NVidia 8800 GTS, driver 275 and VDPAU ? [Solved]

[HolgiB]

Hi all,

I did a fresh install of Sabayon 6.0 XFCE on my media box yesterday. The system consists of the following components:
- Opteron 170 (2x2Ghz)
- 2GB RAM
- GeForce 8800 GTS
- 640 GB WD Green SATA HDD

From the various sources in the www I found there are both statements that my 8800 GTS should support VDPAU (namely h264 GPU based decoding) as well as statements that only newer GPUs such as the 9000 family is required for VDPAU.
VDPAU info gives me pretty much the same error as under the previously installed Ubuntu 10.04.2. Something like "unable to initialize VDPAU device".
I didn't see something special about vdpau in Xorg.0.log at a quick view yesterday.

Has anyone of you been able to run a 8800 GTS together with VDPAU ? Since my CPU is not fast enough to decode 1080p without hickups I rely on a working GPU-based decoding.
My experiments with my ATI HD4670, fglrx and GPU-based (vaapi) decoding under Ubuntu 10.04 were not very promising. So I exchanged the GPU against the 8800GTS someone generously gave to me.

From what I understand both MPlayer and VLC included with Sabayon should be able to do GPU-based decoding out off the box, right ?

Let me know if further informations are required.

TIA,
Holger

======================================================================
Edit:
Hm, I think I found the "solution" for the problem.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU

Unsupported hardware from the GeForce 8 series includes the 8800GTS 320/640 MB editions and the 8800GTX.

From: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/VDPAU

Rules of thumb: anything from before the 8xxx series is unsupported ; anything with the original G80 GPU (8800 GTX, 8800 Ultra, Quadro FX5600, the first 8800 GTS) is unsupported ; everything newer in the 8xxx, 9xxx and 2xx series should work if the driver supports the card.

In other words: My card is too old and thus does not support VDPAU. Gladly I recently grabbed a passive GeForce 9500GT at the bay which will hopefully arrive soon.

My bad: I didn't verify the PCI ID of my card:
This is listed by NVidia for supported versions of the GTS: GeForce 8800 GTS 0x0193

[HolgiB]

Unbelievable

My 9500 GT just arrive today. I exchange my 8800GTS against the 9500GT and the output of vdpauinfo looks much different

Code: Select all

display: :0.0   screen: 0
API version: 1
Information string: NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library  275.09.07  Wed Jun  8 16:04:37 PDT 2011

Video surface:

name   width height types
-------------------------------------------
420     4096  4096  NV12 YV12
422     4096  4096  UYVY YUYV

Decoder capabilities:

name               level macbs width height
-------------------------------------------
MPEG1                 0  8192  2048  2048
MPEG2_SIMPLE          3  8192  2048  2048
MPEG2_MAIN            3  8192  2048  2048
H264_MAIN            41  8192  2048  2048
H264_HIGH            41  8192  2048  2048
VC1_SIMPLE            1  8190  2048  2048
VC1_MAIN              2  8190  2048  2048
VC1_ADVANCED          4  8190  2048  2048

Output surface:

name              width height nat types
----------------------------------------------------
B8G8R8A8          8192  8192    y  Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8
R10G10B10A2       8192  8192    y  Y8U8V8A8 V8U8Y8A8

Bitmap surface:

name              width height
------------------------------
B8G8R8A8          8192  8192
R8G8B8A8          8192  8192
R10G10B10A2       8192  8192
B10G10R10A2       8192  8192
A8                8192  8192

Video mixer:

feature name                    sup
------------------------------------
DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL             y
DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL_SPATIAL     y
INVERSE_TELECINE                 y
NOISE_REDUCTION                  y
SHARPNESS                        y
LUMA_KEY                         y
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L1        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L2        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L3        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L4        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L5        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L6        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L7        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L8        -
HIGH QUALITY SCALING - L9        -

parameter name                  sup      min      max
-----------------------------------------------------
VIDEO_SURFACE_WIDTH              y         1     4096
VIDEO_SURFACE_HEIGHT             y         1     4096
CHROMA_TYPE                      y 
LAYERS                           y         0        4

attribute name                  sup      min      max
-----------------------------------------------------
BACKGROUND_COLOR                 y 
CSC_MATRIX                       y 
NOISE_REDUCTION_LEVEL            y      0.00     1.00
SHARPNESS_LEVEL                  y     -1.00     1.00
LUMA_KEY_MIN_LUMA                y 
LUMA_KEY_MAX_LUMA                y 


Playback of 1080p material works now without hickup. 50% CPU load and no problems.
Great...HDTV I am coming.