I've got an Athlon 65 3200+
When watching live TV, mythfrontend is at about 40-50% CPU utilization (according to top) with an AirStar HD-5000

I'm using R5E50.

Now, it seems that possibly XVMC may help things, but I'm a bit confused.

The wiki seems to indicate that I have to compile and setup xvmc? Is this not "ready to go" in .20?

I also see in the UPGRADE section that the path for xvmc is wrong (so I guess it also is wrong on a fresh install?)

The wiki also indicates that the proprietary nvidia drivers aren't included? Or are they in R5E50?

I guess there doesn't seem to be an "official" updated "how to" for xvmc.

Do I need to download and install the proprietary nvidia drivers?
Do I need to install/setup xvmc?
Do i need to change the path?

How do I verify what driver version I'm at?

This is on a clean install of R5E50.

I changed the path as per the upgrade docs, and restarted the back-end.

Then I went into the Setup -> Playback and set it for xvmc.

But if I do that, I get a "failed to reinit video" when trying to watch LiveTV.

So for now I've disabled it.

I'm guessing I do have to compile/setup xvmc then?

No, xvmc is ready to go in R5E50 (apart from the incorrect path).

Post a bit of info about your system, and perhaps include your /etc/X11/xorg.conf "Device" section.

_________________
Perth, Western Australia.

R5F1
P4 3.2Ghz (Northwood)
AsRock P4i65G
Nvidia FX5200 (Fanless)
512Mb PC 3200
2 x WDC WD1200JB-00FUA0 120Gb PATA
Atheros AR5212 802.11abg NIC
DVD-RW ASUS DRW-1608P2S
2 x DVICO DVB-T Lite

Thanks.

Asus Pundit P1-AH1
Athlon64 3200+
512 MB SDRAM (I'm getting another 512 MB tomorrow)
Seagate SATA-160 drive
AirStar HD-5000 card (that's what I'm watching now)
PVR-150 card (I don't have it hooked up to the STB yet).

Now, the Asus system has a Geforce 6150 (and it claims that Myth/Linux found the 6150 card). I believe this is an embedded AGP card with shared RAM.

Right now I'm hooked up to a 15" LCD monitor (I didn't want to drag it down to the HDTV yet).

"stock" everything in the R5E50 code (ie, no other patching, upgrading, etc.)

The only thing extra I did was enable SAMBA.

When I do a "top", mythfrontend is now sitting around 45-60% CPU utilization (liveTV)

X.org is MAYBE (the highest I've ever seen it) at 3%. Usually it's 1% or less

So now I'm not sure if Xvmc will help any.

Here's my "device" section in the etc/x11/xorg.conf

Generally speaking, people seem to have seen an improvement in CPU utilisation after upgrading to the latest Nvidia drivers (http://www.mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=13443&highlight=r5e50+nvidia), and then making some modifications to xorg.conf

After upgrading to the 9746 drivers from the Nvidia website, my xorg.conf now has the following in the "Device" section:



The NvAGP parameter can be changed between 1-3 and alters which AGPGart the driver uses.

These changes made a huge difference for me.

_________________
Perth, Western Australia.

R5F1
P4 3.2Ghz (Northwood)
AsRock P4i65G
Nvidia FX5200 (Fanless)
512Mb PC 3200
2 x WDC WD1200JB-00FUA0 120Gb PATA
Atheros AR5212 802.11abg NIC
DVD-RW ASUS DRW-1608P2S
2 x DVICO DVB-T Lite

I found that doing the following in /etc/modutils/aliases right after the nvidia line, seems to help too.



I forgot where I found this but IIRC, all three were identified either from lspci or cat'ing something in /proc to know if the capabilities exists. My card is a 5200.