[MPlayer-users] advantages of xmga vs XV
Stephen Mollett
molletts at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 6 23:44:47 CEST 2004
Hi,
On Tuesday 06 Jul 2004 21:17, Malte Gell wrote:
> Do I see it right that the advantage of xmga is that it has more
> advanced buffering compared to xv? Are there more or other advantages,
> like lower CPU consumption?
It does offer lower CPU usage: with xv, the frames are decompressed into a
buffer which is then copied (by the X server) into the video card's memory,
whereas with (x)mga, the video can be rendered directly into video RAM - a
bit like DGA but in its native colourspace rather than in RGB.
(Aside: surely such direct access functionality could be implemented in the X
server as an extension to the existing architecture, either as a YUV variant
of DGA or as a direct-access variant of XVideo...? This would allow higher
performance rendering on many more chipsets than are supported by the current
batch of special drivers.)
> Does xmga have any disadvantages or should a Matrox user always prefer xmga
> over xv?
I'm not sure on that one, but I would imagine that, because the mga_vid driver
does things "behind the back" of the X server, there could be the potential
for problems in some cases.
Having said that, I've been using xmga for a long time with my G400 and have
never had any problems.
Regards,
Stephen
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