[ATI] Advice needed (1 Viewer)

[fangio99]

I have an old PC running Media Portal in my living room. It is just for playback of XVid, MKV etc. files. My TV is only 720P so that is the max it has to acheive.

The spec is:
AMD Athlon XP 3000+
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
2GB PC3200 RAM (Dual channel)
Sapphire Radeon Atlantis 9600 256MB AGP Graphics
200GB Maxtor IDE Hdd
2TB External Hdd
MCE remote
CoreAVC codec and Latest CCCP pack installed
Media Portal v1.1.1.0

It just about handles most 720P stuff but occasionally it stutters with high action sequences.

I was thinking about getting a new graphics card and found this:
PowerColor Radeon HD3650 512MB - AG3650 512MD2-V3

Its not worth spending a fortune on a machine this old so I hope this would be enough to fix the issue. What do you think?

Thanks,

Fangio

 

[robbo100]

Have you tried the latest SAF5 beta codec pack? Some people don't like them, but they seem to work well for me: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...xperimental-based-ffdshow-dxva-decoder-77591/ (you will need to uninstall your current CODECs before you install it if you want to try.

If you ask Hoborg for the "unlock" via PM, then you may have better results than your current CODECs (worth a try before spending money).

Card wise, the main advice I personally see on these (and other) forums, is that the HD5450 512Mb range is good enough. Looking on line, you can pick them up for less than the card you are looking at.

Robbo100

 

[fangio99]

Thanks for the info Robbo100. I will take a look at SAF 5.00. Is it better than CoreAVC Pro V2.0 on CPU utilization?

The motherboard in that PC has only got AGP 8x. There is no PCI-E slot hence the HD3650 AGP card.

Thanks,

Fangio

 

[robbo100]

Is it better than CoreAVC Pro V2.0 on CPU utilization?

- If I am honest, I don't know (I am not an expert), but it does seem to work well for me and many others.

The motherboard in that PC has only got AGP 8x

- Oh, I can see your problem then!

Sorry I can't help much further.

Robbo100

 

[Jay_UK]

Hi there,

I thought CoreAVC was designed more for Nvidia based systems and I see you have a ATI based graphics solution?

Like Robbo, I'm no expert. But I did try CoreAVC on my ION2 client (nvidia based) - and in the end switched back to using SAF5 (PDVD10 and FFDShow DXVA Video for gpu based decoding)

Thanks,

J.

 

[globaldonkey]

CoreAVC works cross platform - however for hardware acceleration it only uses Nvidia CUDA. They were really anti DXVA as I recall, as they wanted to go across OS as well.

 

[fangio99]

If I was to put that card in the PC and use a different codec would I get enough performance for the machine to play HD media?

Thanks,

Fangio.

 

[globaldonkey]

The 3650 is too underpowered for a modern HTPC IMHO. My recommendation would be 4550 / 4670 in the 4xxx series and 5570 in the 5xxx series. These cards will adequately handle anything you can through at them HTPC-wise. The decision to go 5xxx series would be for the benefit of bitstreaming blu ray audio over HDMI.

 

[fangio99]

I just need something for H264 playback. The TV is only 720p and The PC is not a high spec. It only has AGP, no PCIe. It just does playback of downloaded movies and TV series. If and when I want to do more I will look at a complete new system. For now I just want to know if a HD 3650 AGP card will solve my playback stutter problems or is there another cheap alternative AGP card that would do it.

Fangio

 

[globaldonkey]

To a degree, what the TV is doesn't really matter. It's what the source material is that counts more. I had problems with 1080i material (Live TV and files) using a 3450. If you only ever play 720p source material then you might be ok. But if you watch live TV and tune to HD channels, I would think you would have problems.