Will I ever be able to smoothly play x264 720p on Ubuntu?

[Julita]

In order to lower your CPU usage, you have to define parameters by installing programs cpufreqd and cpufrequtils. Once installed, you will be able to see your configuration of CPU frequency via command cpufreq-info and set your own parameters via sudo cpufreq-set. Type in the terminal man cpufreq-set for usage. Type sudo cpufreqd to launch useful demon (via sudo cpufreqd-set you can define the way demon works.)

[lidex]

Wow, you guys are great.
I currently have 9.10 installed, what version of Ubuntu is this driver compatible with? I read somewhere that 8.10 is the latest version which supports the card I think. If so I'm going to burn a 8.10 and boot from disk and try to get these drivers from AMD going, see if it makes a difference. Am I on the right track?

A cautious yes here...you may want to try installing 8.10 to another partition and then test the driver. Don't think a live session will do it for you. If you're not married to Karmic and this works, then go for it. A lot of users are still running 8.04

[wesleyb82]

i uninstalled all video apps and codec packages, then following the previous suggestion by lidex i started the open source ATI drive instrutions, ran
$ sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx

choose y, restarted

then opened a MKV and all is well!

i do not understand this whole process yet but i just know 720p is running at 100% in VLC.

ah, my 8 hour plane trip is going to be mint! Thank you!