Old, slow system works; New, fast system stumbles

[SteveP]

I am transistioning from an old system that works great with two NTSC-based tuners to a new system that will be ATSC-based. So far, the new system is unable to perform to the level of the old system. I know that ATSC requires more power to decode, but the differences are large even with a strong system. I need help figuring out what to do. Here are the basic specs on both systems.


Old system: 1.1 GHz Duron, Radeon 7000-based video card (32MB), 512MB system memory, two PVR 250 tuners, Sage 2.2.3 beta, Sonic decoder, VMR9 enabled, outputs to TV and monitor at 1024x768.

New system: 2.8 GHz P4 processor with 533 MHz FSB, Gigabyte Geoforce 6600 video card (256MB, supports DirectX9), 512 MB system memory (333MHz), one VBox DTA 150 tuner, Sage 4.1.3.67, Sonic decoder, VMR9/Overlay, and only outputs to the monitor at this point (tried at 800x600 and 1024x768 resolutions)


The old system only requires about 20% of the CPU and plays flawlessly (Except for occasional lockups of the Sonic decoder, but that's another story). The new system uses 40% to 70% of the processor and works ok with Overlay. Enabling VMR9 yields about 4 to 5 video frames, one second pause, then 4 to 5 frames again. Not exactly high quality output. Any ideas why the new system cannot run VMR9?

Thanks,
Steve

[jptaz]

Do you have Full Screen Exclusive mode enabled on the new System?

NVidia Cards need to have FSE enabled most of the time for smooth VMR9 playback in SageTV.

John

[SteveP]

I did try FSE previously, but Sage quit working with FSE. Any further thoughts?

Thanks,
Steve

Edit: I tried FSE again and Sage runs, but video still runs a few frames and pauses.

[Opus4]

All the DirectX stuff is enabled in the driver? There's is only one monitor at the moment, so there isn't an issue with trying to run VMR9 on a secondary monitor, wher DirectX will always be very slow?

- Andy

[SteveP]

Andy, how do I check the DirectX stuff in the driver? BTW the nVidia driver is version 7.7.7.2

I know the Sonic decoder is setup with full acceleration.

Steve

Edit: I tried uninstalling Sage ( including its directory), reinstalled Sage and went throught the setup again. The VMR9 worked better but still skipped a lot. Sage also shut down when I went from small screen to full screen while FSE was enabled and I was watching a live show. After restarting Sage, VMR9 mode is back to basically being a series of stop action shots. Overlay mode also has frequent micro stutters.

[gplasky]

Go out to Microsoft and download the latest DirectX 9.0c. Upgrade Windows Media Player to the latest, 10 I think it is. Uninstal the nVidia 77.72 drivers, reboot so it is recgnized as a VGA crad and get the 81.98 or the beta 82.12 version. After that, reinstall your Sonic decoder and see if that helps.

Gerry

[SteveP]

Ok, I've performed a variety of changes and have made progress. The biggest change came from installing nVidia's decoder. This impoved the frame rate substantially and cut processor usage to about 35%. Overlay mode now seems to work without skipping frames and VMR9 works considerably better, but still skips every third to fifth frame. I'm not sure how FSE is supposed to work because most of the time Sage just turns itself off with FSE on and I switch to full screen mode.

Gerry, I had just tried going to nVidia's latest driver when I got your last post. The new driver acted very strangely on my system. It only allowed VGA mode with 4-bit color. I went back to the 77.72 driver.

I have upgraded to WMP 10. How do I check which version of DirectX I have?

One other question, should changing screen resolution on my 6600 based graphics card affect cpu/video card processing and the chance for stuttering? Is lower resolution better? I'm feeding an ED plasma display so 480p would suffice for output. My trials so far haven't shown any difference.

Thanks,
Steve

[mlbdude]

You will need to update the BIOS on your video card in order to use the newer nVidia drivers. Maybe nVidia will fix the drivers too, but until then if you want component out you need a newer BIOS.

If you are outputting at 1080i you will need to use FSE with VMR9 as the nVidia card can't do VMR9 at the high a resolution without it. Sage should work OK with FSE as long as you don't switch between window and full screen mode.

If you run at the non-HD resolutions (480p) it does help CPU some, but deinterlacing 1080i video is still very GPU intensive.

[SteveP]

Thanks for the information.

Steve