nVidia vs. Intel

[Buffoon]

I do not play graphics demanding games. I do use hardware decoding of MPEG-4 and MPEG-2. I have to say nVidia wins hands down. The picture quality is much better with nVidia, I do not know what kind of filtering they are using but it works. I have lots of old movies, all standard definition. They are perfectly watchable with nVidia GT 430 on a big TV screen - and they look ugly with my Intel 530.

Or ... maybe I do not know how to use Intel properly? Right now I think nVidia is the king.

[Fitzcarraldo]

I use a Clevo W230SS laptop with NVIDIA Optimus hardware (GeForce GTX 860M discrete GPU plus Intel HD Graphics 4600 integrated GPU) and there is not much apparent difference between the performance of the two. I use the NVIDIA closed-source driver with the GTX 860M, and the usual Intel Linux driver with Intel IGP. I find 3D graphics is very good with the Intel IGP. I do notice a difference between the two GPUs when using CAD software: the NVIDIA GPU is definitely faster. But, for everything else, it's actually difficult to tell which GPU I'm using. I was surprised, since I had been expecting the NVIDIA discrete GPU to trounce the Intel integrated GPU. I also know someone with a higher specification Clevo laptop: a P150SM-A also with NVIDIA Optimus hardware (GeForce GTX 970M discrete GPU plus Intel HD Graphics 4600 integrated GPU). He told me the performance of the Intel IGP is good enough for his purposes and he wishes he hadn't bothered spending extra to get a higher-specification NVIDIA GPU. Mind you, neither of us play video games.
_________________
Clevo W230SS: amd64, VIDEO_CARDS="intel modesetting nvidia".
Compal NBLB2: ~amd64, xf86-video-ati. Dual boot Win 7 Pro 64-bit.
OpenRC systemd-utils[udev] elogind KDE on both.
My blog

[NeddySeagoon]

Fitzcarraldo,

Once your FPS count goes above the display vertical refresh rate, the extra frames are never seen.
Thats why its usual to lock the frame render rate to the display vertical refresh, usually 60Hz.

Buffoon,

The Intel card should be plenty good enough to play standard definition video, whatever that is to you.
That's 640x480 @30 Hz interlaced in the USA and 6540x576 @ 25Hz interlaced elsewhere.

The trick here is the deinterlace. 'Fast' deinterlace throws away one field and shows you the same field
twice. That's really ugly, as there isn't enough information in the video to start with and half of it is being thrown away.
You may be using the nVidia hardware decode.

The Intel chip will want software deinterlace. That's up to your player to organise.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Buffoon]

This is not deinterlacing, this is some sort of smoothening filter nVidia has in hardware. I had another box with nVidia ION and it was not that good. My impression is Intel plays these videos as they are, but nVidia GT 430 actually enhances the picture.

[The Doctor]

I'm running an i7 (I couldn't say which of the top of my head) with the built in graphics. I can play blu-ray movies and they look quite good. The only catch is that VLC can't handle it for some (known bug) reason. I have switched to using mplayer and everything is extremely smooth. To be exact, I use mplayer -lavdopts threads=4
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First things first, but not necessarily in that order.

Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box.

[dweezil-n0xad]

I use the modesetting driver on my i7 with HD4000 Graphics. This fixed the occasional tearing problems I had with the intel driver (even with the tearfree option). Great performance and smoothness. I watch a lot of HD movies on my laptop and they look great. I use smplayer + mpv.
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i7-4790K | 16GB DDR3 | GTX 970 | 500GB SSD
ASUS N56VV | i7-3630QM | 12GB DDR3 | GT 750M | 256GB SSD

[Ant P.]

Nvidia invented VDPAU, so it makes sense they'd support most of its features like fancy upscaling. Intel cards use VAAPI by default, which only looks like it exposes hw decoders. Maybe you can get better quality by forcing the intel chip to use vdpau somehow. You'd need to enable it in Mesa at a minimum.

[Buffoon]

Mesa is built with vaapi and vdpau. Yet, players are unable to use vdpau. I wonder what am I missing, libva-vdpau-driver and libvdpau are installed.

[John R. Graham]

[NeddySeagoon]

John R. Graham,

Thank you.

I still recall the 377i monochrome system used in the UK before the introduction of the PAL colour broadcast system.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[Roman_Gruber]

Well as your title suggests.

I think my next box may be AMD APUs when I buy a new box. When I buy an used one, like I did last year its probably nvidia without the intel gpu in use. (ASUS still has some hardware without the intel gpu connected to the output) But never ever again those intel gpu crap. Playing youtube is a pain in the ass with some intel gpus / using some desctop environments.

Reference: kernel.org + some celeron / pentium type cpus from 2013-201X => gpu artifacts, freezing (hell yeah)

A gpu with its own gpu ram always is the better choice as those integrated intel gpus.

AMD seems to focus on providing nice open source drivers and nice APUs.

[Fitzcarraldo]

I will certainly make a lot of effort to avoid NVIDIA Optimus hardware in future; I found it a configuration headache in Linux.
_________________
Clevo W230SS: amd64, VIDEO_CARDS="intel modesetting nvidia".
Compal NBLB2: ~amd64, xf86-video-ati. Dual boot Win 7 Pro 64-bit.
OpenRC systemd-utils[udev] elogind KDE on both.
My blog

[Buffoon]

Intel just scored some major points, my i3 does HEVC decoding in hardware. My GT430 nVidia did not. New (expensive) nVidia cards do HEVC, not many of these yet. I think you need at least feature set F for HEVC. But interestingly enough my Intel does not MPEG-4 (XviD, etc.), but does MPEG-2.