I have an ATI Radeon HD2400 PCI (yes, PCI, not PCIe!) in an IBM M51 SFF (with MSI MS-7129[pdf] motherboard) which I'd like to use as an XBMC media center. I've installed a barebones Ubuntu instance (12.04 x64 with 3.2.0-30-generic) from the ubuntumini.iso to which I've only added XBMC (and X.Org of course), so it's not running any window manager other than XBMC, nor any other services other than SSH. RAM usage is unsurprisingly very low (always less than 20% of my 3 gigs) and CPU usage is around 35% (P4 HT 3GHz SL9KG) when playing an HD video (example is 1280x544 ~5Mbit/s). But while playback is almost ok, the framerate is too low (only 16fps) for HD content to be watchable, and there's a slight repetitive stutter (SD content is ultra smooth).

GPU is reported as Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV610 in XBMC.

I'm using the Gallium (radeon) driver as I have been unable to get any version of fglrx to work with my card. This is probably due to my card being PCI and not PCIe or AGP, though it says on the Catalyst 12.06 legacy driver download page:

It would be nice to have a definitive answer as to whether any version of fglrx supports any PCI cards at all. Nevertheless, when I install the fglrx driver I just get a blank screen at boot, no blinking cursor, nothing, just totally blank. So I guess Gallium/radeon is my best bet, though I don't think it supports any of the native video decoding that I think my card is capable of. Hence the problem with HD playback.

Alternatively, is it possible to improve PCI performance in some way, for example by raising the bus speed? I'm suspecting that the poor framerate is related to PCI bus overload or congestion, but seeing as this is a fairly modern GPU (relative to the PCI standard at least!) maybe there is some way I can squeeze just a little bit extra out of it? Does anyone know of any utilities which might be useful?

lspci reports:
Any suggestions most welcome!

You'll have to try the legacy driver because they dropped support for HDseries below HD5000.
I have the 4000-series & have not tried getting mine working because I have an nvidia card which is supported. I pretty sure that you can get it working.

It's quite upsetting that they dropped support & my mobo is only 3yrs old.

Many thanks for your reply!

Well I already have, and although it says on the download page that the driver supports the HD 2000 series I've not had any success, again I suspect this has to do with it being a PCI card and not PCIe or AGP. In all my hours of researching this I've not seen a single report of PCI cards working with the Catalyst driver, legacy or otherwise - if anyone has information to the opposite I would love to hear about it!

If not, it looks like I ought to get an nVidia card instead, one that supports PureVideoHD and VDPAU, as the nVidia driver support seems to be vastly better under Linux. [rant]Shame really, I always used to like the slightly more professional feel of ATI's products (yeah, ok, AMD), with drivers that felt more solid and with less over the top packaging and styling. Makes me feel queasy every time I look at the infantile imagery the computer component manufacturers use in their marketing - it's an insult to think I would be impressed by their cheesy 3D renders and ridiculous product names. And they want me to pay how much!? Ah well. As I keep trying to convince my son, there are other (potentially more rewarding) uses for a computer besides trying to get headshots in some inane online slaughterfest for sugar-high teenagers.[/rant]

Hrrrrm... anyway, PCI video cards with recent-ish GPUs are rare as hen's teeth but I've managed to find a couple with GeForce 8400 GS and 512MB RAM - can someone tell me if such a card will work under Linux, and whether the video decoding it provides will be enough to allow my system to play 1080i content at full framerate? It's a pretty expensive upgrade (£50/$75) for such an old box and I'd rather make sure before I splash out...

nvidia-glx works with that card.

Offically, no, the closed drivers dont support PCI (or AGP for that matter). I cant recall hearing of anyone getting a PCI HD 2400 going, I'm pretty sure I've seen people get AGP 2XXX-4XXX cards going with the closed drivers. IIRC it needed some manual change in the xorg.conf file to work. Sorry, I cant remember the mod that was needed, and a quick search isnt helping me find it....

Its 'work in progress/todo'-

http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature

Yes, but I wouldnt suggest doing it.

The bad framerate on 'HD' content is because without any GPU decoding or acceleration, all decoding is done by the CPU. Your CPU just hasnt got enough guts to play HD video unaided.

nVidia driver support isnt that much better than AMD/ATI IMO...but VDPAU is a lot better than XvBA.

8400GS should let you play HD video (provided that the encoding method is supported by VDPAU). I've got a similar level CPU (AMD atlhon 64 3000+, 1GB, 8400GS) and it plays 720p just fine. I havent tested with 1080i/1080p as its pointless for me (the monitor I'm using is only 1440x900 so it wont even play 1080 at full res).

That said, I'd avoid the 8400GS cards if possible. They are nasty, have several issues.

You should be able to pick up a PCI GT610 for about the same money as a 8400GS.

http://www.m4store.co.uk/components-...t-610-pci.html

ATI had/has almost the same amount of silly imagery as nVidia. IMO ATI was always let down by driver quality, I actually prefered the ATI hardware but ended up with nVidai cards due to driver issues...and that was with windows, not linux.