2012-12-23, 21:25
TL;DR Summary: Is it possible that my WD Green 5900 RPM 1TB hard drive having the Windows install on it is the reason why I'm getting pauses/stuttering in 1080p playback? Seems a bit odd, but I'm nearly at my wit's end.
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I'm getting random pauses in playback on 1080p video (see this thread for full details: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=148822 ) and I'm beginning to wonder whether it's hardware or software based, so I thought I'd throw a list of the hardware I'm using up and see if anyone here can see something glaringly wrong with my setup.
Motherboard: Asrock H55M/USB3 R2.0
Processor: Intel Core i3-530@2.93GHz, not overclocked.
Memory: GSkill Ripjaws DDR3-1333 4GBx2 Dual-Channel Kit
Video: Issue has occurred with both the i3's built-in GPU and with a PowerColor Radeon HD4850 512MB, using HDMI Out direct to the TV.
Display: Sharp Aquos 60" LCD LC-60E78UN
Drives: This is current, likely to change in the near future. System drive is a 1TB WD Green SATA2 drive, also being used for storage. Additional internal storage is a very old Seagate ST400something 400GB SATA2 drive, a 7200.10 320GB Seagate (likely to become the system drive soon), a WD MyBook 2TB USB3 External drive, connected to the sole USB3 port, and a month-old Seagate 7200.14 3TB SATA3 drive.
I'm running Win7 at present. I was contemplating putting in an SSD in place of the 320GB drive to see if that helps the matter, and I was also contemplating moving back to Linux (moving from Linux to Win7 is why the WD Green is my system drive), possibly at the same time. Unfortunately I don't have any more SATA ports on the motherboard other than eSATA, so I would definitely have to replace the 320. (It's empty now.) The 320 is also the newest HDD of the ones I can boot from.
My problem is that video pauses for a split second while the audio continues with no issues, then the video fast-forwards (rather than skips forward) to catch up to the audio. This happens frequently in XBMC, very rarely in VLC, and fairly frequently in the one test I did with Plex. I also get stuttering in some movies. It's been a few months, but I don't recall it under Linux; that being said booting into XBMCBuntu Live off of a USB2 key drive had the same issues of stuttering/pausing. Am I looking at a bottleneck on the system drive maybe? Core i3 and/or a Radeon HD 4850 are just not going to work for it? (CPU is at about 5% during movies per Debug)? Or am I looking at a software issue of some sort?
One other thing, any appearance of stuttering and pauses seemed to disappear when I put in the Radeon card, but the display was letterboxed due to the Overscan settings. As soon as I adjusted that to take up the full screen, the issue started happening again.
Thanks for reading, appreciate any thoughts or suggestions. FYI, this system (in a different case and with less drives) used to be my desktop PC, and I rarely had any issues with the hardware end of things.
========================================================================================================
I'm getting random pauses in playback on 1080p video (see this thread for full details: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=148822 ) and I'm beginning to wonder whether it's hardware or software based, so I thought I'd throw a list of the hardware I'm using up and see if anyone here can see something glaringly wrong with my setup.
Motherboard: Asrock H55M/USB3 R2.0
Processor: Intel Core i3-530@2.93GHz, not overclocked.
Memory: GSkill Ripjaws DDR3-1333 4GBx2 Dual-Channel Kit
Video: Issue has occurred with both the i3's built-in GPU and with a PowerColor Radeon HD4850 512MB, using HDMI Out direct to the TV.
Display: Sharp Aquos 60" LCD LC-60E78UN
Drives: This is current, likely to change in the near future. System drive is a 1TB WD Green SATA2 drive, also being used for storage. Additional internal storage is a very old Seagate ST400something 400GB SATA2 drive, a 7200.10 320GB Seagate (likely to become the system drive soon), a WD MyBook 2TB USB3 External drive, connected to the sole USB3 port, and a month-old Seagate 7200.14 3TB SATA3 drive.
I'm running Win7 at present. I was contemplating putting in an SSD in place of the 320GB drive to see if that helps the matter, and I was also contemplating moving back to Linux (moving from Linux to Win7 is why the WD Green is my system drive), possibly at the same time. Unfortunately I don't have any more SATA ports on the motherboard other than eSATA, so I would definitely have to replace the 320. (It's empty now.) The 320 is also the newest HDD of the ones I can boot from.
My problem is that video pauses for a split second while the audio continues with no issues, then the video fast-forwards (rather than skips forward) to catch up to the audio. This happens frequently in XBMC, very rarely in VLC, and fairly frequently in the one test I did with Plex. I also get stuttering in some movies. It's been a few months, but I don't recall it under Linux; that being said booting into XBMCBuntu Live off of a USB2 key drive had the same issues of stuttering/pausing. Am I looking at a bottleneck on the system drive maybe? Core i3 and/or a Radeon HD 4850 are just not going to work for it? (CPU is at about 5% during movies per Debug)? Or am I looking at a software issue of some sort?
One other thing, any appearance of stuttering and pauses seemed to disappear when I put in the Radeon card, but the display was letterboxed due to the Overscan settings. As soon as I adjusted that to take up the full screen, the issue started happening again.
Thanks for reading, appreciate any thoughts or suggestions. FYI, this system (in a different case and with less drives) used to be my desktop PC, and I rarely had any issues with the hardware end of things.