Problems with VMR9 Custom

[htewam]

Hi all,

I'm currently running GBPVR v0.99.12 and have Configurationlayback:Video Renderer set to "VMR9". With the new release, I see that "VMR9 Custom" will be the only renderer supported and there were some folks having trouble with CPU utilization so I decided to see if my PC would handle the CPU load.

Still using v0.99.12, I set the configuration to "VMR9 Custom" and then brought up GBPVR. What I get is a full-screen window with the GBPVR title bar at the top but everything else is completely BLACK. CPU usage is not significant and I don't know where to look to resolve this issue. Navigating around and trying to click in (what should be) the menu area does not change any results.

My PC configuration is as follows:

Motherboard – Asus P4C800-E with 1GB Memory & AMI BIOS
CPU – 3Ghz Intel Pentium 4
Graphics – ATI RAGE 128 PRO Ultra4XL VR-R AGP w/ 16 MB Video RAM
Tuner Card – Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150
OS – Windows XP SP2

Simply switching back to "VMR9" seems to make everything fine.

Thanks in advance !

[sub]

Graphics – ATI RAGE 128 PRO Ultra4XL VR-R AGP w/ 16 MB Video RAM

Sorry, but I suspect this card is the source of the problem and just isnt up to the task.

[blizard]

Sorry, but I suspect this card is the source of the problem and just isnt up to the task.

Later, ATI developed a successor to the original RAGE 128, called the RAGE 128 Pro. This chip carried several enhancements, including an enhanced triangle setup engine that doubled geometry throughput to 8 million triangles/sec, better texture filtering, DirectX 6 texture compression, AGP 4X, DVI support, and a RAGE Theater chip for better video encoding/decoding. This chip was used on the gamer-oriented RAGE Fury Pro boards and the business-oriented Xpert 2000 PRO. RAGE 128 Pro was generally an even match for Voodoo 3 3500, RIVA TNT2 Ultra, and Matrox G400 MAX.

The RAGE 128 graphics accelerator was the final revision of the RAGE architecture.

Source: wiki on ATI Rage

Radeon Series - Launched in 2000, the Radeon line is ATI's brand for their consumer 3D accelerator add-in cards. The original Radeon DDR was ATI's first DirectX 7 3D accelerator, introducing their first hardware T&L engine. ATI often produced 'Pro' versions with higher clock speeds, and sometimes an extreme 'XT' version, and even more recently 'XT Platinum Edition (PE) and XTX' versions. The Radeon series was the basis for many ATI All-In-Wonder boards.

Source: Wiki on ATI Technologies

It looks like your video card are to old to support WMR7 or WMR9 technology to render GBPVR correctly. ATis RADEON card should be rather cheap to find and better suited to the task as you would need support for DirectX9 in hardware to be able to use WMR9.

[htewam]

Okay... thanks for the info. I guess I'll have to shop for a new graphics card or just stick with this version of GBPVR.

[gEd]

whilst I agree the the OP's card is probably way too old, how come it worked ok with VMR9 but not VMR9 custom?

i.e. what's the difference between the 2 modes. I though that custom just addressed some problems with nvidia cards

[sub]

VMR9 uses the older directdraw interface for drawing frames to the screen. VMR9 Custom uses the Direct3D acceleration features of the video card for drawing to the screen. ATI cards like the 9200 etc were the first cards to support the really well.

I know that 16MB memory on his video card will also not be enough texture memory for PVRX2.

[htewam]

Sub -- Do you have a suggested minimum for video memory (since I'm going to have to go shopping)? I'm not a gamer and have very few demands for graphics so I generally go with pretty inexpensive graphics cards -- so PVRX2 would appear to be the pacing item. I don't want to go and purchase a new card that still doesn't meet the minimum requirements :-)

Edit - For anyone who cares to make recommendations on graphics cards, I'm looking for a "cheap" graphics card using an AGP 8X interface and does NOT require a cooling fan (trying to keep things really quiet).

[gEd]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ATI-RADEON-9600-PR...dZViewItem

[sub]

Sub -- Do you have a suggested minimum for video memory (since I'm going to have to go shopping)? I'm not a gamer and have very few demands for graphics so I generally go with pretty inexpensive graphics cards -- so PVRX2 would appear to be the pacing item. I don't want to go and purchase a new card that still doesn't meet the minimum requirements :-)

Edit - For anyone who cares to make recommendations on graphics cards, I'm looking for a "cheap" graphics card using an AGP 8X interface and does NOT require a cooling fan (trying to keep things really quiet).

I'd probably go for card with at least 128MB or maybe 256MB of video ram. gEd's recommendation would be a decent choice (for standard definition video at least).

[liteswap]

I use an nVidia 7300LE with 128MB which works fine - no fan just a heatsink so it's silent.