Thank you for the info that a Pi2 or Pi3 can handle (non-Flash) HD video playback.
I think this is the first time I had heard about a static allocation for the GPU. Now I see this page with information about that and many other boot options:
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I think that page will be very valuable.
(The config.txt file must have been where I had put the acceleration license keys for my first Pi.)
I've run OpenElec/Kodi on each version of the Model B's, and indeed they can all play full HD video from my Humax DVR.
The the original Pi1 256MB (split 128/128) really struggled to get going, it once took 50 minutes to start playing a hour long program from Channel 4, where as the 512M (split 256/256) takes at most about 30 seconds to start playing. So I'd recommend at least 512MB for video, if you still have the older lower memory model, its fine for displaying pictures and playing MP3 audio.
The user interface on the Pi2, and Pi3 is much slicker as you'd expect with the faster processor and more cores, and the starting time for HD video is negligible. With the 1GB of memory in these models, they are under utilised running the cut down OpenElec OS, so I'm now running Kodi on top of Raspbian Jessie or Ubuntu Mate, which means I can drop out and use web browsers and other Linux apps which aren't available on OpenElec.
It might outperform a Pi model 1, maybe, because RISC code takes up more memory space and typically more coding to do the same thing. It would depend on a LOT of factors, from the kind of L1/2/3 cache your RAM has to the nature of the code itself. And then, of course, there's floating point stuff which is poorly supported on the Model 1 last I looked. A lot of floating point operations might do better on a 200Mhz Pentium than on a Model 1.
now... if you use hardware float code on a Model 2, the RPi should outperform the 200Mhz Pentium with no problems whatsoever. My $.10 anyway.
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