<div dir="ltr">The good news is Tyan Dual Processor core2 platforms have never been cheaper and the new Intel processors are on there way which will drive the current cost of a Quad core processor down even further.<br><br>
8 cores should serve any beef box well!<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 1:43 PM, Olding, Jim <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:JOlding@gts.gaineycorp.com">JOlding@gts.gaineycorp.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">---<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d">Second, mplayer is slow on the PS3. I wanted to try Linux on the PS3 as<br>
a cheaper alternative to buying a box beefy enough to transcode videos<br>
on the fly. No dice. Checking /proc/cpuinfo revealed two 3GHz PPC<br>
processors with Altivec support, which should make it more than a match<br>
for my x86_64 Ubuntu install on my laptop (a dual-core Intel T2370<br>
running at 1.73GHz). At least, I thought it would. I tried two<br>
Nostromo Divx 5 AMVs (HypnoStrobe and HypnoStar) and an h264 AMV<br>
(Woolongs for Nothing), and they both stuttered terribly.<br>
</div>---<br>
<br>
Sony unfortunately doesn't allow direct access to the video hardware<br>
under Linux. Everything runs under a hypervisor, so all you get is a<br>
non-accelerated framebuffer device for X with no video overlay or<br>
scaling support.<br>
<br>
However, they do allow control of the SPE coprocessors. I don't have<br>
the links in front of me right now, but there is a custom build of<br>
Mplayer that is linked against libspe, which allows for color decoding<br>
and video scaling in hardware. It worked fairly well for me, though it<br>
did seem to make X a bit unstable. I was able to watch 480p H.264<br>
encodes without issue, though 720p was still pushing it.<br>
<br>
Another option I've found to speed up Linux on PS3 was to create a swap<br>
partition on a flash drive, and set that as a higher priority swap than<br>
the disk swap.<br>
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