Flickering Tv-guide and other overlays with EVR enabled (4 Viewers)

[tourettes]

@mironicus

It is not possible to create an application fix (or set processor affinity) for other than an executable.
And it is only considered as a workaround until tourettes or eabin finds a permanent fix for this...

A better workaround is to disable AMD's Cool & Quiet. One way to disable it is to chnage the power scheme in Vista so that minimum CPU frequency is 100%

 

[mironicus]

tourettes

I had Cool & Quiet disabled all the time. However, the Cyberlink Directshow filters set the CPU minimum frequency to 100% everytime it is used.

You set the frequency to 5% - you start PowerDVD - after that the frequency is back to 100%. ^^

 

[pnyberg]

I think the same problem is causing this https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/support-101/my-music-makes-mp-freeze-after-while-33149/ as I reported earlier... Since when I only running SingleProcAffinity it does not happen anymore.

So I think this problem is also causing other problems within MP for users with dual cores..

 

[tourettes]

No progress on finding the faulty code. I guess its time to just accept the fact that the flickering is a feature. Unless someone else wants to have a look on the bug (I have already spent multiple weeks in looking into it).

 

[Eabin]

i did a lot of testing too. seeing as single-core affinity helps a lot, it might as well be some wrong synchronization code (aka. if ( _InVmr9Renderer ) { ... } ), which won't do anything useful, and makes even less sense on dual-core machines. if we could find the offending threads (assuming that they exists), they should be synchronized via a "real" lock.

but this still does not explain why this is purely an ATI issue...

 

[rtv]

but this still does not explain why this is purely an ATI issue...

That's because nvidia's drivers are worse and not even gain from multicore cpus

 

[tourettes]

but this still does not explain why this is purely an ATI issue...

Drivers could handle dual core systems in different ways and only ATI's drivers expose the bug in MP side.

 

[tourettes]

One small interesting find (not on the code side this time). Its only the video overlay that triggers this flickering. If you set the video to play on background (2nd button in the top in the home screen) and go to the EPG the flickering is not happening.

So the question is: whats different between rendering the video overlay and rendering the video as background? Or is it just taking more time to render the video to the background and that will change the timings a little bit and "fix" the flickering.

 

[bitbucket]

i did a lot of testing too. seeing as single-core affinity helps a lot, it might as well be some wrong synchronization code (aka. if ( _InVmr9Renderer ) { ... } ), which won't do anything useful, and makes even less sense on dual-core machines. if we could find the offending threads (assuming that they exists), they should be synchronized via a "real" lock.

but this still does not explain why this is purely an ATI issue...

If this would be just an ATi related issue I cannot understand why it happens at my Gaming System (2x 8800 Ultra) as well.

Got three MP Clients running Vista:

1x Intel E6700 + nvidia 8600GT = no issues
1x Intel E6700 + 2x nvidia 8800 Ultra = flickering
1x AMD 4850e + 780G Board (ATi 3200) = flickering

Any ideas?

 

[chemelli]

1x Intel E6700 + nvidia 8600GT = no issues
1x Intel E6700 + 2x nvidia 8800 Ultra = flickering
1x AMD 4850e + 780G Board (ATi 3200) = flickering

You have the same driver version on 8600Gt and 2x 8800 ultra?

Can you remove one of the 8800 and see if this make a difference ?

This is the first report of a user with Intel proc and flickering

Simone