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davidm

Member

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 371

[Solved] h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?

It's harder for those of us with older hardware because all the new recommendations are useless to us. Especially when you use Linux as it seems everything is talking about directX and Vista or Windows 7 which mean nothing to me.

AGP 8x
will be doing h.264 decoding and occasional editing
1920 x 1080 resolution LCD (dvi or hdmi)
dual head would be a plus for later but not vital.

Not a gamer at all.
Needs to work well with Linux, of course.

I'm running on an old P4 3.0 Ghz so if I can get the encoding/decoding offloaded (especially for flash) on to the GPU this would be a huge help.

Price < $70 on Amazon or Newegg (possibly more if it's really worth it)

I've been looking at a Radeon 2400 Pro 512MB Agp on Amazon but wanted to see if anyone had a better suggestion before I pull the trigger so to speak.

[06/17/2010 - changed subject from "Which AGP Video card would you recommend?" to "h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?"]

Last edited by davidm (2010-06-19 17:41:56)

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byte

Member

From: Düsseldorf (DE)

Registered: 2006-05-01

Posts: 2,046

Re: [Solved] h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?

HD2400?? Get an HD3650 or HD4650 (more in the 80-90$ range though) and be careful not to fall for those rip-offs with 64-bit memory interface.

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dcc24

Member

Registered: 2009-10-31

Posts: 732

Re: [Solved] h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?

As far as AGP cards go, this is possibly the best you can get:

ATI Radeon HD4670
- AGP 8X
- 1GB GDDR3 (Can't beat that)
- 128-bit memory interface (most AGP cards don't have this)
- 750MHz core / 1600MHz memory clock
- Dual output (DVI & VGA)

Link: http://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-Radeon-HD-4670- … 5133wt_911

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davidm

Member

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 371

Re: [Solved] h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?

Thanks guys.  I'm glad I didn't go with the 2400.

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davidm

Member

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 371

Re: [Solved] h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?

I guess maybe I'll update this as I have been doing more research. 

It seems the very latest AGP card you can buy is the Radeon HD4670 as recommended.  On the Nvidia side the latest seems to be the Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT.

It seems that neither of these really supports FULL hardware decoding of h.264 although both do have some sort of hardware decoding present but it requires specific software support (special configuration which I'm not sure Linux has).  From reading a wikipedia article it seems that on the Radeon side Full hardware decoding was just missed by a little bit.  As for Nvidia it seems that it uses "PureVideo" and while Nvidia released VDPAU it seems to be for later cards and does not support -- nor does it seem it ever will (?) -- the GeForce 7600GT. Someone please correct me I have some facts wrong so far.

I'd love to be able to have h.264 (and other HD formats) hardware decoding which actually works in Linux on my old P4 which only has an AGP 8x slot.  But this is starting to look like a "Mission Impossible" ... or is it?

edit: would going to a regular PCI (not PCI express) card be completely out of the question here?  While I realize the bus is quite a bit slower than AGP and it is shared with other PCI components I see that I can for example pick up a "GeForce 9400 GT" which can evidently potentially support h.264 decoding (feature set A, at least): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Pur … ature_Sets

Last edited by davidm (2010-06-18 06:15:07)

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Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,606

Re: [Solved] h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?

edit: would going to a regular PCI (not PCI express) card be completely out of the question here?  While I realize the bus is quite a bit slower than AGP and it is shared with other PCI components I see that I can for example pick up a "GeForce 9400 GT" which can evidently potentially support h.264 decoding (feature set A, at least): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_Pur … ature_Sets

It will work. See here: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=135515

Last edited by Gusar (2010-06-18 08:38:23)

davidm

Member

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 371

Re: [Solved] h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?

Thanks, I went ahead and grabbed a GeForce 8400 GS for $40.  Hopefully it's the newer core chip which has better hardware decoding but either way it's good.  The 9400 didn't seem worth the additional cost.  I'll let everyone know how it performs with the PCI bus when I get it.

I'm thinking that it's going to suit me just fine because I'm working off of a Rage 128 Pro Ultra TF with 32 MB as my backup when my GeForce4 MX 440 went bad. There's no way it can be worse than what I am running now.

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davidm

Member

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 371

Re: [Solved] h.264 hardware decoding on an AGP card in Linux?

Someone asked me for an update via email so I just realized that I forgot to post as I promised.  It's working out pretty good.  I can play 1080p h264 movies using mplayer with only about 10-30% use of my 3.0 P4 HT CPU using VDPAU.  I wasn't able to get it (x.264 GPU decoding) to work with vlc or the system ffmpeg though.  At least when I set this up many months ago.  So if anyone is just looking to be able to play 1080p h264 videos I definitely would give a VDPAU capable PCI card a shot if you have no other viable choices for your old hardware.  Using mplayer with VDPAU properly configured I don't experience any stuttering at all on my old hardware, believe it or not.

03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G98 [GeForce 8400 GS] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Device 19f1:0a5e
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
        Memory at fb000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
        I/O ports at ec00 [size=128]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at fafe0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [78] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
        Kernel driver in use: nvidia
        Kernel modules: nvidia, nouveau, nvidiafb

Last edited by davidm (2010-10-28 20:07:36)

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