2xPCI). However
> low profile fanless 8 or 9 series PCIe cards are also quite rare
> (particularly with 512M RAM).
>
> Seems to be many cards that have some combination of the attributes
> (fanless|low profile|512M RAM) but not many with all of the above.
>
> Maybe with the thermal load vdpau is rumoured to create a fan is a
> necessary evil.

You may not need a new card.  I am running a p4 3.0 with 1gig of ram
with an nvidia 5200.  I have overclocked the cpu a bit to 3.2 and it
can play h264 vids up to 720p fine.  When I get into the 1080p
resolution it chokes.  So if 720p is satisfactory for a 46 in screen
you could be good to go.

-Gregg