Re: G3's, G4's, Altivec, DVD's, iBooks, and TiBooks

[Michel Dänzer <daenzer@debian.org>]

On Tue, 2001-10-23 at 20:56, Nicolas Lopez wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 08:17:55AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 02:14:39PM +0200, Michel D?nzer wrote:
> > > It might be. On this good ol' PowerBook with a 400 Mhz G3, about a third
> > > of the frames are skipped or dropped. And as the software seems to be
> > > improving rather quickly in this area, the new iBooks might soon be well
> > > enough for smooth DVD playback.
> > 
> > Are there people actively working on this?  The mood I was getting was
> > that G3's weren't work the trouble.  I myself don't have much in the way
> > of PowerPC assembly brains, or video processing mojo.
>   Don't listen to the nay-sayers.
> 
>   A PII/266 with a Rage128(not pro) can sustain 20fps on DVDs under Linux.
> There is no good reason a G3/366 can't do the same.

At least two reasons: MMX and MTRR. Even without those, the G3/366
should do 15-20, which is quite remarkable.

> And a 500 or 600 should be able to go all the way.

My words. ;)


>   I have my doubts that Apple is even using those features, because if you
> try to play a DVD under OS9 or OSX it will make the system unusable. You
> watch the DVD and that's all you do. Might just be playing scheduling tricks
> though.

Even if it doesn't use those features, it most definitely uses DMA and
AGP a lot more than we currently can.


-- 
Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
XFree86 and DRI project member   /  CS student, Free Software enthusiast