LibreElec and NVidia / AMD GPU's, current status

1st Official Post

    Hi there,

    approx two years ago i tried to combine my Gaming Rig and mit HTPC in a single machine. Back than the problem was that the drivers for the NVidia 1050TI i used were not really optimized. If i recall it right there was no support for the Video decoding engines at these Nvidia cards, so i abonded that idea quite fast.

    Okay two years have passed away now and i want to give it another shot. Because i plan to switch to an AMD GPU in the next couple of months i liked to asked how good the support for NVidia and AMD GPU's is today, also regarding 4K and HDR.

    Hello!

    AFAIK KODi 19 will drop Nvidia Support due to nvenc which is Not supported for Linux and the old vpdau can Not handle 4k hdr in Hardware.

    There are comunity builds which are able to do HDR with Intel 4xxx CPU Intel 600 gpu. But HDR should arrive in KODi 19 Libreelec 10.

    You can try a Milhouse Alpha KODi 19 build.

    See here

    Regards

    Nicolas

    • Official Post

    Kodi has not dropped VDPAU support for v19 and LE10 will still support nVidia chips. Our Stats show a continued decline in nVidia users and there are still more installs with older cards (legacy driver) than new ones. Although VDPAU is not technically "dead" there is no progress on 10-bit support so at some point (maybe Kodi v20) the axe will fall.

    Quote from chewitt

    Kodi has not dropped VDPAU support for v19 and LE10 will still support nVidia chips. Our Stats show a continued decline in nVidia users and there are still more installs with older cards (legacy driver) than new ones. Although VDPAU is not technically "dead" there is no progress on 10-bit support so at some point (maybe Kodi v20) the axe will fall.

    Hello chewitt!

    My mistake... X11 Support will be removed...

    But due to this also VDPAU.

    "LibreELEC 10.0 will remove support for Xorg/X11 windowing on x86_64 hardware and move the entire distro to a common DRM/GBM video framework. This change will also impact nVidia users as Kodi v19 removes support for VDPAU"

    Development Update – LibreELEC

    Edit: I found one Statement from you that Nvidia EG gtx1050 has No Support in LE 10.

    4k Linux Question?

    v19 removal of VDPAU support

    I Said vpdau doesn't Support 4k HDR and is also No longer developed.

    And nvenc has No linux Support yet. AFAIK

    Also I read alot that LE will drop Nvidia Support for LE 11.

    You states the Same Here:

    LibreELEC use intel HD instead of nvidia GPU

    "Kodi in LE v8/v9 uses VDPAU for nVidia cards, which is no longer developed, and VDPAU only supports 8-bit HEVC. LE v10 will not support X11, so unless nVidia get their VDPAU replacement sorted in the next year, LE 11 will not support nVidia cards"

    And:

    Radeon graphics card for LibreELEC 10.0

    "I lost track of AMD cards years ago so cannot comment on that model, but GTX1050 is nVidia so it will not be supported in LE10 .. or to be more specific; it will run via the nouveau driver (slowly) and you won't want to use it."

    Correct me If I am wrong.

    It would be nice to have Nvidia support. Over the Last 10 years Nvidia was the Video Card of choice. Not only for LE also for VDR (yavdr, etc). And the image quality was way better (lancosz 3 scaler and pretty good deinterlacers) than with Intel or AMD If you could use them.

    Regards

    Nicolas

    Edited 9 times, last by Nicolas (July 16, 2020 at 10:42 PM).

    My understanding was AMD/Intel Linux driver support was strong and was the direction to go which is why I invested in a new AMD card and pulled my old Nvidia.

    I sure hope AMD is supported as Intel doesn't have any add-on boards out as yet which means my x86_64 box would be junked.

    Quote from chewitt

    Although VDPAU is not technically "dead" there is no progress on 10-bit support so at some point (maybe Kodi v20) the axe will fall.

    Coming with the NVIDIA 450 Linux driver series besides CUDA 11.0 RC compatibility are:

    - HEVC 10/12-bit "decode only" support has been added to the VDPAU driver.

    - Support for image sharpening for OpenGL and Vulkan applications.

    - New 16-bit format support within the NVIDIA VDPAU driver and with that support for creating 16-bit video surfaces in the VDPAU driver.

    NVIDIA 450 Linux Beta Driver Quietly Rolls Out With New PRIME Option, Other Improvements - Phoronix

    darkside40

    So maybe a good Chance the Nvidia could Work.

    You Said it is your gaming PC so I suppose it is running windows. Have you tried to Install KODi on Windows (only the app)?

    I used this Combo on a Laptop for years because the Video drivers worked better than on Ubuntu and Openelec.

    Another Option is If your gaming PC uses a Intel CPU with build in GPU you can use that one in LE.

    monarc

    Good News thank you for the Info.

    Regards

    Nicolas

    Edited once, last by Nicolas (June 22, 2020 at 12:45 PM).

    The PC has an AMD CPU. Of course using Windows would be an alternative. The last time i tried that the disadvantage was that there was no good Hyperion Grabber for Windows, also i simply dont like Windows ;)

    But maybe HDR would be supported there,

    • Official Post

    Hmm, the VDPAU announcement of 10/12-bit support is interesting. If it works on a broad range of cards it might result in a stay of execution. If it only works on the latest cards it might not be so appealing (our stats show nvidia is mostly legacy users). It might also require someone to tweak Kodi in some areas; and there's low desire to work on nvidia things among the current core Kodi devs.

    So to be honest if i now have a NVidia Card and want to go the AMD way in the future, the Windows way seems more appealing.

    Nvidia simply sucks when it comes to open source, thats not new.

    Quote from chewitt

    If it works on a broad range of cards it might result in a stay of execution

    Maybe it would be a good idea to make a special LE branch for nvidia? It doesn't make sense that Intel/AMD is still not using Kodi-GBM because of nvidia.

    Quote from smp

    Maybe it would be a good idea to make a special LE branch for nvidia? It doesn't make sense that Intel/AMD is still not using Kodi-GBM because of nvidia.

    I only read that Image quality is better in x11.

    Regards

    Nicolas

    I don't know where you read that nonsense, the "image quality" is identical.

    With X11 you can forget about HDR. HDR is only possible with GBM+DRM PRIME.

    The fact that Nvidia will support 10-bit HEVC decode via VDPAU doesn't really make them any less useless.

    Quote from smp

    I don't know where you read that nonsense, the "image quality" is identical.

    At Archlinux, vdr and KODi Forum.

    Something Like this

    kodi-gbm requires kodi-x11?

    "why do you switch to gbm? you should have good reasons because quality of video is not as good as on X11" See the Post from fernetmenta

    I checked that 2018 or 2019 and also CPU usage was Higher on Intel by 2-7% in playback and 7-12% in idle. Which was also cofirmed by Other Users.

    "kodi-gbm may be a good choice for standalone operations since it runs Kodi directly on the GPU without the X11 layer. Setups like this will be unable to launch other graphical applications. There are some other features lacking compared to kodi (X11) including:

    • Decreased software decoding performance due to a lack of PBO support in GLES.
    • Decreased high quality upscaling and upspacing performance due to missing PBOs.
    • In general, shaders for GLES are behind those for OpenGL.
    • No support for HDR, meaning wrong colors will be renders with GLES.
    • GBM has no accurate timing for a/v sync like X11 or Wayland do."

    Kodi - ArchWiki


    Regards

    Nicolas

    Edited 2 times, last by Nicolas (July 16, 2020 at 10:35 PM).

    Quote from Nicolas

    At Archlinux and KODi Forum

    By "quality of video is not as good as on X11" he means that some features like dithering and color management are not (yet) implemented in Kodi-GBM because it would require OpenGL.Kodi-GBM use OpenGLES. Normally those features shouldn't be touched anyway, so no big loss.

    Quote from smp

    With X11 you can forget about HDR. HDR is only possible with GBM+DRM PRIME.

    The fact that Nvidia will support 10-bit HEVC decode via VDPAU doesn't really make them any less useless.

    IMHO Intel, AMD or Nvidia any of them have/had good products. Nvidias politics okay it is what it is. But, it couldn't be bad to have 3 instead of two options choosing a Video Card which fits your needs.

    I bought Video cards from different vendors for Apple (Classic OS, OS X), Linux, some BSDs and Windows it Always comes down to whats supported and what works best in Case of Performance, Features, stability.

    Regards

    Nicolas