Geforce Onboard 8200/8300 Poor Playback Fix Found (1 Viewer)

[mhunter]

Hi everyone,

This is not a support question, rather a support answer.

I struggled with the M3N78-EM under Vista and XP for quite a while and have seen many others struggling with the boards as well.

The main issue was performance of TV and Video playback which was extremely glitchy as though the machine was very underpowered and could not cope with the demand (dropping frames, audio sync issues, etc...). I got it to the point where the MPC-HC codec for Videos was great (because it offloaded all mpeg4/divx/x264 traffic off to the video card), but found that TV was still poor performing. After finding out others have had this problem (especially with Media Portal), there's an easy work around.

The main issue is that Cool 'n' Quiet is implemented poorly on this board (probably driver issue)and when it's on video's and TV playback runs very poorly (and video too if not off loaded to GPU). So, the trick is to either turn it off in the bios (it was on by default on my M3N78-EM) or turn it off in windows:

To Turn off in XP: change power setting to anything other then 'minimal power'
To Turn off in Vista: in the advanced power settings, change the minimal CPU to 100% (making sure the Max is on 100% as well).

After discovering this, I found the following corroberating info:

AnandTech: The IGP Chronicles Part 2: AMD 780G vs. Intel G45 vs. NVIDIA GeForce 8200

Anyway, I ended up using RC4 + XP worked perfectly (with Cool 'n' quiet off). I still had issues with Media Portal in Vista which I'll save for another days post.

Hope this helps someone.

Cheers

 

[mhunter]

Updated Info...

Just an update for anyone who's interested, I've done a tone of experimentation with this chipsent (Geforce 8300) and found major issue.

Basically, most issues are caused by the lack of a phenom processor... Basically I posted here about it.

Here's the info repeated

Hi guys,

I've had the Geforce 8300 Asus M3N78-EM for 2 months now and can confirm the issues with the chipset when using a 5200 X2 processor. I have just purchased a 7750 X2 CPU (based on the phenom) and it works brilliantly - all issues seem to be solved now and picture quality is as it should be!

I have been testing it with a 37" 100hz 1080p Toshiba Regza TV, and knew something was wrong with my HTPC as images from other devices and H264/x264 sources were really good (though there was some jittering). I did most of my testing using Cyberlinks Codec, but also confirmed it with WinDVD and other codecs / players. I tested on both Windows XP and Vista x86 with the same results.

The issues I was experiencing were:
- 1080i/576i digital TV transmission showed flickering when using hardware acceleration and without it hardware acceleration there would be motion issues and video was slow on some transmissions.
- DVD playback showed flickering (e.g. Warner Brothers logo at the start of west wing)
- Blu Ray play back HD content showed jitter/judder on slow panning shots and on slow zooming shots, the image seemed to wobble/jump (as though the camera had hit some bumps on the floor) this was when using VRM9 or EVR renderers under MPC-HC and within Cyberlink Power DVD, however worked fine when using the Haali software renderer under MPC-HC. Measured Jitter under Media Portal using Shift + ! I(which shows stats on playback) and it showed jitter between 10 and 20.
- Cool 'n' quiet when turned on caused poor playback of most video, including even just 700MB Divx DVD rips - had to turn it off to get reasonable playback performance.

How did I know swapping to a Phenom would do the trick? Research!
- If you go through this you'll find people complaining about the same sort of issues, so this confirmed it just wasn't me.

- Found this great page on missing remote which said basically that you needed a Phenom Processor.

- Most reviews for this board indicated that the board was excellent with visual processing quality, all these review were using a Phenom processor, I could only find one that did not use a phenom and just a regular AMD x2 processor and it got very poor visual quality rest results. This backed up the missing remote post.

- Found this thread, took the advice on overclocking the Hyper Transport (HT) - so underclocked the 5200 from 2.7ghz per core to 2ghz via multiplier and then overclocked the FSB from 200 to 250 (basically 250 x 5 = 1250 HT). This dramatically reduced jitter/judder and almost totally removed flashing etc... Almost perfect. So obviously, HT was the key to solving the problem.

- Purchased the 7750 processor (which is based on the Phenom) and has a 1800 HT rate (3.6ghz instead of 2000 on the X2 5200), put it in last night - everything is perfect now. No issues at all now. No flashing, no jitter/judder, Cool n quiet works, clearer better picture, motion much smoother - very, very happy!

Sorry about the long RANT, but it's good to get it all off my chest. I totally recommend getting the 7750 as it's far less $ than an x3 and x4 and has more than enough processing power to get the job done - although I found I HAD to turn on cool and quiet + turn on the Asus QFan feature just to get the noise of the fan down as it tends to run a lot hotter than the 5200 X2. I would NOT recommend the standard Athlon X2, you won't get the visual performance out of it that you've probably read in all the reviews and are bound to be disappointed.

P.S. For those thinking about the ATI/AMD 780G IGP, this is a great board too, but according to the "missing remote" link about, it also requires a Phenom processor for interlaced material - so you may find the same or similar issues with it.

Cheers

Matt.

The other thing is that now Cool n quiet seems to work fine as well - and I'm sure this is due to the Phenom...

I'm really happy with this board now, it's a perfect HTPC experience, but if your gonna get one .. make sure you get a Phenom architectured CPU!

 

[Spragleknas]

Thanks for sharing

btw:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mot...00-mini-itx/10 <- Page not found (fix link, pls)

 

[mhunter]

Fixed the link thanks!

 

[josch.hh]

What screen resolution do you use?

 

[mhunter]

I use 1080P 100% of the time via HDMI

 

[allanw]

Thanks for these posts mhunter I have been struggling with similar issues and now I may have a solution in sight. So far this is what I have been through so far (using Vista x64 with MP1):

CPU - AMD 4850e
MB - ASUS M3N78-VM

1. Tried using IGP and had pretty noticable stuttering on anything over 576i.
2. Tried CPU/MB with ATI 4350 and struggled with driver bugs, worse image quality and still had stutters but were less noticable.
3. Currently using 9500GT which has equal or slightly better image quality than IGP and less stuttering but does have some flickering issues like the first 2.

After reading your posts I went into my BIOS and checked out the HT options. It was defaulting to 1000Mhz so I turned it up to 1200Mhz and then put on a DVD with SHIFT + 1 turned on so I could pick up on any stutters easier. This didn't make much difference so I just tried out 2000Mhz and turned off CnQ. This proved to be the smoothest yet although still not perfect. I then put it on the maximum value the BIOS listed which is 2600Mhz and it was as jumpy as 1000Mhz. Im not sure that the values are actually being applied because other people seem to be able to overclock the HT far less than that.

I don't think I can get a 7750 black edition as my 4850e already creates enough heat in my small case (Origen AE S10V) but would really like to try it out to see if it can resolve the remaining stuttering/flickering that I get.

 

[wonkyd]

There are some newer drivers from nVidia for this chipset that make a massive difference. Use the seperate chipset and graphics installer and everything should be smooth! P.S I use a AMD X2 AM2 4200+ and an nVidia 8200 chipset.

 

[mhunter]

Hi,

I'll try and help, just a couple of things:

1) You should not get stuttering on everything. I know that in vista I found the best results with the 5200 X2 when I turned off Aero (by setting screen mode to basic) and also in media portal, using VRM 9, not EVR. Having it on caused jerky issues with TV especially and poor playback in media files.

2) Turn of Cool 'n' quiet, at least for now until you get good playback then turn it back on later to see the affect - I have found a lot of evidence to support this being an issue with video playback as well as experiencing it myself - really jerky on everything.

3) I don't think you're overclocking your HT properly - You could try doing it indirectly by overclocking the FSB (you may need to underclock the CPU hz though to get it stable and keep heat down) which in turn over clocks the HT. The HT on the standard X2's is 1000, the phenoms have it at 1800 to 2000 or more. You should not need to go higher that this. I believe the bios settings you are changing are having no affect, if you overclocked it by more than 2.5 times I would think your CPU would freeze at post.

4) What codecs are u using?

5) Are you getting bad playback for anything else? TV? Divx? MKV's? The CPU will have an especially hard time dealing with interlaced material, but you should be able to get good playback of others.

6) Try setting your PC output to 60hz, that's where I get the best picture (although 24p looks great the audio gets out of sync). What sort of TV/Monitor do you have is it 100/120hz?

Cheers

Matt.

There are some newer drivers from nVidia for this chipset that make a massive difference. Use the seperate chipset and graphics installer and everything should be smooth! P.S I use a AMD X2 AM2 4200+ and an nVidia 8200 chipset.

Yeah, good point.

Current version is 182.5 i think. Make sure these are installed as well, and yes don't install the ones that come with the chipset drivers.

 

[allanw]

Hi mhunter thanks for the reply.

1. I have turned off aero and so far it seems to have made a dramatic improvement. I had heard that turning off aero turns off DXVA is that true? I checked out DVD playback and it did not stutter once during the time I was watching.

2. It is currently turned off until I have resolved the issues.

3. You are correct the setting I was applying was having no effect on the HT. Unfortunately I cannot turn down the multiplier on the CPU so to overclock the HT I have to overclock the CPU speed as well so I have left it all on standard for now.

4. I use the standard vista mpeg2 decoder with haali media splitter and MPC decoder. For audio I use AC3 Filter. No other directshow filters have been installed other than the ones mediaportal installs and those listed above.

5. Live TV appears to playback the best and I don't really get much trouble with SD or HD channels. DVD and AVI playback is the worst of all with MKV working ok.

6. My HTPC is connected to a 40inch Samsung Series 6 LCD monitor via HDMI @ 1920 x 1080. I have a default refresh rate of 50hz as I live in Australia and when I watch AVI/MKV files I switch to 24hz or 60hz. My TV has 100Hz feature but I generally don't use it as I prefer the look with it turned off.

I still get some motion judder that I dont see as much from other devices but that is another issue I believe and something that cannot be completely removed as I have noted in another post.

I should also note that I have tried using VMR9 before in both XP and Vista but on this machine the computer locks up at random times but usually in as little as a minute or 2 and usually when turning the tv on or changing channels.