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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

ATI Mach64 4MB RAM, no heat sinks, plays DVDs in vesa mode and also in x11 
-noaspect 800x600 WITHOUT LOSING SOUND.  (Black and white, anyway).

This card beat all the others . Heat sinks and fans and lots of memory are 
apparently for games, not DVDs, despite one website saying you needed a 
faster card (for 400MHz computers).

It produces squarer looking text.


On Fri, 3 Jun 2005, sindi keesan wrote:

> I just tested, in VESA and x11 modes (-noaspect): Three AGP cards with Nvidia 
> GeForce2 MX400 (Inno3d) MX420 (PNY) and Ti (Asus), all with heat sinks and 
> big fans, the 420 also with a round PS/2 size TV out port. The MX's have 64MB 
> RAM, the Ti 32MB but it is supposed to be faster RAM.
>
> One PCI Voodoo 3dfx with 16MB RAM (to 1280 resolution 24-bit color) which I 
> know works as framebuffer so is probably vesa 2.0 - how can I test?
>
> None of these will do svgalib properly - garbage on exit - or test with 
> whatvga2 or work in Compushow (runtime error 200).
>
> cpu 605MHz PIII, 256MB RAM.
>
> Black and white Cary Grant movie.
>
> The Nvidia's all played a DVD perfectly in VESA 2.0 mode.
> The VooDoo did not work with -vo vesa - just exited to the prompt.
>
> The Nvidia's all lost their sound in x11 mode, even with -noaspect, on a 
> black and white movie that was moving slowly, in about 20 seconds (halfway 
> through the credits).  (In a previous movie the credits were shorter and 
> there was a lag between sound and lips - not sure which came first - and THEN 
> the sound cut out shortly after, and people were moving slowly, but that was 
> a color movie.  And in the other movie the credits were relatively quiet, 
> whereas this movie played Brahms.)
>
> In x11 mode the VooDoo PCI kept going with sound but occasionally the sound 
> would arrive before the lips moved.  After that things would match up again 
> for a while.  No sign of losing sound, or of slow motion.
> So this card is usable in x11 and might be better with -framedrop.
>
> SO:
>
> 1.  The amount of meomory is irrelevant in cards with at least 16MB.
> 2.  The speed of the memory (main difference between MX and TI) is not 
> important either.
> 3.  MX400 and 420 act the same as the Ti and each other.
> Any Nvidia GeForce2 card works in VESA mode but in x11 mode it loses sound 
> and may also give slow motion even with -noaspect.  With -framedrop it works.
>
> 4.  Voodoo did not work in PCI mode, but worked a lot better than the nvidia 
> in x11 mode and is therefore likely to be just fine with a slightly faster 
> cpu.  It would probably work better with -framedrop than the Nvidias.
>
> PCI is just as good as AGP.  Someone else measured a 5% improvement in speed 
> in some gave with AGP, same card.
>
> Voodoo should work perfectly on a slightly faster cpu in x11 (probably needs 
> -framedrop otherwise, at least for color movies), and
> Nvidia GeForce2 works perfectly in vesa mode at 600MHz but not in x11 without 
> -framedrop (except for black and white movies without a window manager).
>
> Should I test a 4MB 3DTrio or ATI Mach64 AGP card with DVD playing?
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org