3D acceleration slows down and sometimes screws up GUI

[archcommus]

This is an edit from my original post so as not to confuse people.

Basically I was experiencing a lot of instabilities with the interface when using 3D acceleration and VMR9 rendering. It often became sluggish and buggy after taking Sage out of standby or sometimes if I changed channels very quickly. Turning off 3D acceleration and VMR9 rendering often improved speeds but these were not things I wanted to do. After being fed up for long enough fussing around with different rendering modes and other settings to no avail, I uninstalled and reinstalled Sage, let it install whatever Java version comes with v5 of Sage, installed the latest Catalyst drivers for my video card, and uninstalled ATI Tray Tools and put in the regular ATI Catalyst Control Center. Used this to re-balance all settings (this helped with VMR9 issues in the past) and gave it a go from scratch (I was previously using old backed up config files). Been using it for a few hours with NO problems at all, very nice.

[astribli]

What happens to your CPU utilization?

[Opus4]

Is SageTV running on the Primary monitor? DirectX runs best on the primary monitor; on the secondary monitor, it runs in emulation mode & is much slower. (You can set the 2nd display to be the primary, though.)

- Andy

[dvd_maniac]

I notice better menu response with 3d disabled as well.
What exactly do I benefit from having 3D enabled?

[archcommus]

See OP.

[archcommus]

Updated OP for anyone interested. All I can recommend if you are experiencing GUI issues (sluggish, etc.) is, clean installs and drivers really might do the trick! I was too lazy to do all that but gave it a shot and it seemed to work. What encouraged me to try all that was Andy's mention of emulation mode with DirectX. Although I am only using one monitor, I figured who knew what wacky things could be going on with my DX and Catalyst installs. No other programs really have had the chance to indicate problems as I haven't been gaming, so Sage was really the only software making use of those things.

[astribli]

I thought I was fine after reinstalling a fresh copy of XP, ATI drivers, Sage, etc. Seemed to work fine for about 20 hours. Recording and watching shows, playing mp3s, you name it. Then all of a sudden CPU goes to 99% (caused by sage exe) then shortly after menus and interface gets slow then entire thing locks up.

[archcommus]

Originally Posted by astribli

I thought I was fine after reinstalling a fresh copy of XP, ATI drivers, Sage, etc. Seemed to work fine for about 20 hours. Recording and watching shows, playing mp3s, you name it. Then all of a sudden CPU goes to 99% (caused by sage exe) then shortly after menus and interface gets slow then entire thing locks up.

Any other strange processes in the background when this occurs? Does closing it and reopening it fix the problem? Is that 20 hours being open steady or being closed and opened again during that time?

[astribli]

No. This is a very clean virgin XP install. In fact, I have stopped most unnecessary windows services that run in the background like Automatic Updates, DTS, DNS, Distributed Link Tracking, Fast User Switching, Help and Support, Infrared Monitor, Secondary Logon, Security Center, Task Scheduler, System Restore, etc. In other words, not much of anything running in the background except the core services.

It is fixed by rebooting the PC or killing the sage process (if I can regain control of the PC, usually not). That 20 hours was just leaving it running full screen in foreground. Luckily I turned off my TV so it didn't burn the screen (it's a projection) when it freezes.

So for 20 hours, Sage was just humming along running the screen saver (displaying photos), recording stuff in the background, occasionally I would watch a recorded show or listen to some mp3s, then just leave it alone again for several hours.

[archcommus]

What is your card? Could be a hardware issue. What is your CPU/system temp? Also what version of Sage is this, if it is v5 might as well do the free upgrade to v6.

[astribli]

Have only been using version 6 of Sage. Problem didn't occur until I put in the ATI 650 HDTV. Actually had the new Hauppauge 1600 HDTV tuner and thought that was bad which is why I bought the ATI 650. But in thinking about it, the cpu utilization goes up to 50% or so using HDTV so it wasn't card but rather the increased utilization, which all of a sudden randomly jump up to 100% then several seconds later, cannot not control anymore then freeze.

ECS nForce 3A motherboard w 1/25 GB RAM
AMD 3100 Sempron
300 GB SATA drive
ATI 9550 AGP graphics w/256 MB
ATI 650 HDTV tuner
Hauppauge 150 tuner

Don't think it has anything to do with hardware. Have also been trying out BeyondTV, MediaPortal, and Yahoo Go Tv (formerly Meedio), at different times of course, and they all run without a hitch. Overall I just like Sage better but not if it isn't reliable. Can you imagine what the wife would do to me if 24 didn't record?

[archcommus]

Well we know the problem isn't natively with the software, as many people (including myself) are using SageTV v6 with no problems. You say the other programs run without a hitch, but have you run them for 20 hours like Sage? I would enable debugging and see what it produces around the time when Sage starts freezing/crashing.