Help picking a video card and other related gear

[grarpamp]

Been out... replying to all at once here.

>> Requirements

> So, for video you want an ATI/AMD card. r500 and below will get you
> all the features today. r600+ will get you EXA and Xv acceleration
> today, with 3d rumored to be coming soon.

Most of what I see on the net says that ATI of roughly these series
is the open source solution to go with. And seems to have future
potential, mostly as Nvidia seems to be firm on doc refusal. So
other than Intel, I guess that's that part.

> That's for 60 Hz. If you think you might want a 120 Hz display
> instead of 60 Hz, dual link is only good for 1920x1200.

Ok, I really should tune this CRT from 85Hz down to 60Hz and see
if it drives me nuts. As well as check out other peoples LCD settings
in person to be sure. Right now, it's real estate I need most.


>> color calibration, spydering

> You can set rgb gamma, is that what you are referring to?
> http://www.behardware.com/articles/580-1/the-spyder-2-an-affordable-colorimeter.html

That's part of it. With analog CRT tech, you've got the electron
beam stuff... astigmatism, focus, G2, raster geometry, etc. Then
add your input signal and you've got RGB gain/bias.  And if it's
NTSC you've got color decoding to deal with too. All that to tinker
with just to set your reference color bars, pluge, CIE and grayscale
correct. There's websites dedicated to that topic... avsforum, keohi.
Old school broadcast stuff... still applies to digital, just doesn't
involve as much electrocution :)

DVI-D LCD displays do away with all the analog bits of that. But
they, in conjunction with the card, still need to display those
reference files correctly. The windows guys seem to be doing it by
poking at their card/driver somehow. If the knobs exist I could
just play human comparator.

>> dual displays/panels

> Most of this, I'm not entirely sure about, or at least not in a
> single video card. But beware, multiple video cards are not currently
> working and I don't have an ETA on them working again right now.

I think I recall seeing single matrox cards with two physical dvi
jacks driving two panels. Either stitched together GUI or in GUI/GUI
or GUI/cons modes. Maybe not, either way, I can live without.

>> chipsets

> Intel is the likely candidate here, but I'm having trouble with
> Intel chips lately, so stability may be a factor.

My old gear doesn't cut it, but I was able to watch a dvd on a
loaner IntelIGP Dell 2350. Maybe a little choppy but likely user
error.

> The Radeon IGPs should work fine as far as I know right now, so
> if you can find one of those that meets your needs, you should be
> in good shape.

The AMD 790GX chipset has a Radeon HD-3300 in it. I've seen mobos
with it, DVI-D and DSUB-15 all onboard. So I'm getting closer.

http://my.ocworkbench.com/2008/gigabyte/GA-MA790GP-DS4H/g1.htm
Rats, no ECC ram. And no, I don't overclock.

>> tuner

> Jason's cx88 driver (in ports) supports several cx88 based cards,
> both digital and analog. http://corona.homeunix.net/cx88wiki

Thx, will look, need OTA, rest is optional, so this might work.
Has anyone ported the pchdtv.com HD-5500 over yet?

>> amd: phenom x3 8450e 2.1GHz, athlon x2 5050e 2.6Ghz or 5600+ 2.9Ghz

> If it were me I'd look at Phenom II at least x2, maybe x3 or x4
> depending on pricing. Decoding HD video in real time without GPU
> assist needs a lot of CPU.

Well, if I was watching what appeared to be deinterlaced dvd [MPEG2
480p] on that Intel 1.8Ghz, then I'm hoping a 2.1Ghz or better will
do 1080p. Need to find a 15sec raw HD stream to test the CPU and
mplayer with.


> I spent the weekend playing around with some very cheap nvidia
> graphics cards, playing with VDPAU. If you were wanting something
> very cheap to decode and deinterlace HD MPEG4/AVC/H264, VC-1 or
> MPEG2, then this is where it is at.

I don't think any of those applies to me as I'm only looking for
480p dvd and OTA HDTV/1080p. They're MPEG2 AFAIK.

> With a 30 Geforce 8400 GS, I
> could decode/deinterlace a 1080i 22 MBps MPEG4 AVC stream, using
> 3-5% CPU (without acceleration, 70-90% CPU usage and occasionally
> dropped frames). Playing back 1080p x264 content used 3-5% CPU
> (without accel, 100% CPU usage, 3-4 dropped frames a second). This
> was with a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo, 7-STABLE and the nvidia 180.44 driver.

1080p, Core 2 2.2 GHz, pegged and dropped. Thx for the reference
numbers! I added GHz to the CPU's above. They're the highest GHz
at 65Watt or less and happen to be under $80 as an unexpected bonus.
It gets pricy [$150++] and hot [95W/140W] to go faster or more cores
after that sweet spot. Are both the CPU cores pegged? With what
processes, the player and xorg eating up each CPU?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Phenom_microprocessors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Athlon_X2_microprocessors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_Athlon_64_X2_microprocessors

> Obviously, being a nvidia binary blob, there are certain major
> downsides (no amd64, no source code, no guarentee of support), but
> to get similar performance from a software decoder would be impossible.

Doesn't 'without accel' mean everything is being done in software,
ie: mplayer, by the CPU and more or less being sent straight to
some sort of dumb digital framebuffer on the video card, translated
to DVI-D and out to LCD.

Also don't know what all these new acronyms are... EXA, Xv, XvMC,
UVD, UVD2, VDPAU, VAAPI. More stuff to google. Thx, heh.

Keep in mind, I'm still running an old Riva128, it's about as dumb
as an ISA bus Trident/Tseng, hah :) So yeah, the digital stuff is
all new to me. More reading to do.

> Do they actually have Xv running *correctly* yet?

Methinks some of what I ask is better suited for the xorg lists.
Wish I knew what the FreeBSD kernel portion of these video bits
does for me? Like this DRM thing. Other than those parts, I think
everything else is the xorg guys. Is video4bsd going anywhere?

Certainly the foundation could support a bona fide committer with
a card, especially if the vendor docs are in hand.

As a side note... maybe the various supported hardware lists [wiki,
release notes, handbook, mailing lists] could be integrated. Then
add in a way that users can submit go/no_go notes on their own as
well. Sometimes they seem rather dated and short given the variety
of gear out there. If it were me, I'd wikify it.