Mailing List Archive

video card?
The fan went on my nVidea GT 730, so I ordered a new card, while I wait for
the replacement fan to arrive. The new card looked a little different and
played quite a bit poorer. What graphics card does play nice with Mythtv
these days?
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 7:46 PM Daryl McDonald <darylangela@gmail.com> wrote:

> The fan went on my nVidea GT 730, so I ordered a new card, while I wait
> for the replacement fan to arrive. The new card looked a little
> different and played quite a bit poorer. What graphics card does play nice
> with Mythtv these days?
>

I've had good luck with an Nvidia clone GT-1030 fanless. (MSI Graphic Cards
GT 1030 2GH LP OC) It was recommended to me by other mythtv users.

However, due to a hardware issue with Nvidia cards on mpeg2 interlaced
content, I use OpenGL in software to do all the tough work. It helps that
the CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600.

Jim A
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On Mon, 8 Nov 2021 20:09:42 -0500, you wrote:

>On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 7:46 PM Daryl McDonald <darylangela@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The fan went on my nVidea GT 730, so I ordered a new card, while I wait
>> for the replacement fan to arrive. The new card looked a little
>> different and played quite a bit poorer. What graphics card does play nice
>> with Mythtv these days?
>>
>
>I've had good luck with an Nvidia clone GT-1030 fanless. (MSI Graphic Cards
>GT 1030 2GH LP OC) It was recommended to me by other mythtv users.

@Daryl - Yes, I upgraded to fanless Nvidia GT1030 cards over the last
year. They are fine for MythTV, but are not capable of more than
basic 4K@60 video. As you have discovered, cards with fans die early
when the fan does, but so far I have yet to have any fanless Nvidia
card die. I have one EVGA GT1030 which is a PCIe x4 card, and three
Asus GT1030s which are electronically PCIe x4 as well, but physically
PCIe x16, which is a pain as you have to use a x16 slot when a x4 or
x8 one would do. The other 12 PCIe lanes on the x16 pinout are not
connected to the video card. If you have an older motherboard or CPU
that only does PCIe 2.1 or lower, then these cards will not run at
full speed as they need PCIe 3.0 or better to get all the bandwidth
they need using their PCIe x4 pinout (as compared to the PCIe x16 used
by your old GT730). For MythTV this does not matter as MythTV
normally only uses low bandwidth as it passes the video streams to the
video card directly for it to decode, so only up to 100 Mbit/s is
really needed for that. I have used one of my Asus GT1030 cards on a
PCIe 1.1 motherboard and it did MythTV just fine. If you also want to
do other heavy graphics things where the CPU is transferring huge
bandwidth (eg some games, 3D graphic design), then you do need to have
a PCIe 3.0 or greater PC to use a GT1030 card fully. But that also
applies to any Nvidia card of that generation or later - to get full
bandwidth, you need a PCIe 3.0 or better bus.

Due to Nvidia removing driver support for older chipsets in both
Windows and Linux, you really do not want to buy any Nvidia card older
than a GT1030 now, as if the driver support is not already gone (eg my
GT220 card), then it likely will disappear within a year or so.

>However, due to a hardware issue with Nvidia cards on mpeg2 interlaced
>content, I use OpenGL in software to do all the tough work. It helps that
>the CPU is a Ryzen 5 3600.
>
>Jim A

@Jim - Lots of DVDs have MPEG2 interlaced video, and I have not had
any problems playing images of them on my GT1030 cards. Is it some
specific MPEG2 interlaced format that has a problem? Is there a
sample file somewhere I can try playing?
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On 11/9/21 4:33 AM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Nov 2021 20:09:42 -0500, you wrote:
>
> @Jim - Lots of DVDs have MPEG2 interlaced video, and I have not had
> any problems playing images of them on my GT1030 cards. Is it some
> specific MPEG2 interlaced format that has a problem? Is there a
> sample file somewhere I can try playing?


@Stephen - I haven't had any real issues with any video on my system
with Ryzen 5 3600/ GT - 1030 GFX.


I really don't see any differences between NVDEC profile or OpenGL.

I have seen discussions on this list about problems and the advice has
always been use OpenGL.

Maybe all the NVDEC stuff got fixed.

Jim A


_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 12:47 AM Daryl McDonald <darylangela@gmail.com> wrote:

> The fan went on my nVidea GT 730, so I ordered a new card, while I wait for the replacement fan to arrive. The new card looked a little different and played quite a bit poorer. What graphics card does play nice with Mythtv these days?

As I recall, there were (at least?) three different
variants of cards labeled as a GT730 by nvidia.
One used the (older) Fermi based GPU and
DDR3 memory, and two used (newer) Kepler
GPUs, and among those, one used DDR3 and
one used GDDR3 for the memory. Their
performance did, indeed, vary, and some of
the OEM vendors did not make it at all easy
to know which was which.
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 7:21 AM Gary Buhrmaster <gary.buhrmaster@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 12:47 AM Daryl McDonald <darylangela@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The fan went on my nVidea GT 730, so I ordered a new card, while I wait
> for the replacement fan to arrive. The new card looked a little different
> and played quite a bit poorer. What graphics card does play nice with
> Mythtv these days?
>
> As I recall, there were (at least?) three different
> variants of cards labeled as a GT730 by nvidia.
> One used the (older) Fermi based GPU and
> DDR3 memory, and two used (newer) Kepler
> GPUs, and among those, one used DDR3 and
> one used GDDR3 for the memory. Their
> performance did, indeed, vary, and some of
> the OEM vendors did not make it at all easy
> to know which was which.
>
> I used string to tie a big old fan onto the back of the original GT730 and
it's chugging along with temps in the mid 30's and fluid display. The new
GT730 made football look like they were playing in strobe, so I returned
it. Why does my original card do well if nVidia has pulled support? Is this
card headed for obsolescence? The new, appropriately sized fan will arrive
in "20 to 64 days"; can I expect this card to continue to do well (into the
future, with the new fan) since it does at this moment? Thanks.
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On 09/11/2021 13:23, Daryl McDonald wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 7:21 AM Gary Buhrmaster
> <gary.buhrmaster@gmail.com <mailto:gary.buhrmaster@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 12:47 AM Daryl McDonald
> <darylangela@gmail.com <mailto:darylangela@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> > The fan went on my nVidea GT 730, so I ordered a new card, while
> I wait for the replacement fan to arrive. The new card looked a
> little different and played quite a bit poorer. What graphics card
> does play nice with Mythtv these days?
>
> As I recall, there were (at least?) three different
> variants of cards labeled as a GT730 by nvidia.
> One used the (older) Fermi based GPU and
> DDR3 memory, and two used (newer) Kepler
> GPUs, and among those, one used DDR3 and
> one used GDDR3 for the memory.  Their
> performance did, indeed, vary, and some of
> the OEM vendors did not make it at all easy
> to know which was which.
>
> I used string to tie a big old fan onto the back of the original GT730
> and it's chugging along with temps in the mid 30's and fluid display.
> The new GT730 made football look like they were playing in strobe, so I
> returned it. Why does my original card do well if nVidia has pulled
> support? Is this card headed for obsolescence? The new, appropriately
> sized fan will arrive in "20 to 64 days"; can I expect this card to
> continue to do well (into the future, with the new fan) since it does at
> this moment? Thanks.
>

I have two systems with 'GT710' fanless cards and Fedora 34, with the
470 series drivers from rpmfusion. IIRC they have different memory
types. Both 'work' acceptably (for me, and not trying 4K content) with
master, but playback (and panning) on my TVs was smoother with leanfront
or, at normal speed only, via DLNA.

But obsolescence looms. This list for the 495 series driver doesn't
include GT730 or GT210, and support for 470 in individual distros may vary.

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/181274/en-us

John P
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On 11/9/21 11:45 AM, John Pilkington wrote:
> But obsolescence looms.  This list for the 495 series driver doesn't
> include GT730 or GT210, and support for 470 in individual distros may
> vary.
I would like to point out that the open source nouveau driver exists. 
https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html

It may, or may not, support your cards.  If I understand correctly,
support is better for pre-Maxwell cards, which is when NVIDIA started
requiring signed firmware.  Because of their active hostility to open
source drivers, it is generally recommended to avoid NVIDIA GPUs.


While not discrete GPUs, Intel's Haswell and Skylake integrated graphics
have worked fine for me (with a 1080p TV).
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 16:36:30 -0500, you wrote:

>On 11/9/21 11:45 AM, John Pilkington wrote:
>> But obsolescence looms.? This list for the 495 series driver doesn't
>> include GT730 or GT210, and support for 470 in individual distros may
>> vary.
>I would like to point out that the open source nouveau driver exists.?
>https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html
>
>It may, or may not, support your cards.? If I understand correctly,
>support is better for pre-Maxwell cards, which is when NVIDIA started
>requiring signed firmware.? Because of their active hostility to open
>source drivers, it is generally recommended to avoid NVIDIA GPUs.
>
>
>While not discrete GPUs, Intel's Haswell and Skylake integrated graphics
>have worked fine for me (with a 1080p TV).

The Nouveau drivers have historically not supported the Nvidia
features needed for MythTV properly. I have not tried them with
MythTV for quite some time, so it is possible that has changed. It is
likely that if you use only CPU decoding and you have a powerful
enough CPU, you would get good results. The thing least likely to
work is 1080i video (either MPEG2 or H.264), as deinterlacing is very
CPU intensive. If your normal TV is mostly 1080i, as it is in New
Zealand, it is very important that the deinterlacing is done perfectly
(at least for people like me who will see any defects). Any Nvidia
card (using its proprietary drivers and VDPAU or NVDEC) will produce a
perfect result, with very low CPU use (and therefore lower power
bills).

For those people who have H.265 broadcasts, that needs even more
powerful CPUs to handle the decoding if done in the CPU. But again,
any recent Nvidia card will handle it with ease.

I have recently had to replace my laptop, and the new one has Intel
graphics builtin (as well an Nvidia GT2060), so I should try it out
and see how well it handles our H.264 1080i TV.
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On 11/9/21 9:35 PM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 16:36:30 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
> The Nouveau drivers have historically not supported the Nvidia
> features needed for MythTV properly. I have not tried them with
> MythTV for quite some time, so it is possible that has changed. It is
> likely that if you use only CPU decoding and you have a powerful
> enough CPU, you would get good results. The thing least likely to
> work is 1080i video (either MPEG2 or H.264), as deinterlacing is very
> CPU intensive. If your normal TV is mostly 1080i, as it is in New
> Zealand, it is very important that the deinterlacing is done perfectly
> (at least for people like me who will see any defects). Any Nvidia
> card (using its proprietary drivers and VDPAU or NVDEC) will produce a
> perfect result, with very low CPU use (and therefore lower power
> bills).
>
> For those people who have H.265 broadcasts, that needs even more
> powerful CPUs to handle the decoding if done in the CPU. But again,
> any recent Nvidia card will handle it with ease.
>
> I have recently had to replace my laptop, and the new one has Intel
> graphics builtin (as well an Nvidia GT2060), so I should try it out
> and see how well it handles our H.264 1080i TV.

I also recently upgraded to a new Intel 10th gen  Core i7 laptop that
has the Intel Iris GFX and the Nvidia mobile GFX.

I run it in a mode that can switch between Intel and Nvidia. In Linux
Mint 20 you can right-click mythfrontend and run it with Nvidia GFX  if
you don't want the Intel GFX default. It saves a lot of battery to stay
in Intel GFX mode.

However, Intel GFX mode with Mythtv using the OpenGL profile is perfect
for me. I have started mythtv in Nvidia GFX mode with the NVDEC profile
and it also works great. The NVDEC profile seems to have defined both
NVDEC and OpenGL so not sure which it's running.

I'm willing to test some more, but my only media is MPEG2 ATCS OTA 1080i
or 720p. I do have some transcoded m4v H.264 stuff laying around.  I've
found that even older hardware has no issues with these.

Jim A


_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
Re: video card? [ In reply to ]
On 10/11/2021 02:35, Stephen Worthington wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 16:36:30 -0500, you wrote:
>
>> On 11/9/21 11:45 AM, John Pilkington wrote:
>>> But obsolescence looms.  This list for the 495 series driver doesn't
>>> include GT730 or GT210, and support for 470 in individual distros may
>>> vary.
>> I would like to point out that the open source nouveau driver exists.
>> https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html
>>
>> It may, or may not, support your cards.  If I understand correctly,
>> support is better for pre-Maxwell cards, which is when NVIDIA started
>> requiring signed firmware.  Because of their active hostility to open
>> source drivers, it is generally recommended to avoid NVIDIA GPUs.
>>
>>
>> While not discrete GPUs, Intel's Haswell and Skylake integrated graphics
>> have worked fine for me (with a 1080p TV).
>
> The Nouveau drivers have historically not supported the Nvidia
> features needed for MythTV properly. I have not tried them with
> MythTV for quite some time, so it is possible that has changed. It is
> likely that if you use only CPU decoding and you have a powerful
> enough CPU, you would get good results. The thing least likely to
> work is 1080i video (either MPEG2 or H.264), as deinterlacing is very
> CPU intensive. If your normal TV is mostly 1080i, as it is in New
> Zealand, it is very important that the deinterlacing is done perfectly
> (at least for people like me who will see any defects). Any Nvidia
> card (using its proprietary drivers and VDPAU or NVDEC) will produce a
> perfect result, with very low CPU use (and therefore lower power
> bills).
>
> For those people who have H.265 broadcasts, that needs even more
> powerful CPUs to handle the decoding if done in the CPU. But again,
> any recent Nvidia card will handle it with ease.
>
> I have recently had to replace my laptop, and the new one has Intel
> graphics builtin (as well an Nvidia GT2060), so I should try it out
> and see how well it handles our H.264 1080i TV.

I notice that yesterday I sent this only to Stephen: resending to list...

I'm coming back on this because I have just installed current master
(776fe08) on my old 2-core HP box with the GT710 card and 470 series
driver (mentioned earlier but with a typo) in Fedora 34.

With the VDPAU High Quality profile, VDPAU Acceleration and High Quality
driver deinterlacing, playback and skipping responsiveness is excellent
on the recordings that I have looked at. They seem better than I have
seen earlier, when I have usually used other options. In some h264
recordings from DVB-T2 there may be frequent changes between progressive
and interlaced scanning, and I believe these have caused some problems
in the past. The new code handles them well, and plays energetic
sequences from HD 'Strictly Come Dancing' with cpu loads of around 2 x 15%

I think the most relevant commit was c5819a0. Now I look forward to
seeing this with the ffmpeg resync...

John P
_______________________________________________
mythtv-users mailing list
mythtv-users@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org