Fresh lunar install

[Zbigniew Luszpinski]

On Saturday 18 of May 2013 14:14:22 Jean-Michel Bruenn wrote:
> > This warning was added by me. If you have nvidia binary driver it
> > installs vdpau driver which uses dedicated hardware to do decoding
> > with low cpu/gpu use. If you select y for mesa-lib vdapu mesa-lib
> > will build generic shader acceleared vdpau (not gpu vendor dependent,
> > just GPU needs to have shaders) which will make your GPU hot. So it
> > is better to not build it at all if you have nvidia driver to
> > preserve better vdpau from nvidia driver. Indeed message looks
> > confusing. It should be removed and block mesa's vdpau build if
> > nvidia driver is installed or question should be rewritten to not
> > confuse. e.g. "enable mesa vdpau shader based acceleration for any
> > GPU haning shaders? say no if nvidia binary driver is installed
> > because it already installed better vdpau" y/n
> 
> Hey zbiggy,
> 
> nice to read you, pal! Can you link to specific bug reports about the
> above issue? I've build with vdpau enabled, and my gpu's (two geforce
> 9800 gt in SLI mode) are between 47 and 60°C - usually 54°C which seems
> to be okay. Maybe that issue is fixed already?

There are no such bug reports. Just author of mesa-lib's vdpau wrote that 
using shader accelerated vdpau can make gpu hot when compared to use vdpau 
on dedicated video decode hardware. Simply shader acceleration is more GPU 
hungry because it is not optimized at all for video decoding than 
dedicated hardware.

My single geforce 8200 runs constantly about 75°C even on simple desktop 
without compositing :)

If you have installed nvidia(-beta) module should be protected against 
using mesa-lib vdpau even if it is installed. I gave up using lunar update 
a year ago so do not know if protection is still working. This line will 
tell you what is in use:
vdpauinfo | grep string
Information string: NVIDIA VDPAU Driver Shared Library  319.17  Thu Apr 25 
21:07:58 PDT 2013

vdpauinfo command comes from vdpauinfo module.

If you see something like this you use optimal nvidia's vdpau. If you see 
something else like gallium or mesa the worse vdpau from mesa is active.

> Do we need the vdpau module at all in linux, if nvidia ships with it's
> own?

Do not know vdpau module. Maybe it was added after Auke kicked me out so 
unsubscribed from lunar commits/updates ml.

The video stream goes thru these elements:
mplayer->vdpau library (libvdpau module)->vdpau driver (one of these: 
nvidia module or mesa-lib module with vdpau or S3 chrome driver or radeon 
open source driver)->GPU.
If you have installed all above elements it is ok.