[MPlayer-users] Mplayer performance on Upgraded PowerBook Wallstreet

[Ivan Kowalenko]

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On Jul 18, 2006, at 11.32, larrystotler at netscape.net wrote:

> hello everyone.  I have a question about playback performance on my  
> son's PowerBook.  I just upgraded the cpu from the stock 233Mhz G3  
> w/ no L2 cache to a Powerlogix G3/466 w/ 1MB L2 cache.  Considering  
> that my Thinkpad 390X w/ a P-III 450Mhz can play xvids with no  
> problems, I was really dissapointed to see the playback with this  
> new processor on the PowerBook.  Even Mpeg2 playback is jerky and  
> unwatchable.  I have completely recomplied everything(yasm, xvid,  
> x264, libmad, mp3lame, libavcodecs, Mplayer - in that order) with  
> the same results in case their was a significant difference in the  
> processors with the same results.  Now, the onboard video is  
> evidently a PCI based version of the ATI Rage LT pro with 4MB VRAM,  
> and the sound is the stock Apple.  I even removed the sound modules  
> and tried running Mplayer to see if it was the audio driver and no  
> luck.  So, my question is:
>
> Is the laptop capable of playing movies without the hardware  
> Cardbus decoder card?

What? I don't think MPlayer even knows what that chunk 'o hardware is  
(let alone me). MPlayer tends to do everything in software. The only  
hardware it really uses is XvMC, and that's not supported on ATI  
cards. I'm not sure OpenGL would work too well for you (and I doubt  
that would have anything to do with this decoder card you're talking  
about)

> Would it help if I had a G4 w/ the Alltivec support instead of the G3?

More than likely, yes. Assuming you have a compiler that does AltiVec  
compiling decently (I've heard some versions of the GCC don't do so  
well with that).

> Would I be better off with a newer powerbook, like a Lombard or  
> Pismo, or even a G3 iBook?  Or a G4?  a PowerBook with an AGO  
> graphics adapter(my Thinkpad 390X is a Neomagic 256/AGP 1x with  
> 2.5MB VRAM)

Again, those video cards shouldn't make too much of a difference.  
None of them have XvMC, and XvMC is only good for MPEG-2 decoding.

>   Mt Thinkpad 600 P-II 300Mhz was actually better than this G3/466  
> and it had PCI video as well(although still really unwatchable).
>
> I am running openSuSE v10.0 with GCC 4.02 as the compiler and the  
> newer Mplayer1.0pre8.  openSuSE v10.1 will not install on this  
> machine.
>
> Any help would be greatly appriciated.  Thanx

This is really rather odd, given that that G3/466 should outpace your  
PIII/450 by a long shot. It's either serious code inefficiencies for  
PowerPC, or there's something really unusual with your Wallstreet.
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