[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] Radeon 9600 Pro vidix support

[Vladimir Mosgalin]

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Jonas Jensen wrote:

JJ>> No. Well, if you don't need opengl, that's true, you can sacrifice 8M.
JJ>> But the problem is, it doesn't work. I haven't tested it with current
JJ>> card & driver, but with my old 8500 and 2.5.1 or 2.9.12 drivers my
JJ>> computer hung up hard instantly on launch of mplayer or any opengl app
JJ>> when limiting video memory. I believe it worked a very long time ago and
JJ>> it works on matrox, but not in this case. Well, it was a dirty solution
JJ>> anyway. That patch is a hack too, but at least it works without problems
JJ>> or limitations.
JJ>
JJ>I don't see what you mean by limiting video memory. I can't say I
JJ>fully understand vidix, but the way I read it it simply tries to
JJ>place its buffer at the highest possible address in video memory,
JJ>because there will be the least chance of stepping on another
JJ>application's (X's) memory.

Don't know it it works now, but the problem you described with yuy2
existed with common yv12 as well. There was advice in documentation for
matrox and radeon card owners: you should limit video memory in
XF86Config and set there your "video memory - 4M" or about it with
VideoRam parameter. In that case, last 4M won't be used by driver, and
vidix will reside there. But later, there was a problem with this advice
when using newest radeons and fglrx drivers. Without limiting memory it
displayed garbage, with limiting it doesn't worked at all. That's where
that patch kicked in: changing dga address, and no need to limit video
memory.

JJ>The patch moves the address down by 8MB, increasing the likehood of
JJ>corrupting X's cached pixmaps, but I don't see how that can crash
JJ>anything. If that crashes, playing a 1600x1200 4:2:2 movie with double
JJ>buffering (which would also take about 8MB) should crash your computer
JJ>too, right?

No, that patch is great and works and so on ;) Problems are when trying
to get working vidix without that patch (or before its existence).

JJ>On my laptop's 4MB mach64 card I often step on X's cached pixmaps, or
JJ>even X's display itself, but that only causes graphics corruption, not
JJ>crashes.

Yes. But limiting video memory will work for you, since there are no
problems with mach64 and you aren't using fglrx driver - but you got
only 4m of it, and you don't want to limit it to 2m, right? But that's
just your case.

-- 

Vladimir