Reply 20 of 36, by Standard Def Steve
wrote:After installing the ATI X550 EZ PCI-E card into the Opteron 180 system, the 2D Video playback went from 24.9 fps (HD4350 AGP) to 43.6 fps (X550 PCI-E). Recall it was 31.9 fps on the i915-Prescott 3GHz system w/X550. 2D Graphics memory went from 522 fps (HD4350 AGP) to 292 fps (X550). Recall that it was 219 fps on the i915-Prescott 3GHz system w/X550.
I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this information except that the Opteron 180 system is a good deal faster than i915/i875 systems w/Prescott 3 GHz. Perhaps that 2D Video playback on the HD4350 isn't very good? Is this the benchmark which is responsible for viewing FLASH and HTML5 content in web browsers? If so, should I change the graphics card? To what? Ideally, I'd like to stick with AGP graphics to leave the PCI-E slot open for future, non-graphics, expansion cards.
I knew that Opty could do better! 😀
It's probably the AGP bridge on the HD4350 that's tanking your scores. The 4350 GPU itself should be faster than the X550 at 2D Video playback, but the AGP versions of the HD2000-4000 series are known to be quite buggy as far as graphics cards go.
Had one meself a few years ago--HD3850 AGP--and never really liked it because of the unpredictable performance. The AGP x1950, despite also having a bridge chip, was a better card because it was officially sanctioned by ATI. The HD2000-4000 on the other hand were all up to 3rd party board makers.
If you prefer AGP, then the Radeon x1000 series would be the newest cards I'd recommend from ATI. For nVidia, well that depends. You say the board is based on a ULI chipset. IIRC, some boards with ULI chipsets simply used ULI as a southbridge, and used ATI or VIA for PCIe/AGP control. How's your board set up?
Some VIA AGP controllers had issues with bridged nVidia cards like the 6600GT. If your AGP control is provided by ULI or ATI, then you should be fine with everything right up to the GeForce 7000 series.
Honestly though, I think a PCIe graphics board would be the highest performing and most trouble-free solution by far. If you want fully hardware accelerated 264 decoding, then PCIe is your only practical choice. Although, an Opteron 180 will be able to handle 1080p 264 decoding all by itself, just at much higher power levels.
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