[mr.sparkle]

Crossfire? Jesus, man. A $25 GT210 will do just fine.

[drewy]

sparkle have announced a half height passive cooled gt 430. It has heatsinks (via pipes) on the rear of the card, so is single card width. I was holding out for one of these...but I haven't (so far) found anyone stocking it

see http://www.sparkle.com.tw/News/SPGT430/n...30_en.html

[Thespirit]

guys silly question but nobody seems to be recommending ATI cards I take the newer gen nvidia has now stolen the top spot as far as we are concerned, they certainly look a little cheaper, so the 430 is what u would recommend?

[poofyhairguy]

guys silly question but nobody seems to be recommending ATI cards I take the newer gen nvidia has now stolen the top spot as far as we are concerned, they certainly look a little cheaper, so the 430 is what u would recommend?

GT430 for Windows, and GT220 for Linux. Nvidia decoding is more robust than AMD, and their 3D support is much better as of now.

[Temar]

guys silly question but nobody seems to be recommending ATI cards I take the newer gen nvidia has now stolen the top spot as far as we are concerned, they certainly look a little cheaper, so the 430 is what u would recommend?

Additionally to what poofyhairyguy said, you will get problems if you want to run VDR on your HTPC. VDR uses libxine for its output devices and libxine does not support VAAPI. So you won't be able to watch HD content using xineliboutput and you won't have hardware accelerated transparency either.

With a Nvidia card you always have the choice to switch to Linux. ATI on Linux is just lots of trouble.

[naicols1971]

This morning my Zotac Nvidia GeForce GT430 Zone Edition Fanless (ZT-40601-20L) arrived !!
I have installed it with the latest NVIDIA driver 260.99 WHQL downloaded directly from NVIDIA web site, but I have the same problems with my old ATI 3850 fanless : with some HD video I have a lot of DROP...

My system is Windows XP 32bit SP3, the CPU is Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.00GHz, the motherboard is Asus P5E, XBMC is Dharma beta 4.

For example when I play the video killa.sample.x264.mkv (the one with a lot of flying birds) the parameters (when I see a lot of drops) are :
D(Audio: ac3, 48000Hz, 5.1, s16, 448 kb/s) P(aq:99%, kB/b:441,40)
D(Video: h264, yuv420p, 1920x1080) P(vq:98%, dc:ff-h264, Mb/s:41,49, drop:86, pc:4)
C(ad: 0.000, a/v: 0,134, edl:-, dcpu: 1% acpu: 3% vcpu: 101%)
W(fps:18,93 CPU 2 core(s) average: 54,4%)

Please can you help me ??

I don't understand why I have the vcpu over 100%

Thank you very much

[Temar]

This morning my Zotac Nvidia GeForce GT430 Zone Edition Fanless (ZT-40601-20L) arrived !!

I got the same graphics card using driver version 260.19.12 on Ubuntu 10.04.

My system is Windows XP 32bit SP3, the CPU is Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.00GHz, the motherboard is Asus P5E, XBMC is Dharma beta 4.

I have a AMD 4850e in powersaving mode at 1GHz.

For example when I play the video killa.sample.x264.mkv (the one with a lot of flying birds) the parameters (when I see a lot of drops) are :
D(Audio: ac3, 48000Hz, 5.1, s16, 448 kb/s) P(aq:99%, kB/b:441,40)
D(Video: h264, yuv420p, 1920x1080) P(vq:98%, dc:ff-h264, Mb/s:41,49, drop:86, pc:4)
C(ad: 0.000, a/v: 0,134, edl:-, dcpu: 1% acpu: 3% vcpu: 101%)
W(fps:18,93 CPU 2 core(s) average: 54,4%)

Please can you help me ??

I don't understand why I have the vcpu over 100%

When I play the killa sample I get 2 frame drops right at the beginning, before the first frame is displayed. The rest of the sample plays without frame drops. My CPU usage is CPU0: ~15% CPU1: ~3% and my VCPU Usage is 2%.

You could download XBMC Live and see if it works there. If you get the same frame drops there, you probably have a hardware problem. If you don't, you have a Windows problem.

[poofyhairguy]

My system is Windows XP 32bit SP3

There is your problem. DXVA2 (the GPU decoding backend for Windows use by XBMC) only works with Vista and Windows 7. For XP your new GT430 literally does as much as a Geforce 4 (aka just display interface)!

Either upgrade to Windows 7 or Linux to use the card. That was your problem with your ATI card by the way. In Windows 7 it would have torn through 1080p....

[naicols1971]

OK now my system is Windows 7 Ultimate and the DXVA2 GPU decoding is ON in my XBMC.

Now the VCUP is very very low when I play the video-test killa.sample.x264.mkv (the one with a lot of flying birds), but I have another issue.

When this movie starts the drop frames are 18 and I can see only a screen all green without images (but the audio is OK), after 2-3 seconds the birds appear but the image is very corrupted, after other 5-6 seconds the image becomes OK and without drop frames.
I don't understand why this happens please someone can help me ??

Another question : with some HD video I see the image is not 100% fluid during screen panning, I don't understand why because this video play very very fluid with my last configuration (WinXP, ATI 3850).
I think it can be the implementation of DXVA2 GPU decoding that still does not work perfectly in XBMC Dharma beta4.
Please someone can confirm this issue ?

The last request : someone can give me a help to optimize the settings of windows 7 ??

Thank you very much

[Temar]

When this movie starts the drop frames are 18 and I can see only a screen all green without images (but the audio is OK), after 2-3 seconds the birds appear but the image is very corrupted, after other 5-6 seconds the image becomes OK and without drop frames.
I don't understand why this happens please someone can help me ??

This happens because video codecs only store the difference between two frames. If this would be done for the whole movie you would always see the described effect when jumping to a position within the video. Therefore every few frames a complete image is stored in the video stream. The following frames then again only contain that part of the screen which changed since the last frame.

So why are you seeing that effect? Because 18 frames of the video were dropped and within the 18 frames was the frame which contained the complete image. As frame 19 only contained that part of the screen which changed since frame 18, you can see the screen slowly being build up, until either each pixel of the screen changed at least once or until the next complete image is found in the stream.

To get rid of that effect, you have to get rid of your frame drops.

[naicols1971]

To get rid of that effect, you have to get rid of your frame drops.

OK but how do I do ??

[Temar]

OK but how do I do ??

Sorry, no idea. I don't use Windows, not even on my Desktop.

You could try another player (i.e. VLC). If it works with VLC then it's probably a XBMC problem, else you have to check your Windows installation. At least you would know where to start looking.

[Beer40oz]

Get a Radeon 5570 I am using the one from MSI. I plays flawless 1080p under windows 7 using dxva2 from the menu in XBMC. Also it is small if you wan't it in a small enclosure. I got mine for $60 on sale.

[PsychoCheF]

I would like to borrow this thread for a quick question.

I shall buy a new gpu to my brother for christmas. It doesnt need to be the best one, just good enough. (3D isnt intresting here)
As i understand for DXVA2, it doesen't mather if i go nvidia or ati?
(using Win7)

Right now i'm thinking of AMD XFX HD5450 512MB DDR3 (650Mhz) that i guess would be good enough, and for a good price (less than 40$)
What do you think?

[Hannes The Hun]

Get a Radeon 5570 I am using the one from MSI. I plays flawless 1080p under windows 7 using dxva2 from the menu in XBMC.

now that's interesting, so we may ignore your thread here? http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=86941