No hardware accell in Linux, too little graphics memory?

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Hi,

I’m having trouble with hardware 2D / video acceleration in Linux. I don’t know the exact change that caused this, because at the same time that I installed a new, bigger screen I also installed a newer version of Linux (the old screen died).

Video is very choppy when maximized on one of the screens (e.g. using mpv player), with the window manager (Cinnamon) using about 70% CPU. 2D intensive graphics, like google maps is really slow, and VLC either crashed with a seg-fault, or tells me that the system does not have enough resources to complete the requested operation (vdpau_avcodec), acceleration setup failure (avcodec decoder error).

I have one 2560x1440 screen next to one 3440x1440 screen connected both with displayport cables to a 512MB NVIDIA NVS 310 graphics card, running on Linux Mint 18.2 with Cinnamon. I’m running the 384.90-Ubuntu0.16.04.2 graphics driver. My system has 8GB memory and an older generation quad core I7.

Is 512MB too little graphics memory for my current setup? If so, what would be a good card to buy for someone who only uses the card for 2D and video?

Regards,
Bastiaan

2

Afaik, to drive a single 4K monitor (which is about the same pixel count you’re running) you should go for 2GB of VRAM. I’d look for some card with about 4GB to have a flying desktop with some reserves for later when another monitor dies and gets replaced with 4k.