Having great success with my 780G so I wanted to start a thread to help people out who have this great mediaPC board.
CPUs
-------
1) For the lowest power system, use an Athlon 2x50be or 4850e CPU - You can playback 1080 content fine with this. I use this and have a near silent setup (no PSU fan and CPU fan is set very low)
2) For ultimate playback use a Phenom CPU with HT3 of 1.8GHz or higher (this gets you additional video processing like better de-interlacing for 1080i content)
Memory
----------
1) Dual channel ddr2-800. No excuses here - its cheap now. On most boards this means the memory is side by side. Video needs all the bandwidth it can get.
2) Set UMA in the bios to 256MB
Players
---------
Cyberlink v7 (v8 screws up some cool and quiet settings), WinDVD (latest), Nero (latest), Arcsoft (latest).Do not use CoreAVC, as this does not use the h264 hardware acceleration in the 780G.
Alot of people have tonnes of codecs installed. Carefull as some tend to try and take control over a format so even though you may have cyberlink installed, you may not be using it with its proper splitters etc.
Also if you see probs, try disabling cool'n quiet in the bios. Could be that the player is acting up with AMDs power saving feature and lowering the cpu at the that wrong time.
Drivers
---------
Use the latest from game.amd.com
Disable pull-down detection if your 1080i content is stuttering and you have the right hardware setup.
Files
-----
Watch out for bad mkv's. There is an article on avsforums that explains.
x264 Encoding Options for Hardware Compatibility & DXVA - AVS Forum
Commerical decoders look for a certain H264 format - profile 4.1 - which is what BluRay encoders use for commercial content.
***NEW*** March 2009
Getting MKVs to work tips
Use Media Player Classic – Home Cinema edition as your player. It plays Matroska files with H.264 acceleration on 780G.
SourceForge.net: MPC - Homecinema: Files
You can even use its filters to have acceleration of Matroska files in Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center.
Here’s some instructions (you can google it and find it on the web):
Go to SourceForge.net: MPC - Homecinema: Files
Go to Filters 32 or 64 bit depending on O/S
Download to some dir the following files:
mpchc_x86_v1.2.908.0_MatroskaSplitter.zip
mpchc_x86_v1.2.908.0_MatroskaMuxer.zip
mpchc_x86_v1.2.908.0_MPCVideoDec.zip
Unzip the files into some temporary directory of your choice and you should have 3 files with .AX extension:
MatroskaSplitter.ax
MatroskaMuxer.ax
MPCVideoDec.ax
Open a CMD prompt window to the directory containing the files.
For each file, execute the following command:
Regsvr32 xxxxxx.ax
Where xxxxxx is the name of the file.
Make sure to uninstall any other H.264 SW decoder or at least disable the H.264 decoding support in it (you can do this on FFDSHOW).
For example, I had FFDSHOW installed and WMP kept using it instead of the MPC-HC stuff. Once I uninstalled FFDSHOW, everything was fine.
BTW, you can probably do the same thing for .MP4 support if you install the proper Splitter from MPC-HC.
****
That's it for now. If anyone has any other ideas post away. The 780G should be an excellent media motherboard!
CPUs
-------
1) For the lowest power system, use an Athlon 2x50be or 4850e CPU - You can playback 1080 content fine with this. I use this and have a near silent setup (no PSU fan and CPU fan is set very low)
2) For ultimate playback use a Phenom CPU with HT3 of 1.8GHz or higher (this gets you additional video processing like better de-interlacing for 1080i content)
Memory
----------
1) Dual channel ddr2-800. No excuses here - its cheap now. On most boards this means the memory is side by side. Video needs all the bandwidth it can get.
2) Set UMA in the bios to 256MB
Players
---------
Cyberlink v7 (v8 screws up some cool and quiet settings), WinDVD (latest), Nero (latest), Arcsoft (latest).Do not use CoreAVC, as this does not use the h264 hardware acceleration in the 780G.
Alot of people have tonnes of codecs installed. Carefull as some tend to try and take control over a format so even though you may have cyberlink installed, you may not be using it with its proper splitters etc.
Also if you see probs, try disabling cool'n quiet in the bios. Could be that the player is acting up with AMDs power saving feature and lowering the cpu at the that wrong time.
Drivers
---------
Use the latest from game.amd.com
Disable pull-down detection if your 1080i content is stuttering and you have the right hardware setup.
Files
-----
Watch out for bad mkv's. There is an article on avsforums that explains.
x264 Encoding Options for Hardware Compatibility & DXVA - AVS Forum
Commerical decoders look for a certain H264 format - profile 4.1 - which is what BluRay encoders use for commercial content.
***NEW*** March 2009
Getting MKVs to work tips
Use Media Player Classic – Home Cinema edition as your player. It plays Matroska files with H.264 acceleration on 780G.
SourceForge.net: MPC - Homecinema: Files
You can even use its filters to have acceleration of Matroska files in Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center.
Here’s some instructions (you can google it and find it on the web):
Go to SourceForge.net: MPC - Homecinema: Files
Go to Filters 32 or 64 bit depending on O/S
Download to some dir the following files:
mpchc_x86_v1.2.908.0_MatroskaSplitter.zip
mpchc_x86_v1.2.908.0_MatroskaMuxer.zip
mpchc_x86_v1.2.908.0_MPCVideoDec.zip
Unzip the files into some temporary directory of your choice and you should have 3 files with .AX extension:
MatroskaSplitter.ax
MatroskaMuxer.ax
MPCVideoDec.ax
Open a CMD prompt window to the directory containing the files.
For each file, execute the following command:
Regsvr32 xxxxxx.ax
Where xxxxxx is the name of the file.
Make sure to uninstall any other H.264 SW decoder or at least disable the H.264 decoding support in it (you can do this on FFDSHOW).
For example, I had FFDSHOW installed and WMP kept using it instead of the MPC-HC stuff. Once I uninstalled FFDSHOW, everything was fine.
BTW, you can probably do the same thing for .MP4 support if you install the proper Splitter from MPC-HC.
****
That's it for now. If anyone has any other ideas post away. The 780G should be an excellent media motherboard!
Germany
