Re: mplayer / divx

[Niklas Hoglund <niklas.hoglund@telia.com>]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 12:22:35PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 12:06:10AM -0700, Aaron Lehmann wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 08:47:53AM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > > There is i386, i386 with mmx, i386 with 3dnow and a few other
> > > variations. Lots of options to choose from.
> > 
> > So with the ones you listed, we're talking about i386 vs. Pentium
> > MMX and up vs. K6/Athlon. As I said, my impulse is to go with the Pentium
> > optimization since it's a very safe bet. [...]
> 
> For the record, mplayer is acceptably fast in a build with no
> optimisations other than -O2 (i386 instruction ordering, no MMX, no
> nothing), on my Athlon @800. It doubtless could use less CPU cycles,
> but I really don't do much else while watching video streams.
> 
> The only real challenge is the borderline processors...

Like my AMD K6-2.  Works well for most movies, but some are almost
unwatchable because they skip so much (with -framedrop). I compiled mplayer
locally, so I have some of the optimizations. I'd say the best alternative
would be to make mplayer detect processor type at runtime and use the
relevant routines, but lacking that one package for i383, one for MMX and
one for 3dnow would be nice.

-- 
                                                Niklas