EB1501 playback issues (latency?) (1 Viewer)

[MPM]

I got myself an EB1501P few weeks ago and spent considerable time trying to make it work well, but have failed. The problem is a bit strange and difficult to understand. Well.. At least for me...

First time around I was very confident about it given many positive reviews (general performance, not MP specifically) so I just went ahead and made a full install, starting with clean W7 install, necessary drivers, MP client, SAF and StreamedMP. Sat down to test it and it was terrible. Playback was choppy, regardless of what I played - 1080p, lowres video or SD TV. It was exactly the same issue both in MP, VLC, WMP and MPC-HC... Next round, I did a "staged approach", testing and backing up after each phase. Perfect playback of all the content until StreamedMP was installed... I then thought maybe StremedMP with Moving Pictures and TV Series was too heavy for it, so I "settled" for the default skin. Changed few "harmless" Windows settings and problems were back! Long story short, I did a lot of trial-and-error using clean installes and back-ups and the conclusion was that any "random" action could ruin the day and get me back to choppy playback. It could be something as simple as installing a MP plugin or changing the time before Windows sleeps, but there was no consistency to what or when would cause it.

Now, the other weird part... There is no way back to good performance! Uninstalling the plugin or changing the setting back to what it was previously would not help. (And yes, I would restart it... ) Only help is restoring to a back-up from a point in time before the change. And if I don't change anything it would continue running fine. Had it running fine for three days without touching it as I wanted to make sure that those issues were actually caused but my changes and not only coinciding with them.

Potential "lead" may be latency... After a lot of forums browsing I installed DPC Latency Checker and it was obvious that my performance issues were correlated with significant latency increases compared to how it looked while performance was good. But again, there is that "no way back" issue. Once I get to bad performance state, I can uninstall all the progs I have, uninstall all the drivers and disable all the devices except the most essential ones but the latency stays high - and performance bad. I also tried "stripping down" W7, removing all not needed functionality and services but results were same...

I was thinking about potential HW issue, but it doesn't make sense either with the randomness and working fine after restoring the back-up...

All thoughts, ideas and suggestions are very much appreciated!

Also, if you have EB1501P (or any EB1501) and are happy with performance, could you please let me know if you have done anything special in terms of installation and drivers?

 

[Jay_UK]

Hi there,

I have an Atom with ION2, and have to agree they can be very "sensitive" to anything.

Have you tried disabling the wireless.... that was causing me big issues.

Do you have issues with playback of local media/content?

J.

ps - Logs would help

 

[porky996t]

Hi MPM,

As I noted in the other thread I also disabled the IPv6 protocol in addition to disabling the wireless adaptor in Win7 Device Manager.

Any chance you could you try an SSD in there to see if it speeds up a bit or becomes more consistent?



M.

 

[MPM]

Jay_UK
Yes, I've disabled the wireless but there was no change. I tested primarily with local files but also some online content using Online Videos plugin but the pattern was the same. When it works everything works beautifully, both local files, TV and HD content from the web. But when it goes south then everything goes south... I had a quick look at logs myself and it all looked fine, can post them later anyway. Since I have same issues with other players (VLC, MPC) I didn't think logs would reveal so much...

porky996t
I don't think I tried disabling IPv6, will give it a shot... My plan was to get an SSD in once I got everything configured, but given the weird behavior and latency issues I don't think that SSD would change much at this point.

 

[porky996t]

Hi MPM,

This whole thing just sounds odd.

Have you tried a clean re-install ?

Have you raised your problems on the eee user forum - there may be somebody who could provide more detail. Forum >>here<<

Sorry I can't be of more use.


M

 

[MPM]

I fully agree, it's very odd! I've tried a clean re-install many times... And, I appreciate your suggestions and input!
BTW, I didn't know about the eee user forum at all, will check it out...

 

[MPM]

Re: EB1501 playback issues (latency, nvidia drivers)

Have done some more testing and it's now obvious that the issue is with GPU and/or drivers... Previously I switched between graphic drivers included with the EB1501P and Nvidia's latest and there was no difference, but now I removed them all together. Graphs below are from a system with clean W7 (64) install and almost all devices disabled, including network, blueray, USB etc.

First graph (dpc-vga) shows latency with no drivers installed (i.e. W7 built-in standard VGA drivers used) and the second one (dpc-nvidia) with nvidia's drivers installed. Only activity done while measuring was moving a window around the screen...

So, what do I do now?

 

[Jay_UK]

Hi there,

There is a latency checking program which actually shows which driver has the highest latency.

That might help/confirm things?

J.

 

[MPM]

Yes, Latency Monitor. Have now used it and it only confirmed that it's Nvidia drivers...
Peaks are caused by nviddmkm.sys which is "Nvidia Windows Kernel Mode Driver". Have cycled through a number of different permutations with different driver versions, different BIOS versions and W7 32 and 64 bit but results are always the same.

Have done some browsing on nviddmkm.sys and latency issues and some people have fixed their problems by adjusting some power management options and services (PowerMizer) but none of recommended solutions works for me. And there aren't too many BIOS options in EB1501...

Installing XP now to test that one too just in case, but I think it's all pointing to bad hardware...

 

[porky996t]

Is it not possible to return the EB1501 as a faulty unit?