[pbrille]

Hi,

I recently bought a "Point of View ion230" mini-ITX Mainboard with 1.6 GHz ATOM processor with 512 Megs of DDR2 and a 80 GB 2,5" HDD.
I thought by having the 9400M Nvidia onboard, the system would be fast enought to show FullHD Videos but it stutters when connected to my 19" widescreen (mkv 1080i with x264 and Dolby Digital 5.1).
It stutters at 1440x900, so I guess I don't need to try a higher resolution.

I installed the nvidia drivers 185.18.36 under Ubuntu 9.04.

Is the board just too slow? If so, I need to send it back, or did I mess sth. up during setup maybe?

THX a lot

[motd2k]

i'll be fine but you have about 1/4 of the needed DDR2 - VDPAU wont be functioning with 512MB of RAM installed.

[pbrille]

Even with 2 GB of RAM especially mkv movies in 1080i doesn't play smoothly. If there isn't much action in the scene there is hardly a problem but in fast moving scenes the video plays too slow. The pictures are behind the sound.

Is there anything I could check that the nvidia card is actually used to decode? Maybe the cpu is just too slow... :-(
Remeber: it's the ion atom 230, not the 330. AFAIK the 230 is single core in contrast to the dual core 330.

[Swifty]

I'll say the obvious and check that you have VDPAU enabled as the renderer in XBMC (although I think if it's on Auto it should choose it anyway)

You can also press 'i' on the keyboard with video playing to check your fps, etc - I believe that it shows VDPAU somewhere on there if it's being used.

Lastly check to see if you have PulseAudio installed, this caused me some glitches with audio ahead/behind video like you mentioned.

FWIW I have an ION Atom 230 (Acer Revo) and it seems to play 1080 fine, even while streaming VDR to another client in the background.

[mojo6911]

Even with 2 GB of RAM especially mkv movies in 1080i doesn't play smoothly. If there isn't much action in the scene there is hardly a problem but in fast moving scenes the video plays too slow. The pictures are behind the sound.

Is there anything I could check that the nvidia card is actually used to decode? Maybe the cpu is just too slow... :-(
Remeber: it's the ion atom 230, not the 330. AFAIK the 230 is single core in contrast to the dual core 330.

Make sure after you install 2GB, you go into the BIOS and allow the Video to have 512mb of RAM. After that, go into XBMC and make sure VDPAU is manually enabled.

[pbrille]

Thanks a lot to all you you.
Now my system runs smoothly.
To be able to get the optical audio out working I needed to enable a switch within the audio mixer (forgot the switch's name).

[pbrille]

...

Lastly check to see if you have PulseAudio installed, this caused me some glitches with audio ahead/behind video like you mentioned.
...

I had pulseaudio installed, but removed it because every time I restarted the computer the master-out was set to "mute". So I removed pulseaudio. When I tried to store with "alsactl store" I became "E: core-util.c: Home directory /home/<<username>> not ours"

[gkornato]

motd2k, what do you mean 2GB is minimum for VDPAU?

I have 512MB DDR running in an HP thin client with an 8400. I'm running Ubuntu and have no issues playing back 1080p. Infact, my OS and XBMC is using only around 350MB ram.

[prae5]

I run 1gb in all of my ion machines and haven't had a problem - don't think i would drop below that though.

[motd2k]

motd2k, what do you mean 2GB is minimum for VDPAU?

I have 512MB DDR running in an HP thin client with an 8400. I'm running Ubuntu and have no issues playing back 1080p. Infact, my OS and XBMC is using only around 350MB ram.

8400 != Ion

[ali B]

motd2k, what do you mean 2GB is minimum for VDPAU?

I think I can explain....
the OP has stated he has an ION with only 512MB of RAM installed, and ION shares system memory for it's Video RAM.

Mojo suggested that VDPAU needs 512MB assigned to the Video Hardware to function correctly on 1080p, with the remainder left for the system. this needs to be assigned in the bios, it's not automatic, so even installing more memory won't instantly cure the problem.

the 8400 point is moot, as it's a separate card with it's own memory, therefore not yoinking any system memory, at wich point you could get away with only 512Mb system mem.

(well that's how i understand it anyway...)