> > Umm, with what player did you test it? mplayer plays it very nice > > (even DVD's at the same machine) with 3% frame drops, if I remember > > back from my old machine (I gave this card and bought NVidia). G400 ss > > the most supported card in XFree with their open source drivers. > > Matrox closed source drivers are also working pretty nice, specially > > when it comes to TV out and Dual head. > > using Xine(rama), I'll look at mplayer just in case. the limit is > definitely NOT the player, more likely the display driver should be > optimized to use the hardware acceleration of interpolating the image > to full screen.
Weird. G400 got a great hardware scaler so it doesn't really change much which resolution you use since it does scaling on hardware, not software. You can check if you have Xv supported (with: xvinfo) - if you get "no adapters found" - then there's your problem. Also, mplayer is the fastest playback program. If you're using debian - then make sure you have the latest 0.90pre8 (or pre9) installed. The mplayer docs also mention some stuff regarding G400. > > > 1. my CPUs are two slow (P2/350) (but non-fullscreen is fine), > > > > How much RAM? which Window Manager? > > 512 meg, Enlightenment, what has that got to do with anything? Well, on small RAM (32, 64) it does matter as your Linux is doing lots of other things, but with 512MB RAM it doesn't matter which window manager. > > > 2. I'm not aware of some optimization options I could switch on. > > > > mtrr enabled? (/proc/mtrr) > > enabled in the kernel compile time. never looked up what it does. do I > need to switch it on with sysctl or something? If it's compiled inside your kernel - then it's ok. > > dma? (hdparm) - you'll need both for good playback. > > just the defults, hdparm says it's already working optimally (if I'm > doing the tests correctly). plus it does it from both old disks, new > disks (with 8 meg cache) and CDroms... it's NOT a matter of reading > fast and constant from the disk, there are NO frames dropped when I'm using > the xine's initial window size, it ONLY happens when I set xine to > fullscreen. Please run: xine-check and look at the results ;) > I avoid it by leaving the window size and hitting ctrl-alt-+ a few > times till it fits the screen, but it's a lame solution. It won't change anything since it's done on hardware, so increasing/decreasing resolution won't change much. > > > 3. MGA just isn't good at this stuff, time to shell out $70 for a > > > GeForce4 (I heard nVidia write the linux driver themselves), and > > > gain a TV-out in the deal. > > > > Geforce 4 on Pentium 350?? > > yeah, a dual P2/350 with half a meg of L2 cache on each CPU and onboard > ultraSCSI. Ahh! I thought you have a single Pentium 350 processor. > I might upgrade to an Athlon one day, but Celerons and Durons and their > ilk are never going to see the inside of my boxes! Depends for what purpose. for 550 NIS you get a nice processor, and everything onboard including graphics, sound, ethernet, etc - which is not a bad solution for a small purpose file server or a low end workstation. > I don't need a stronger machine, as far as I can tell, only better > drivers or chipset for the video. > > > Add to that Geforce 3 (you really don't Geforce 4 - it costs too much now, > > unless you need some hefty 3D) and it will be cheaper then Geforce 4. > > $70 for GF4 64meg with TV out is a lot? that's the most expensive GF4 I > could find, there are even cheaper ones! You're confusing graphics cards. There are few Geforce 4 based graphics cards variants - take a look here: http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=geforce4mx I assume you're going to buy the cheap version :) > > Regarding the driver - yes, they write it themselves (it's 95% same > > driver as their Windows drivers), but if you're the type of only using > > card with open source drivers, then thats something else... > > I'll go look. do I simply use 4.2 with their module as an add-on? that > would be excellent. For Nvidia? you'll need to "compile" their own kernel module (each time you change the kernel version, so keep the tarball somewhere) and you'll also need their GLX driver to install. You'll also need to change your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file from "nv" to "nvidia", and remove the "dri" module from this configuration file. The driver itself got lots of cool features, so you might want to take a look at the docs (it's Xinerama for dual screens is really good), as well as some nice stuff like "nvtv" and some tweaking programs.. Enjoy, Hetz ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
