# slow video playback with nvidia card and kernel 2.6

## jtorrance

hi!

there seems to be a bug in the nvidia drivers when being used with a 2.6 kernel which results in a very low performance when playing back video (cpu load 80%). this affects mostly pci cards. i searched the nvidia forums and google but couldn't find a solution. does anybody know of a patch/config hack that solves this problem?

thanks

kevin

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## opopanax

in what media player?  all media players?  what codecs are you using?  if mplayer, what draw method are you using (in config options)?

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## Xamindar

I notice this too on my machine:

kernel 2.6.8-r3

latest nvidia drivers

latest xorg-x11

from ~x86

I can't figure it out.  Even my Descent3 game intro movie severely studders with big gaps of no sound (same thing used to happen on my system with mandrake8 a couple of years ago)  The intro to this game ran fine when I had freshly installed gentoo.  It is really annoying.

Someone mentioned here in the forums that the kernel pre-emptive thing causes this but I haven't tested it.

I am going to try turning off the composite extentions and see if that is the problem.

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## John5788

i dont notice any problems. i have 5900XT and gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.9-r1

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## jtorrance

hi!

i found a some kind of a workaround. since i only use the gf2mx for watching movies, i switched to the nv driver. nvtv works for those as well. but those still produce problems. first: i can't quit x and restart it. if i do so, my computer freezes (or maybe only the display, i don't do that very often since it isn't working. maybe i could still ssh into the box) and second: i tried to watch a movie in a hdtv resolution (9xx x 7xx) and i again had a cpuload of 90%. maybe the card/nvdriver isn't able to scale videos down. watching the movie on my ati card worked fine. i didn't do much debugging on this issue. just didn't have the time, but if it persists i have to try some things (reduce desktop resolution, so that the ati driver has to scale down to, reduce resolution on the gf2mc and so on). unfortunately i completely removed the kernel 2.4. i'd like to know if the nvidia driver has the same problems with scaling down.

since the nvidiadriver problem is related mostly to pci cards i don't expect any help from nvidia. they haven't released a new driver in a very long time and i don't think this is one of their main concerncs.

kevin

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## Realmaker

Hello

I have also a problem with videos:

When i try to watch a movie in full screen mode i see many horizontal lines and this is very annoying  :Confused:  Where do they come from? The nvidia module is loaded and glx is working. i'm using the newest drivers, 2.6.9_rc4-mm1 and xorg 6.8.0-r1

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## enrique

When I use nVidia's driver, I get very choppy playback, but with the open source nv driver I get a smooth playback. I belived that nVidia's drivers perfomed better, but they don't.

Realmaker: I also get "horizontal lines" I think it goes under the name "image tearing" I will lock into that.

btw, my system specs are: Asus CUSL 2, 566 Mhz Celeron, nVidia TNT 2 Ultra 32mb.

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## pro547

I have the exact some problems I have been trying stuff all day.

System Specs are P3 500MHz 192 of ram  Have a PCI gf4.  I tried nv and the nvidia drivers but its just so slow and chopping.

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## enrique

I have opgraded to a PIII 800Mhz and a GeForce4 MX440, it's almost 100% smooth, but I get some dropped/skipped frames in xine.

Cpu load is around 30%

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