[MPlayer-users] Re: best graphical card for mplayer

[Jonathan Rogers]

Sergei Klink wrote:
> Relatively recently - a few weeks ago - that was a TNT2 and a GeForce, I 
> believe. The TNT2 was on a dual p3-450 and after it somehow compiled the 
> module, xfree kept crashing from time to time when using 3d, as well messing 
> up framebuffer console, whoever's fault that is. The single cpu with GeForce 
> was better(though I admit I wasn't working with that one much), but still 
> seems to crash sometimes especially when switching between VTs(although that 
> might not be exactly the driver's problem). But yes, this is quite some 
> improvement from several years ago :) ; nevertheless, there is no way I'm 
> ever going to recommend an Nvidia card to anybody, unless with a very tight 
> budget _and_ pretty low expectations. Oh, and it makes me feel a bit better 
> when I know that I have at least two different drivers to choose from :) But 
> that's just silly me :)
> Saying all that, I still could really use a good third option...

I have no experience with SMP machines. One thing you defintely don't 
want to do is use the proprietary X driver at the same time as the 
kernel framebuffer driver. It should work, but it's just an invitation 
for hangups. I've certainly had problems and I wouldn't say I'm 
satisfied with NVidia's support of their hardware, but can you give an 
example of graphics hardware that does XVideo and OpenGL acceleration 
with no hassle? If so, that's great, but I was under the impression that 
most powerful graphics accelerators currently have issues on Linux. On 
*BSD, I'm sure support is even worse.

Jonathan Rogers