[Polysemous]

without using SSH to check the output (still not sure what that is), I went ahead and set the option in xorg.conf

Still choppy dropping 531 frames. However, I did notice BOTH CPUs peak at 100%. First time I'd seen either reach 100% before.

[Cresho]

I get very smooth framerate on either 1080i 30fps or 720p 60fps. And while playing the video, I activate

me-tv running HDTV on a kworld 115
tvtime running television cable signal on a avermedia studio

with these three videos running, I can still have compiz fusion running, have foolbilliards, savage 2, and tons of games running in the background and my cpu usage is very low.


spec
ubuntu hardy heron
ddr800 memory
amd athlon xp6400 black edition
nvidiao 8800gt
audigy gamer 24bit (I am using alsa audio since other audio causes bad framerates and bad audio drops in video) perhaps you should look into this.

[Cresho]

MY cpu usage is at 70 percent. I used conky to look into this. ill post a screenshot. i just need to make some room

[ShortySco]

Just an FYI

I have not tried Envy drivers yet, just the restricted driver that ubuntu 8.04LTS installed for me, did you have the same problem using this?

Maybe also check your bios settings on your motherboard, see if you spot something goofy.

Is your sound working ok?

What FPS are you getting while playing Vids, does it vary wildly?

Shorty

[CapnBry]

:confused2: Could you explain how to "check the output from 'top' "? :confused2:
thanks!

Oh sure! SSH is a way of connecting to the box remotely to get a terminal screen. It's nice because xbmc is fullscreen and I'd rather not try to get a window in front of the video renderer because it may affect performance.

So what you've got to do is install ssh if it isn't yet:
sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Then from another machine ssh to it using an ssh client like PuTTY. You'll be prompted for your username and password and then just type 'top'. You'll see basically a process monitor, the column you're looking for is %CPU and you just want to see if while you're playing there's another process besides xbmc.bin that's using all your CPU power.

[Polysemous]

ShortySco: I originally used the restricted drivers with the same problems... that's what prompted me to try Envy.

CapnBry: SSH sounds simple enough! I'll give it a try tonight and report back.

Thanks all for the help! I'm in a race to get this working before the new baby is born and all of my attention is diverted elsewhere!

[Polysemous]

Here's the output from Putty while watching a stuttering (audio and video) 1080p mkv file. It looks to be that XBMC is the only significant process running.

Does this help me narrow my troubleshooting down to video/motherboard settings?



top - 18:31:14 up 8 min, 2 users, load average: 1.93, 1.08, 0.53
Tasks: 128 total, 1 running, 127 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 43.1%us, 0.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 55.5%id, 0.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1942568k total, 1796408k used, 146160k free, 801692k buffers
Swap: 5686968k total, 0k used, 5686968k free, 678340k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
8143 xbmc 20 0 272m 110m 44m S 86 5.8 1:09.60 xbmc.bin
1 root 20 0 2844 1692 544 S 0 0.1 0:01.06 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1
8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 events/0
10 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 events/1
11 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
46 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 kblockd/0
47 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/1
50 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
51 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
163 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod

[althekiller]

I'd run memtest86 overnight. Since the onboard graphics shares the system memory bad RAM could cause all kinds of problems.

It should be on the grub menu when you boot the system.

[Polysemous]

Wow! You weren't kidding! Memtest86 is at the 10 hour mark now and still going.

(Un)fortunately, 0 errors so far.

[Polysemous]

I'm more and more convinced that my problems are hardware related and not software...

Any suggestions for benchmark software? Maybe I can convince a few others with the same setup to compare benchmarks with me?

[Gamester17]

Any suggestions for benchmark software?

Phoronix Test Suite http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com
Further discussion here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=33645

[Polysemous]

33 passes complete with memtest86 (over 15 hours!)... with 0 errors.

Time to start benchmarking. thanks for everyone's help! Have a great 4th! I'll have to make do with 720p for now.

[ShortySco]

With hardy 8.04 i installed the svn ppa on there (using the stickied thread as a guide of sorts)... over the last few days, twice i've had a message from linux about updates being available (Which is amazing the OS seems to update everything on your system, not just itself, windows is now in the bin!)

After installing one of these updates i noticed an immediate performance boost, halved my dropped frames on the killa sample, now at around 30, perhaps the newest svn will help.

Could be a hardware fault you have, but i'd say (guess) it's far more likley some kinda setup problem (hardware/software)

Remember Razor has the same setup as you and also myself with an e8200 instead of the 8400, so it definatley can be made to work.

Shorty

[drewjacks0n]

Get a real video card and give it a shot. Onboard is never good, pick up an 8 series nvidia card and give the killasampla a go

[Razor_109]

i'm running the same hardware and don't drop frames on the KillaSample, so it's possible i guess to have it running smooth with a 'real' videocard.