Vista and the 780g Board

[gazoo]

I just put together system, this time replacing my server. I'm still in the process of putting the software on there. I tried Vista this time, since there have been some praises about it on here. Well, it seems I was worried for nothing and most of you were right - Vista seems ok.

However, I had another reason for trying vista - I wanted to try it on the 780g mother board with integrad ATI HD3200 graphics to see if DXVA was functioning on it. Well, a new ATI driver update just came out so I figured there was even a better chance than normal AND I also used another MB, this time a Gigabyte vs an Asus.

I had the same experience basically, no DXVA under GB-PVR. It was better, as this time there was no crashing or weird skipping and artifacts, just no DXVA. However, I did find that I was getting DXVA under Cyberlink 8 H.264 only on EVR, BUT NOT UNDER GB-PVR. I tested this by building a graph and replacing the typical VMR7 output video filter that comes up with the EVR one and it worked fantastic - 4% for a 720p H.264 .mkv movie. Can anyone explain what I'm doing wrong and why it won't work under GB-PVR?

Thanks./

[bogyver]

Are you sure it is using cyberlink in gbpvr to play back the mkv, the h264 selector in the config applies to ts files. Also have you done the registry fix for cyberlink to enable hardware acceleration, the cyberlink decoder stores the setting for dxva on a per application setting in the registry.
see here http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=18462
you need to make sure you have it set for pvxr in the registry
Also have you tried the mpc-hc h264 decoder, the stable release available for download works great with ati hardware, I have even seen people using it with 780g boards as well.

[gazoo]

Thanks. I'll try those suggestions. I tried the MPC player and got no HA. I'll give these a shot.

[gazoo]

It's not working no matter what (even the registry edits). MPC standalone doesn't do it at all either. The only way to get it to work is to create a graphedit filter and add EVR as the output renderer. Then, and only then, will I get HA and ONLY on EVR with H.264 - forget about Mpeg2. I'm using Cyberlink 8 H.264, ATI decoder most recent version, and I even tried Cyberlink 8 MPEG decoder to see if that would do it and I get nothing except for the h264 evr case above.

I'm really glad I just bought a beefier processor because I'm going to need it. I am going to give up on this real soon because I have lost all faith in AMD products. This board has been out for 5 months and it's still having problems. HA works sporadically and perhaps even in certain applications, but not where I need it to. I really wish it was me making some mistake somewhere but I highly doubt it now. This is a second machine, using Vista instead of XP this time, different MB (but still 780), different codec load (just did the basics first before I added Klite), etc. - and still no reliable HA.

[csy]

I've just finished setting up another HTPC using the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard (780G chipset) with Vista 32bit SP1, GBPVR and Cyberlink PowerDVD8 Ultra.

It all works fine for me on the integrated HD3200. I get full HA on both H.264 and MPEG2 inside GBPVR using EVR.

I did have to update the BIOS to version 'F4' though.

Note Catalyst 8.5 still has the H.264 green screen issue on SD source material.

[gazoo]

I might actually be achieving HA and not know it. I wasn't on XP because I had a way to check using the dxvachecker but that doesn't seem to work on Vista.

What CPU% are you getting during H.264 720p and MPEG2 1080i if I might ask?

I'm using Cyberlink 8 for both and I also tried ATI AVIVO decoder for MPEG2. I have one of the new low power (45W) X2 AMD CPUs (the 2.5GHz one) and I get around 30% CPU (both cores together) for H.264 720p, 60% H.264 1080p, and 25% MPEG2 1080i. I really don't think it's doing it, because I do remember getting like 4% or something similar on my other machine running XP when I was able to get it to work that one or two times.

It's possible the sources I am getting off the internet are not encoded to the standard H.264, but the 1080i that I get off my QAM should be fine and that's running at 25% so I don't know if that's the good number or not.

[csy]

I'm running an Athlon 3500 single core on that motherboard.

H.264 720p and MPEG2 SD is around 8% average CPU load. I don't have any MPEG2 HD material.

H.264 hardware acceleration is very picky about standards compliant content. There has been a lot of discussion about this in the Doom9 H.264 forum:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=132924

[bogyver]

Try this h264 file, it's the trailer for "The Dark Knight" and it is dxva profile high at level 4.1 so it supports dxva. I get dxva accleration playing this file.
http://www.dvdloc8.com/clip.php?movieid=14223&clipid=2

[gazoo]

Thanks! Will try when I get home.

[gazoo]

Ok, I tried the batman clip and this is what I get:

In graphedit using EVR I got 4%-15%, which seems inline with HA. Running under EVR in GB-PVR, it's 25%-30%.

Do you think it's HA'ing while in GB or not? Looks like it is if there is any other GB-PVR overhead to add to it - if not, it's not doing it.

Please comment..