Old NVIDIA card, new FreeBSD = failure?

[RW]

On Mon, 28 Jun 2021 17:19:05 -0700
Kevin Oberman wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 3:11 PM RW via freebsd-questions <
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org> wrote:

> > I wonder if hardware decoding is actually important on desktop
> > processors. I'm using integrated Intel HD 2500 graphics from
> > 8 years ago with the i915 driver and, AFAIK, I'm seeing 3d
> > acceleration, but not getting hardware decoding for video.
> >
> > 1080p x264 decoding in software is using only about 28% of a core
> > with vlc, 4k video on a 1080p display is about 180%. This is on an
> > 8 year old, bottom of the range, quad core, sandy bridge i5 cpu.
> > _______________________________________________
> >  
> On an 8 year old i915, I'm guessing Ivy Bridge, you should get video
> acceleration with libva-intel-driver.

Thanks, that does work. And it is ivy bridge rather than sandy bridge. 

> On my 10 year old Sandy Bridge system the CPU
> utilization for playing an H.264 encoded video dropped CPU from 60%
> to about 10%. I could even play video with a compile running as long
> as the compile was niced.

I've not noticed any impact on video from compiling, unless I run with
the default value of kern.sched.preempt_thresh. Perhaps we've found the
point at which hardware decoding became relatively insignificant.

I've only recently got the Intel graphics working. I originally fell
back to using an old nVidia card. If you followed the UPDATING advice
exactly nVidia video support fell-off with kernel mode-setting,  and I
didn't notice. I only found out because someone pointed it out in this
list, and he only noticed it in top.