[BLKMGK]

Bumped FSB to 360 - FPS went to 18-19 with some lows of 16 - still dropping mass frames and chopping sound. Bumped it to 370 (x8) and not much difference to be seen at all. At 8x370 (2960) the Matrix clip is still around 12FPS when all of the green chars are running I think it's going to take some serious brute force to play these IMO work on the decoding software to optimize, if possible, might be what's needed to get such intensive clips playing with reasonable clock rates. I think my CPU could go higher as all I did was ratchet FSB and I've got good memory. Not tonight though, perhaps if someone else manages smooth playback I wonder just how much CPU this would take with the current code...

[Tsf42m]

I did some searching and didn't find any info about via c7 boards.

I have been working on a project that I need a mini-ITX board for. I have been leaning towards Jetway J7F5M2G-VHE it has a 2ghz cpu and a lots of nice outputs.
I know the on board graphics kinda suck but they supposedly have good linux drivers.

Has anyone tried XBMC on VIA hardware? 2Ghz?
I'm looking for h.264 to play at 640x480.

[gzusrawx]

re-7150/630i PATA problems
I figured out the problem I was having with the PATA buss. I was using a 40 pin cable instead of an 80 pin and apparently the HD couldn't handle the noise level. switched cables and it booted up into the rest of the windows install and I upgraded the bios.
Now I just need to re-install ubuntu 32-bit and install XBMC(probably this weekend).

[embrion]

This is a demanding clip, is it representative of 1080P content anyone is likely to run into in the "wild"? It's an HD-DVD clip yes? The Matrix clip, any ideas on how representative that is? We cannot decode the sound now, is that likely to be common?

First some specs: http://www.videohelp.com/hd

By "demanding clip" You mean my birds sample or Matrix?

Birds are x264 encoded rip from HD DVD ( and funny thing is that it is 35Mbps and normal/native max video bitrate in HD DVD is 29.4Mbps so we got higher bitrate resoult from lower bitrate source )

Matrix is as I can remember pure EVO rip so nothing was reencoded and it is the same like on HD DVD buyed in store. Later I check how it plays at my downclocked setup.

Also remember that bitrate is one thing but one codecs are more demanding than others and both Blu-Ray and HD DVD can encoded with one of a few video codecs (see specs I linked again).

Also user d-range wrote at PS2DEV forums that:

Also, I can't tell from the fact that this is an H.264 file with a high bitrate that it is actually a 'very demanding' video file. It might use AVL instead of binary arithmetic coding for the entropy encoding, use fewer prediction frames, use no interlacing, etc. That would explain why the bitrate of the file is so high. Generally speaking, the lower the bitrate for high-quality video, the more likely it is that it will be demanding to decode, not the other way around.

So it's now so easy to choose ultimate sample but again bird scene is currently most demanding as far as I know (will check Matrix later)

Bumped FSB to 360 - FPS went to 18-19 with some lows of 16 - still dropping mass frames and chopping sound. Bumped it to 370 (x8) and not much difference to be seen at all. At 8x370 (2960) the Matrix clip is still around 12FPS when all of the green chars are running I think it's going to take some serious brute force to play these IMO work on the decoding software to optimize, if possible, might be what's needed to get such intensive clips playing with reasonable clock rates. I think my CPU could go higher as all I did was ratchet FSB and I've got good memory. Not tonight though, perhaps if someone else manages smooth playback I wonder just how much CPU this would take with the current code...

At almost 3GHz it should work without any problems. I'll check it out under Win and Ubuntu.

[rodalpho]

My XBMC/linux box got 9-12fps in most of the bird sample, with a 3Ghz C2D. It's certainly demanding, but I wouldn't say it's a representative sample of 1080p-- most video is much lower bitrate.

[embrion]

Matrix sample is even more demanding and is not smooth even with stock clocked GPU and [email protected] (Windows XP).
I see that to have "everything player" we need GPU assistance (which won't going to happen under Linux in nearest future I think)

P.S. This sample is VC-1 Advanced Profile@L3.

[BLKMGK]

It's funny but for me the Matrix clip seems less demanding. It doesn't jitter for one thing, it's smooth - just slow. I had it buffer just once andonly at the very beginning. Only when the numbers are falling does it even seem to lag at all - sort of slow motion. Birds on the other hand is a mess. Stops and starts multiple times but no buffering.

Something I found reading an AVS forum thread on my new ASUS board that might be useful -> http://spng.se/frame-rate-test/ from this thread -> http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=938473 Not had time to DL and test the clips yet but that is the board I received today - waiting on a case and laptop drive now before the build.

[maudib]

Hey ekurin, That's a pretty little motherboard. I actually prefer AMD's, even though they run a little warmer.

Have you seen this motherboard?

GIGABYTE GA-MA69G-S3H AM2 AMD 690G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

I have the mATX version of that board, GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AMD690G S-AM2 HDMI M-ATX.

It is very nice but currently I'm having problems with 100% cpu usage when running opengl (with direct rendering enabled).

Also I don't think audio is supported through hdmi and alsa yet. (ready that OSSv4 had tho).

[herg]

From my experience, the slowdown in the matrix clip is something to do with either the audio or the way it is muxed. I have demuxed the audio, converted it to AC3, then remuxed it. The video is still untouched 1080p VC-1, and I can play the entire clip on my C2D OC'd to 2.75 GHz at 24 fps, no dropped frames.

[herg]

I was curious, so I remuxed another test file from the matrix.evo sample. My procedure:

On a Windows machine using gdsmux, add the evo file. It shows two VC-1 video streams and six AC3 audio streams. The audio is actually EAC3 including some DD+ and some TrueHD. I kept everything. XBMC shows a thumbnail for the resulting file, but won't play it.

I then used mkvmerge and add the output from gdsmux. mkvmerge shows the two video tracks and the six audio tracks. Again, I kept everything. This file XBMC does play. No audio since it is DD+, but the video is 24 fps, no dropped frames (C2D 2.75 GHz).

[BLKMGK]

Sounds like maybe the Matrix clip isn't very representative - drop it then?

[herg]

In my opinion, it is very representative. It is a sample of what you can expect if you are archiving your own HDDVDs without re-encoding them. You probably won't find many of them in the "wild", but having it work as is would be one of the criteria for me to buy a HD/Blu drive.

If you are trying to find the most CPU intensive video you can, it is probably not the best choice, though.

[Iceman-UK]

Has anyone got a successful MiniITX based solution going? If so, what CPU/Disc/RAM/Case etc are being used?

I'm tempted to start my Linux-XBMC build using this as the heart: http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11701

Jetway J9F2-Extreme Core Duo Mainboard
- C2D up to t7600
- hdmi out
- intel 945
- up to 2Gb RAM

I'm pretty new to miniITX though and am looking for a suitably sexy and svelte case to go with it. Any recommendations? This looks OKhttp://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=11124 but as black is the new... black, I'd prefer one in that colour.

The other alternative I was looking at was an Aopen Mini 965 model. Ready-built with the fastest C2D i can afford. Extremely sexy case and integrated IR and bundled remote. Expensive though.

[WTF0v3r]

I've got some recent experience with the mini-itx platform. They're great, except that none of them to date have an igp chipset that supports the minimum requirements for open-gl and shader requirements. The A-open and the 965 doesn't technically support it either, as noted in either this thread or another one of the recent hardware threads, but someone went to to work on the code to support Intel x3100 IGP chips.

[BLKMGK]

Right now I think only the Intel G35 chipset has the features specified for XBMC. So far I've only ever found one motherboard, from ASUS, that has this chipset but it's in a mATX format which is larger than what you are looking for. That would be a P5E VM HDMI. So far as I know no one has tested this board but I hope to tomorrow and will report ASAP when I know something for sure. Honestly if you want something as small as what you linked the 2Ghz Mac Mini might be worth looking at - there's a pretty active port ongoing for it too. http://www.osxbmc.com/

Lastly, I think some of the developers may be using a tiny ASUS box and it has had some hacks written to support it's less than robust chipset. Search around, it might have even been mentioned in this thread....