Suggestions for a gfx card for HTPC

[Evil-I]

Hi All,

Finally got round to bunging a blu ray drive into our main media centre as we've been using our PS3 until now, but its not proving to be a great success so far.

Machine is an intel E5300 @ stock, 2 Gb RAM in a Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H GeForce 7100 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard. The on board GeForce 7100 theoretically should be up to the job (according to the specs when I bought the board) but I'm getting lots of picture tearing issues.

Can anyone suggest whther this is likely to be underpowered on board graphics or a software issue?

Thanks for any advice,

E-I

 

[CAPTAINBUMFLUFF]

I recommend a ati 4350 am using one now can pick them up delivered for under £30
with the picture tearing are you trying to play hd movies by any chance

 

[Baboonanza]

Sounds like you may not have v-sync enabled. Which player are you using? Have you tried playing any other 24fps video with it?

A graphics upgrade can't hurt, but it may not be the cause of the problem. If you do upgrade you want an nVidia card, their GPU video acceleration is much more versatile.

 

[Evil-I]

Hi captainbumfluff,

I only bunged the blu ray drive in late last night, so played with it for an hour or so. Was playing a blu ray and getting pretty bad picture tearing on any movement. Was using the cyber DVD software v8 that came with the drive. I haven't had any issues with HD content like mkv's on this machine, its played everything I thrown at it fine until now.

I was looking at the 4350 or the 5400 series (but no stock showing for the 5400's atm).

I have just come across the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4670 Ultimate "Passive" 512MB GDDR3 which although a bit more expensive looks a really good and future proofed alternative.

Any other thoughts or suggestions anyone?

Thanks,

E-I

 

[Evil-I]

Hi Baboonanza,

Where are the v-sync settings? Its an on board nvidia gfx chipset, so has the nvidia control panel, but I havenm't come across that setting yet (can't check now as I'm in work).

I had a quick look at the nvidia options, whats reccomended at a fairly low price point for blu ray playback?

Thanks,

E-I

 

[Devrij]

Try the trial for arcsoft totalmedia theatre. I had big issues with that software when I got my drive. Ended up sticking with arcsoft tmt3 in the end.

 

[Baboonanza]

OK, after doing some reading up it seems that the 7x series of nVidia GPUs do not support hardware accelerated h264 decoding. This means that it's being done entirely on your CPU, so unless your task manager is showing 100% CPU usage performance isn't the problem.

If you want to add video acceleration something like this should be capable enough, though I'm not an expert on nVidia cards.

You haven't really given enough information to determine the problem IMO. Assuming it's not a performance issue, it could be:
- Horizontal tearing caused by a v-sync issue. Maybe solvable by fiddling with he player settings
- Juddering on movement. This is caused by your display runnning at 60hz but the video is 24hz. You can fix this by using Reclock or by changing your Tv refresh rate (if it supports 24hz).
- A weird Blu-Ray disk. If it's a movie it should be pretty standard, but I've had a problem recently with a BBC programme encoded as NTSC (23.979 fps) 1080i, 4 reference frames and a high bitrate. Caused all sorts of problems.

 

[Jay_t]

I used an ATI 4670 as it was the most powerful card I could use at the time that did not require an additional power connection. The newer ATI 5670 would be the logical choice for you now. Very low power consumption, no external power connectors and enough oomph to allow some medium duty 1080p gaming on the big screen.

 

[Evil-I]

OK, after doing some reading up it seems that the 7x series of nVidia GPUs do not support hardware accelerated h264 decoding. This means that it's being done entirely on your CPU, so unless your task manager is showing 100% CPU usage performance isn't the problem.

If you want to add video acceleration something like this should be capable enough, though I'm not an expert on nVidia cards.

You haven't really given enough information to determine the problem IMO. Assuming it's not a performance issue, it could be:
- Horizontal tearing caused by a v-sync issue. Maybe solvable by fiddling with he player settings
- Juddering on movement. This is caused by your display runnning at 60hz but the video is 24hz. You can fix this by using Reclock or by changing your Tv refresh rate (if it supports 24hz).
- A weird Blu-Ray disk. If it's a movie it should be pretty standard, but I've had a problem recently with a BBC programme encoded as NTSC (23.979 fps) 1080i, 4 reference frames and a high bitrate. Caused all sorts of problems.

Hi Baboonanza,

Thanks for the reply.

Sorry, I know I haven't given a lot of information, mainly because I don't have much yet. I only threw the blu ray drive in last night and spent about an hour fiddling with it as a way to chill after returning home from the 4 day tour of europe I've just had returning from Warsaw (don't ask, it wasn't pleasant).

Anyway, you've all given me much food for thought and things to look into this evening. I think I'll hold off buying any new bits until I've investigated, v-sync and software options.

Many thanks for everyones help,

E-I