GBPVR cpu affinity to single core solves audio/video stutter

[JePe]

Running GbPVR 1.2.13 on Windows XP Pro SP3 UK, AMD X2 4050e, Gigabyte GA-MA-780GM-S2H mainboard, PowerDVD 7.3 MPEG2 codecs.

From what I've read, the cpuaffinity setting in the config.xml doesn't do anything for the PVRX2.exe. I can confirm that using Task Manager, both cores are used. Using this setting in LiveTV (Free to Cable channel), audio starts to stutter before it completely dies, video follows shortly after that. I also get random application terminations without any clue in the log files. Initially I thought it was this quartz.dll of DirectX9c thingy, however it turned out to be the cpu affinity.
If I set affinity to 1 core, stuttering disappears and LiveTV runs stable for over 2 hours.

Does anyone have a clue why I get such contradicionary behavior as most users have to enable usage of both cores.

[JePe]

It seems related to AMD chipset and/or AMD cpu. I've tried Catalyst drivers from 8.1 to 8.7, all showing different behaviour. Finally I stuffed my DVB-C card in an G33 chipset + E4300 Intel cpu system and all is working perfectly. It seems to me that ATI is creating drivers that are basically cr*p. It's time to get their act together and starting producing some basic stable drivers instead of tweaking the hell out of it. Who cares about % speed gain if it crashes or doesn't work as expected?

Does anyone have similar experiences with Catalyst drivers?

[engnz]

I had timing problems last year with my AMD system when I upgrade to a x2 dual core CPU. Finally fixed it by installing a new AMD CPU driver.

[BigMoose]

I've got the same MB as above and have had trouble with the catalyst drivers. 8.6 gave awful interlacing issues and I've not tried 8.7 yet. Is it worth it? I actually accidentally removed most of CCC altogether just leaving the driver only and it works far better! Next to no stuttering at all. Certainly SD channels are grand, HD can be perfect, can be crap! Either a channel change or sometimes PVRX2 restart tends to solve the HD issues.

[JePe]

I've tried all Catalysts from 8.1 to 8.7, all have their issues. The most stable one I use is 8.5, 8.7 won't even boot.

My feeling is that the internal CPU bus between the 2 cores has some issues, at least driver wise.

I'm curious, could you elaborate more on the AMD cpu driver, from Windows Update or AMD?

About the CCC, that's something I didn't try yet. I made some colour changes, gpu scaling, scaling options that I need. I don't know if these can be done without CCC or through registry?

[JavaWiz]

You may want to take a look at this thread. http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...d+affinity

[JePe]

You may want to take a look at this thread. http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...d+affinity

I noticed that thread a while ago and found no solution to my problem. The Microsoft patch won't install on an SP3 machine as it already mentions it has this already. The AMD optimizer also made no change. I'll give it a try again tomorrow.

[JePe]

This time I not only installed the AMD dual core optimizer but also AMD processor driver. The combination of both indeed did the trick. Thanks for reminding me. I can now watch live TV for hours without any stuttering.