You are right!! unfortunately, I already use an mplayer I compiled for i686 with the option -O4 (it was automatically set by the ./configure command, I don't know what -O4 is: I always heard of -O3 as best optimization level).
I asked about xfree because I know the kernel shouldn't improve the speed much.
I'll try -O3 even if I think that the O4 switch, not reported as error at compile time, already optimize the code well.
Unfortunately, I cannot oveclock the system: read the specs below.
So, are there around xfree srpms I could use? If not, is following the instructions provided in the xfree site trouble free (with mandrake, I mean)?

Maybe there is another choice... linux didn't recognize my vodoo banshee pci well: mplayer cannot use it even if I enabled the appropriate options at the compile time. It seems that the 3dfx (or similar, I don't remember) device is not present.
If someone tells me (in addition to the previous question) how to be sure to have the video card recognized, I can try to use that as vodeo output (I use xv now, I tried everything but it's the fastest with my system).

Thank you very much
Olaf

At 21.15 27/12/2002, you wrote:
Don't know how hard it will be, but why don't you try to recompile divx
player/driver yourself? Probably you will get better improvement with
this than playing with kernel if you are not short of memory or running
many services at the same time. I have never played with Xfree, but it
seems to me that you could get more improvement than playing with kernel
in this precise case.
If you want to have a look on recompiling divx stuff, you'll probably
find in source files an archive called something like 'Makefile' in wich
you can change the optimization levels for gcc. Most programs (including
kernel) are optimized in level 2 (-O2) and compatible with any 386 or
(as in Mandrake) compatible with classic Pentium. Maybe you can change
this to your specific processor and change some optimizations:
-O3 --> Mainly will tell gcc that it can re-order machine level
instructions to minimize queues of instructions waiting to be procesed
-march=athlon --> Object code will be athlon processor specific.
Depending on your processor it will be i686, i586, pentium, ...
See 'man gcc' for more information are there are more options, but they
will probably give you less improvement.

I have had up to 12% improvement on a program I did myself just by using
-O3 and processor specific.

Another thing is trying to overclock a bit the graphic card and/or main
board/processor.

Good luck!!! (and tell us about!!! ;-))


**********************************
Configuration: Celeron 400 chipset sis620, 224 MB ram cas2, 40 GB HD IBM GXP 60, integrated audio CMI 8738, integrated ethernet davicom901A, PCI Vodoo Banshee 16MB (plus the sis 620 integrated in the chipset, actually disabled), LG 8080B CD-RW.
Mandrake 9 download edition.

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