Set top GBPVR client machine project

[Pob]

I was looking at the new 780g boards too.
Though I was looking at ATX ('cos I have lots of ATX cases) -maybe the Asus M3A-H - and maybe a phenom cpu.
I would be really interested to know what you think of your 780g board...
Can you get high-def video acceleration in XP? I am another person reluctant to go with Vista...
Do you have to use specific video decoder software to get the acceleration working?
I also read a post from somone saying they could not get the native res. of their LCD (1360*768) working - they had to use 720p. This would be a disaster for me as I only get an acceptably sharp picture using the native 1360*768.
I read somewhere that although the 780g accelerates high-def stuff, it cannot do hardware acceleration of standard-def material such as Mpeg2 - which sounds bizarre if true!
Lastly I read another article which stated that the hybrid-crossfire feature available when another ATI video card is added only works in - yuck - Vista.
Also very interested to know how it's going with your acoustics - I would love a quiet PC. On my current rig I replaced the Nvidia 5950 stock cooler with a Zalman, got a PSU with a 12cm fan, and an 8cm Viper CPU cooler - but it still sounds like a jet engine and is very distracting when watching TV or video...
Pob

[Deusxmachina]

I read somewhere that although the 780g accelerates high-def stuff, it cannot do hardware acceleration of standard-def material such as Mpeg2 - which sounds bizarre if true!

That's true of anything using the video card for acceleration help. It may work fine with mpeg2, actually, but if you have something like, say, your Blu-Ray discs on your hard drive so you don't risk scratching your $30 movies and converted them smaller to not take up so much space, there's a good chance the video card will be of no help and then you're screwed if you have a weak processor. There's little reason not to get a dual-core nowadays.

[SWK]

Hello, A quick suggestion, and sorry if this has already been tried:

1. Do the install to an 8GB partition on a hard disk, get it configured to run as required (No swap, etc.).

2. Then defrag the image, create a ghost image the HDD and restore that image to the CF card.

This should be both faster and less wear & tear on the CF card. You can reverse this process for major updates, expirmentation, etc.

Sean

[gazoo]

Thanks SWK. I was lazy, I knew about that.

Now some numbers.

1080i .dvr-ms on WMP11 core 1 0%, core 2 55%
SD mpeg on WMP11 core 1 0%, core 2 15%
1080p .m2t file core 1 0%, core 2 60%

Don't know what's the deal with the one core pumped up or why it's so high.

[pBS]

haven't installed gbpvr yet?
i bet you'll be most pleased with evr renderer with that chipset..[even under xp]
[install the evr-xp patch]
looks fabulous and super smooth on my HD3450 pcie card..
tho i miss my custom aspect ratios..[but not that much..lol]

mine has component thru svideo jack with ATI adapter,not sure how yours would hookup..probably custom header on mboard..
component looks great, vga a bit sharper, dvi/hdmi a bit sharper still...
but no complaints on any of the three..

As far as cf cards, even with 300x UDMA setup you'd only get half ide speeds, so best with a real laptop hd or similar 1.5 inch 'real' hard drive...apparently they don't include much of a buffer in cf [no room] so speeds are always slow compared with real drive..
it's not the connecting interfaces, it's the drives themselves..but 266 would double your speeds..
and no, you don't have to worry about the writes, it's a real magnetic hard drive in there, same write durability as a regular hard drive...not like a cmos memory chip..

btw, how much was that mboard?

[gazoo]

I did install it, but I got a message about vmr9 not being supported so I posted to the support board and I'm trying to sort it out with sub.

I am currently reinstalling the drivers. I did manage to get pvrx2 up and it worked real smooth, but I had to use overlay mode. EVR would probably work too, is there any disadvantage to either? Overlay didn't look good when playing off the server but fine when using video library. Let's see what happens after the driver reinstall.

[gazoo]

Unfortunately, it's a solid state card. MB was $90.

What's this EVR patch? Would I have already installed it without knowing? I've got XP Pro SP2.

[mkenyon2]

Yea... the EVR Patch... gonna ask in another thread.

Edit: Asked in this thread: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=34104

[gazoo]

More problems. The ASUS chipset/graphics drivers weren't working. I threw in the towel and grabbed a hard drive. I should have done this in the beginning as others suggested and then mirror the drive onto the CF later if I wanted to.

Anyhow, reinstalling the updates (almost done, less than 1.5 hours LOL). I'm dreading installing those ASUS drivers, but the dvd it came with has the same ones as the website. I managed to get everything sort of running before by installing the all encompassing ATI video drivers and not doing the chipset. It ran somewhat ok, except that it claimed that VMR9 was not supported. However, the nlite cd worked like a charm so maybe some of this driver nonsense is related to the CF card, cf card slowness, pagefile disabling, or something of the like.

We'll see how the hard drive install goes. My brand new Sony SATA DVD burner died (and I paid and extra $1 for Sony - should have known after the rookit ordeal not to trust them lol).... apparently this is not me week.

[gazoo]

As an interesting aside..

I intended (after giving up on the CF card) on using a 40GB PATA hard drive from WD that I knew I had laying around. I put it in, and it sounded like an airplane taking off - my wife would kill me if that went in the bedroom! It had a 2000 date of mfg - wow, an 8 year old drive.

As luck would have it, I found a newer 200GB seagate (also PATA though) and it is very quiet. I'll probably stick with that for now.

My wife always says to get rid of those boxes of computer crap..but they came in handy last night. As a matter of fact, the bankers box in the picture under the case is one of those boxes of crap.