780G HD video always Studders

[BigMoose]

Thanks for prompting me on the dual mode memory - when I first got the board it wouldn't work in dual mode. Nothing at all on power up, not even beeps. So I've been running it in single channel mode and completely forgot. I've since updated the BIOS which fixed the problem, so have moved the memory around and it now boots and runs fine in dual channel. Yes, it is 800Mhz mem. Annoyingly I still get the odd stutter on H264 content with cyberlink codecs and the panning with CoreAVC doesn't look quite as smooth as when cyberlink is behaving. The FSB is 200Mhz though and I read somewhere that someone up'd it to 214Mhz and got over all their stutter problems. (reducing the CPU multipler to not over cook it). So maybe I'll have a go with some overclocking settings later. Maybe I should just buy some 1000Mhz mem and be done with it... although I'm not yet sure if spending more money on this board is going to solve my (fairly minor) problems.

[mikeh49]

I'm currently running dual channel at 667, down from 800 because of some stability issues I thought might be related to memory and because I read somewhere that 800 -> 667 would make no difference. Forgot about the video memory aspect when I made the change. I have "unsmooth" pans on SD MPEG analog recordings. I'll go back to 800 to see if that makes a difference.

@pBS: Send me some of those intel processors and I'll send you my 780G board.

[BigMoose]

I got bored at work today and was reading about clock times, overclocking etc and I've probably confused myself. From what I can tell my FSB is running at 200, so from what I've read my memory is only running at 400. Is that right? 2xFSB? Even though I have 800 memory... Unless i have an FSB/dram divider... But since my SD mpeg2 pans are smooth I'm guessing that's not quite right... Will have a play around to see if I can overclock it later to see if that makes any difference to my HD H264 pans.

[pBS]

yea, there's a multiplier,probably in bios, but sometimes auto-set...
usually i leave it set to use speed from SPD on the memory itself..
but some boards yo have to tell it to run in 'dual channel' mode, sometimes labelled 1n/2n,1x/2x,etc

as long as you're running 667 in dual mode it should be fine...[1333mhz]

btw, do any of those boards have provisions for component outs?
all the stand alone cards do...i may just have to stay with cards for that alone..
[tho i have seen a msi board with rca plugs component out on back panel before..tho it may have been a 8200 chip]

run CPUZ and it should tell you the real multipliers etc...

[BigMoose]

OK, I'm confused. I have DDR2 6400 memory (which I assumed was able to run up to 800Mhz ok) yet CPUZ says something about it being 400Mhz. I've attached a couple of screen shots... The initial boot up screen says it's running in dual mode. All I've done is up'd the FSB from 200 to 216 (after reading someone else with the 780G having HD stuttering and that's what they did to solve). I've seen reports that this CPU can go higher, but I dont want to push it to the limits unless I get improved HD playback cause I want the thing to be as power efficient and quiet as possible. I'm just curious if there's anything obviously stupid in my setup that could be causing less than optimal playback. The GPU clock was 500Mhz, I've up'd that to 600 and it runs stable. Any thing look amiss?

[Pob]

400Mhz is correct - as it is DDR it is actually 800Mhz!
I am one of those people who rushed out to buy a 780g motherboard when it first came out - and the problems I had trying to get good results nearly drove me postal! The ATI forums were full of fellow victims with tales of woe. The idea of having to overclock your chipset just to get smooth video is weird. The only solution I ever found was to disable the IGP totally - even in hybrid or surround view, if the IGP is active all manner of strangeness occurs. For an easy life drop in a 4670, or an Nvidia 9600GSO

[mikeh49]

I'm with Pob; a 9500Gt is on the way. Hope it works! I'll report the results here. This board has been a disappointment - my old cheapo ECS SIS chipset with a Sempron 2800 and a 9600Pro was better.

[Jim_]

Late to the party, but for what its worth.
When I configured two new HP Blu-ray laptops with HD 3200 video last fall for my parents and myself, I found that installing WinTv on the first one (default driver disk install) destroyed HD video playback in gbpvr.
Manually installing the 2x HVR850 & 2x WinTV PVR USB2 drivers on the second laptop without WinTV gave flawless 1080 video playback in gbpvr.
Uninstalling WinTV from the first laptop didn’t help a thing because it left some offending codecs registered, but comparing the two systems using GraphEdit, and manually un-registering the left behind Hauppauge codecs fixed it.
780G / HD 3200 graphics @ 1080p through HDMI have been working flawless for me for over 9 months now.

These were bolth new vista laptops with nothing but windows updates installed before gbpvr, I’ve learned through the years to never install anything that registers a codec on my gbpvr systems.... Its just not worth it.

Hope this helps.
Jim

[StanO]

I have a HP Laptop with Turion 70 and the 3200 embedded graphics (Vista 64) that plays back TS files wirelessly as well or better than my office computer (XP) with an AMD 5200 and an ATI HD4670 (512mb), both with 4gb or ram.

Don't wast your money on the graphics card or waste your time tweaking. If it plays back fine in VLC its another issue not raw power. I have never been successful replicating the HD quality in VLC in GBPVR. That being said digital SD works great (and through the MVP as well). FWIW, using the ATI Mux works great with VLC but is unwatchable in GBPVR, TS files are watchable, but some create flashing with VMR9 but not EVR, but with EVR their is a slight stuttering and syncing problem. It's like trying to drive a herd of cats!

I think I will try Jim's advice when I get a chance.

[gazoo]

I will get flamed to eternity but I have two solutions, one harder, one easier:

1) Harder
Make everything work outside of PVRX2 using GSPOT and graphedit. I usually run a video and see if behaves the way I want. If not, move priority of the codec, rinse, repeat. I use MPC HC h.264 decoder if you really want DXVA. Use the ATI one for MPEG2, and then whatever else FFDSHOW tryouts or klite pak give you for the other stuff. Once it's working like you like it, set everything on GBPVR to 'system defaults' VOILA, done.

2) Easy
Give up the pipe dream that is hardware acceleration (and it is a pipe dream for most people), and let FFMPEG from FFDSHOW tryouts or klite run the entire show. That's it. It works. Nothing to buy, nothing to tweak, works with your 780G integrated board without spending anymore time or money. Make sure you have a recent dual core. All my dual cores, even the older AMD can do processor decoding no problem. You might have to do some tweaking to get the interlacing issues worked out, but I never had such issues so I can't help you there. Some 1080p programming can suck up nearly 85% (both cores), but hey at least it works with little headaches.

If you are worried about the processor power being eaten up, you can use something like CoreAVC which is probably one of the best software decoders out there for h.264. It won't be like DXVA, but it will shave a good 8-12% off of what ff does.

The XBMC media center program (which I use on my client machine upstairs) runs completely off of FF and it just works. Any small issues can be worked out by adjusting settings.

Switching to this mode has helped me keep what little hair I have left. Life's too short to mess with DXVA all day every day. I guess I'm a quitter, but I'm a happy quitter!

PS- if you still get stutter it might be a conflicting process running such as spoolsvr.exe or one of the svchosts.exe. System Internals Process Explorer is your friend. I had a Brother printer driver causing some weird stuttering on my laptop because it was not hooked up to the printer and it was searching for it and stealing CPU cycles.