[Ask] Nvidia features on linux

[deanjo]

Just wondering, what's the temperature of the GPU while playing 1080p with high bitrate (say... 20 mbps) ?

Should get no higher then regular idle temps, none of the many nvidia cards that I use increase temps greater then 1 degree C despite playing 1080p h264s at even higher bitrates then 20 Mbps.

[Kano]

The temp is not that important, but cards with active cooling will use a higher fan speed because those cards with dynamic clocking will increase the clockspeed compared to xv output. This can be fully avoided with passively cooled cards of course.

[deanjo]

The temp is not that important, but cards with active cooling will use a higher fan speed because those cards with dynamic clocking will increase the clockspeed compared to xv output. This can be fully avoided with passively cooled cards of course.

That must be dependent on the card Kano. None of my actively cooled cards ramp up fans when vdpau content is played.

[Kano]

I can definitely hear the faster fan with my GT 220. A 9400GT has got only one power level, there is no diff. Mainly you hear those small fans after a while very loud, interestingly i got a replacement for a 2nd hand Club3D 9400 GT without a problem - the old fan was very loud. As it is often possible to get those cards passively cooled too i would say they are the better options. When you use cards from the midrange/high performance class the cooling solutions usually are much bigger (and would require a slower fan speed) - those should not compared to low budget solutions.

[deanjo]

I can definitely hear the faster fan with my GT 220. A 9400GT has got only one power level, there is no diff. Mainly you hear those small fans after a while very loud, interestingly i got a replacement for a 2nd hand Club3D 9400 GT without a problem - the old fan was very loud. As it is often possible to get those cards passively cooled too i would say they are the better options. When you use cards from the midrange/high performance class the cooling solutions usually are much bigger (and would require a slower fan speed) - those should not compared to low budget solutions.

Well the cards I use vdpau that have active cooling on are the GTX 275 and two different 8800GT's. None of them increase the fan speed at all even after hours of viewing high bitrate h264 videos. In the case of the 8800GTs they have the plain jane reference coolers on them.

[Kano]

It is very unlikely that you would ever put those cards in a simple htpc. But with good ears you can hear the switch from the lowest powermizer level to the next on low budget cards - especially when your pc is on the desk.

[deanjo]

It is very unlikely that you would ever put those cards in a simple htpc.

When you have a few laying around doing nothing they work just fine.

But with good ears you can hear the switch from the lowest powermizer level to the next on low budget cards - especially when your pc is on the desk.

That would depend on the cooling solution that is on the card and the thermal levels that it's BIOS are set at to ramp up the fans.

[deanjo]

FYI, the bug fixes in the latest 260 series has this listed.

• Fixed a race condition in OpenGL that could cause crashes with multithreaded applications.
• Fixed a bug that may cause OpenGL applications which fork to crash.
• Fixed a bug in VDPAU that caused it to attempt allocation of huge blocks of system memory. This regression was introduced in the 260.* driver series.

[Kano]

It's interesting that you don't believe me until you read it in a release note Will test that driver later.

[deanjo]

It's interesting that you don't believe me until you read it in a release note Will test that driver later.

It's not that I don't believe you Kano, I'm usually using their unreleased developer drivers before they are released to the public and the issue there has been fixed for a while.