ATI Radeon HD 2X00 (2400,2600,2900) series owners thread [Text View] - Page 15

HT Slider

12-09-07, 04:04 AM

Recently I incorporated an R5000HD USB port on our STB and I'm now using FireSTB to bring the unaltered mpeg-2 video into Vista Media Center. To my surprise, the image quality with our ATI HD2600XT was not as good as I was expected with 1280x720p and 1920x1080i content using the registry tweaks recommended in this thread.

What I found was for the direct HD mpeg-2 content that ATI's default settings were the best!!

Testing each setting individually I discovered these two "biggies":

- Enabling TRDenoise (or deleting the entry) cleaned up a lot of the HD content, especially the 1080i content and did not produce any ghosting or excessive blurring.
EDIT: With some very fast moving content in lower light environments there is still some ghosting so I have again added the TRDenoise=0 entry as I can't stand the "ghosting"; even at the expense of an increase in overall noise.
- Enabling DXVA_DetailEnhance (or deleting the entry) provided a more reasonable level of edge clarity.

My theory is that the STB itself already includes a lot of TRDenoise and DetailEnhance functionality as well as the actual PVR-250 capture card. With these two combined with the HD2600XT there is simply too much, but with the untouched mpeg-2 video, ATI has just the right amount included for our HD content.

Since I am still using the PVR-250 for SD content, I needed a solution that allowed me to leave TRDenoise enabled. I think the best way to deal with ghosting visible from TRDenoise is to turn off the temporal filter for the PVR-250 and leave the TRDenoise enabled with the video card. To turn it off with the PVR-250 I added the following registry tweaks:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Globesp an\Parameters\ivac15\Driver]
"FltDnrMode"=dword:00000000
"FltDnrSpatFltLevel"=dword:00000000
"FltDnrTempFltLevel"=dword:00000000 ;(this is the one that matters)

In addition to this I discovered:

- "UseBT601CSC"="1" makes no difference at all (I suspect Vista Media Center's use of EVR ignores this setting).
- "SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000" and "VForceMaxResSize"="2800000" make no difference to CPU/GPU load (I suspect this may be related to our HDTV being a native 1920x1080i display, not 1080p or higher bandwidth)
- "DXVA_NOHDDECODE"="0" and "DI_METHOD"="5" didn't make any difference, but I left them in use. My thinking was that possibly with some higher bandwidth content these may have an effect?? (or maybe the HD2600XT has enough GPU power that hardware DXVA never gets turned off??)

I also decided to experiment to see if I could get rid of the very annoying "Posturization" issue with content captured with the PVR-250. It turns out that the recommended registry settings actually leave color vibrance and fleshtone at 25% (for some reason as soon as you turn them off, regardless of the registry settings, 7.10 re-enables them at 25%).

To get rid of the "posturization" issue 100% I found the only solution was to enable both color vibrance and fleshtone correction in CCC, but move both sliders all the way down to "1". With them enabled and at 1, there is not more "posturization".

You guys/gals may want to experiment with some of the above and see if it improves your image quality.

karrih

12-09-07, 04:51 AM

"Posturization" [snip...] 7.10 [snip...]

You guys/gals may want to experiment with some of the above and see if it improves your image quality.

I would recommend 7.11 drivers as the posterisation issue is considerably less obvious in those.

I guess it is always best to experiment with different settings as the best settings depend also on viewed material and display device used.

dj4monie

12-09-07, 06:18 AM

I just installed my Diamond HD2400 512MB AGP and Visiontek TV Wonder 650.

Install went smooth after I used RegClean to accidentally take out the cab drivers (oops), so I restored to a couple of days before just to make sure.

TV Wonder didn't go so smooth at first but then I figured out the WDM and UCI drivers were never installed.

After I did that, it works fine both CMC and MCE see the card (the NTSC side), MCE set up via S-video in and Direct TV.

I also downloaded the reg hack and that went fine.

Now the issues -

I can't use any of the latest driver builds, it says "Setup Can not find compatible card, setup with close now"

I get that with 7.9 and 7.11

I assume many of the HWA fixes have been included in the new builds, HELP!

Window video, Live TV or DVD looks super smooth and great, but enlarge to full screen (1900x1200) and it doesn't look great at all. I would say worst than the 9600XT AIW it replaced.

HWA via the TV Wonder 650 seems to be working - CPU useage is avg 24% (lowest shown usage was 19%)

I am using Anime as animation shows color errors alot better.

I am using the last Power DVD decoder.

topcaser

12-09-07, 10:34 AM

Hi,

i cant get Hardware acceleration for HD under Vista:
System Spec:
Vista 32
DVBViewer 3.8.0.0
Cyberlink Ultra, newest patch
Overlay
no registry tweaks
CCC7.11

HW: 2600XT

Had no problems under XP32. Is there anything i hvae to adjust in the registry?

arfster

12-09-07, 01:34 PM

- Enabling TRDenoise (or deleting the entry) cleaned up a lot of the HD content, especially the 1080i content and did not produce any ghosting or excessive blurring.
EDIT: With some very fast moving content in lower light environments there is still some ghosting so I have again added the TRDenoise=0 entry as I can't stand the "ghosting"; even at the expense of an increase in overall noise.

I think that's probably what most people think, although it depends on the quality of the source and how much movement there is. They are gradually improving things though.

- Enabling DXVA_DetailEnhance (or deleting the entry) provided a more reasonable level of edge clarity.

Same as above, depends on the source. It doesn't make a huge difference imo.

Note with the 7.11 crisis hotfix there are now sliders for both denoise and sharpen, replacing both the above.

- "UseBT601CSC"="1" makes no difference at all (I suspect Vista Media Center's use of EVR ignores this setting).

Expansion always works with EVR (regardless of decoder, or acceleration on/off), but the above only affects SD.

- "SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps"="2800000" and "VForceMaxResSize"="2800000" make no difference to CPU/GPU load (I suspect this may be related to our HDTV being a native 1920x1080i display, not 1080p or higher bandwidth)

Yeah, these aren't performance factors. Ignore them if you don't get the PDVD not-quite-fullscreen issue.

- "DXVA_NOHDDECODE"="0" and "DI_METHOD"="5" didn't make any difference, but I left them in use.

dxva_nohddecode is set to 0 by default for the 2600, so doesn't affect you. It's at 1 for the 2400 though, which kills mpeg2 HD acceleration

DI_METHOD only affects certain setup configs, particularly h264 (where it won't use best quality deinterlacing with the default auto setting, it just bobs). With Vista and a 2600, mpeg2 HD always uses best quality deinterlacing - although note there are some issues with the Cyberlink decoder with this combo, before 7.11.

rdunnill

12-09-07, 03:57 PM

I put together a media PC with the LG dual-format drive. When played back in PowerDVD Ultra, the preview portion of Chicago (Blu-Ray) displayed perfectly, but the content itself was choppy and the CPU usage was maxed at 100%. Looking at the PowerDVD configuration settings, hardware acceleration is unchecked while the content is playing. Forbidden Planet (HD-DVD) was even worse.

Will the 2400pro accelerate HDM playback, or do I need a higher end card? If so, which GPU? I don't want to keep pouring in money if success requires both high-end hardware and guru-level knowledge.

Particulars are as follows:
Vista Home Premium
Powercolor 2400Pro with latest Catalyst drivers
2gb RAM
AMD 3000+ (Socket 939)
PowerDVD Ultra OEM (hardware acceleration checked)

arfster

12-09-07, 04:35 PM

Hi,

i cant get Hardware acceleration for HD under Vista:
System Spec:
Vista 32
DVBViewer 3.8.0.0
Cyberlink Ultra, newest patch
Overlay
no registry tweaks
CCC7.11

HW: 2600XT

What format HD?

Valnar

12-09-07, 04:39 PM

djos

12-09-07, 04:54 PM

Is anyone else getting Blocks of Red flashing or looking unstable when decoding MPEG2 in VMC using the standard MS codec for SD/HDTV? Im using Catalyst 7.11 and a GigaByte Radeon HD 2600 Pro 512MB Fanless via DVI-D.

rdunnill

12-09-07, 05:16 PM

I think 117 pages later, it's safe to take out the 2400 model as a recommended video card. 2600Pro mininum.

-Robert

Is that because the GPU genuinely cannot handle the load, or ATI has disabled acceleration (in which case they deserve to be sued)?

Are there *any* low-profile video cards capable of HD decoding that actually work as advertised?

[Europe]Boogiem

12-09-07, 06:11 PM

Boogiem;12431828']Hi all

I just bought a Saphire Radeon HD2600XT (AGP) for my old tinkertoy (Asus A7m266 MoBo with XP2000+ processor and nifty 384 Mb of RAM :D and an old 40Gb Maxtor disk running XP SP2 and streaming movies from the other PC on a DraftN WiFi-lan).

I thought I would start playing and transform it into o HTPC (probably a slow one, but want to see how it turns out with HD accel before i start to build a "real" HTPC).

Before buying the card I was running an old GF Ti4600 which worked...partly when running 1280*720 to my sony HS-50 PJ via RGB-HV (D-sub), allthough the processor peaked at 95-100 most of the time will playing movies (of course) and sound started to stutter after some minutes of watching 720p mkv files, but the picture was there and rolling on quite smooth...but sound out of synch and stuttering is no fun. At least i Managed to get DD5.1 to the SPDIF in the end via the convenient AC3-filter

I got my hopes up when I read some articles at Toms Hardware and other sites that the HD2600XT got full points for XP also for the AGP card and also unloaded the processor A LOT and at the same time got inverse telecine, motion adaptive deinterlacing and all the yummy stuff. I mean you have to bang up some bux to get all the options I read about in an external scaler/deinterlacer and it seems like the options are (allmost) endless with a HTPC.

I will be (am) using Media Portal as a viewer (at least if I get it to work with HD decode) and have been running CCCP FFDShow until now, but I guess I have to change some things to apply Hardware accel of the 2600XT cause it is still at 100% when running MPEG, MKV-files and so on on media portal, zoom player or MPC.

After sitting here for 4 hours (5 in the morning now) reading about tweaks for Vista, PCIE-cards and so on I thought I would ask for some quick tips what to change just o get started.

I also read some things about AGP-cards not working with HW-HdAccel but I sure hope that is not true :-/

I guess just about anyone writing in this thread knows more than me about container, codes, demuxers and whatnot @:-/

Hope you can give me hint :-)

Regards
Boogieman

Boogiem,

I am in the same boat - Sapphire 2600XT AGP in Vista - I was at least able to find a driver combination that would support DirectDraw, but no (noticeable) MPEG2 acceleration, even with registry key changes suggested earlier in this thread. Oddly enough the sample that appears for the deinterlacing within Catalyst appears to work properly, so I know the hardware itself is working properly.

What drivers are you on? The only drivers I could get to recognize my card is the Sapphire modified 7.10 drivers. 7.11 doesn't even recognize my card (its not even in the .INF file by default!)

Please drop me a message if you make any discoveries. I'm to the point where I think I'll pray for 7.12 to deliver me a working card.

I downloaded my drivers from Sapphires driver homepage (http://www.sapphiretech.com/us/support/drivers.php) but its obvioudsly something more than just drivers to get the HW accel to work.
I have no accel neither or H264, Mpeg2, Mpeg4, WMV9....basically u have to do some tricks that i don not know about ... and asking about help for here on the forum.

Basically I think it stinks that ATI/AMD or subsuppliers say they have hardware accel when they cant tell you how to get it to work, or bundle the required software.
If you are not a HTPC guy with Forum-interest u would never benefit from the card.
Thus I think this series will die by the sheer problem to get HW accel to work, witohout being a genie or professor or genius :P

If anyone knwos the trick please give me a mess.

Regards
Boogieman

originalsnuffy

12-09-07, 10:00 PM

My HTPC can only accommodate a low profile card (and even then it required some modification to get it into the box). At least when I ordered a card, my only option was a 2400. I was able to find a silent card (fan less) which was nice.

In any event, the card actually does a halfway decent job with PowerDVD in my relatively low powered CPU system. I can play back HD material (HD DVD sourced), and usually only have a few minor glitches during playback.

Of course the playback is even better over the xbox 360...but that is no fun now, is it?

rdunnill

12-09-07, 10:09 PM

In any event, the card actually does a halfway decent job with PowerDVD in my relatively low powered CPU system. I can play back HD material (HD DVD sourced), and usually only have a few minor glitches during playback.How'd you manage that? My 2400pro offers no hardware acceleration at all. Registry tweaks?

neiltoe

12-09-07, 10:26 PM

Just curious I tried to scan through this thread and I'm feeling out of focus lol. I went by the Cyberlink advisor page and ordered a HD2400XT and now after reading as much as I can with out going crazy what results with or without reg edits can I expect? I won't be using HD Media anytime soon that is on my todo list but I think I will build a new PC for that since I am still using a P4. All I want is to be able to upscale my existing DVD library and not have to use any programs like AnyDVD. I like to not use any external programs if possible. So will I get a good clean stutter free and HDCP compliant output? Also I believe I understand that audio can only be passed through HDMI if I use the adapter. Does this mean if I was to find a DVI to HDMI with audio cable I still won't get audio? Is it specifically that adapter that enables the audio transport? Thanks in advance for your forgiveness because this thread is extremely long and answers vary.

Siriusfilms

12-10-07, 03:04 AM

Instead of running your E4400 at stock 2.0GHz you could easily overclock it up to 2.7-3.0GHz which will help with your CPU usage being so high and stuttering.
What Motherboard do you have?

I have a FOXCONN G9657MA. I belive it overclocks, but I'm not sure how stable. What would I want to change to OC? Just increase the CPU clock, right? Is there a magic number to change without overdoing it?

These "guts" (Mobo, CPU, etc.) replaced my previous Intel915 chipset Mobo with a 3.0GHz Hyper Threading CPU that was SO HOT, my system was at 70C whenever in moderate use. I LOVE the new cool running Core 2 Duo's. I think my E4400 2.0GHz runs cooler (35C) than you'd expect with it's lower 800MHz bus, than my E6600 2.4MHz with the 1066 FSB. Would overclocking take advantage of the available Chipset FSB speen currently not in use? I'm only concerned about much more heat, although I do have a great quality full copper Zalman CPC heatsink/fan. It's just my whole HTPC is in an entertainment cabinet that I have already mounted the PSU on the back and added an external 120mm exhaust fan. This was of course required by the 84Watt draw on the HORRIBLE P4HT CPU.

I have a ULTRA 500W PSU that delivers 40Amps on one 12V rail, which I've read (I believe in this forum) is better than 2 or 3 rails splitting the 12V amperage. I'm guessing I've got good power for what I need.

Is Overclocking really the best way to get my Blu-rays to play perfectly smooth, or should I look at upgrading to a 2600pro or 2600XT?

karrih

12-10-07, 03:14 AM

My HTPC can only accommodate a low profile card (and even then it required some modification to get it into the box). At least when I ordered a card, my only option was a 2400. I was able to find a silent card (fan less) which was nice.

In any event, the card actually does a halfway decent job with PowerDVD in my relatively low powered CPU system. I can play back HD material (HD DVD sourced), and usually only have a few minor glitches during playback.

I too managed for quite a while with 2400Pro but as the latest drivers with posterisation improvements werent so smooth with it for broadcast hd, I upgraded to 2600Pro. I guess I could have tried overclocking 2400.

I tend to agree that 2600Pro is a minimum recommendation.

dj4monie

12-10-07, 05:47 AM

Somehow my post disappeared...

Just having a problem with MCE using the Cat's Eye 150, has nothing to do with the ATI card(s).

I upgraded to Visiontek's build of 7.11 which they modified the .inf files as I understand it to work with HD 2xxxx series cards.

Well I got the AVIVO updated which allows me to set acceleration of 720p and 1080i content.

Once I get the VBox card running again, it should work out well. Concerned with the soft image I get with full screen SD content however, I don't remember it being quite this bad not that it was fantastic to start with but seemed a little shaper.

Do I still need a Power DVD Ultra Decoder to have the card accelerate OTA HD???

hellbraker

12-10-07, 08:33 AM

Hy,I just bought a new graphics card(RADEON HD 2600XT GDDR3 512 MB-ZALMAN Edition,PCI-E).I`m having Vista.I din`t have any other graphics card in my mobo before,as the graphics is integrated.On my first installation of the card,Vista automatically installed the drivers.But on reboot,my sysytem has slowed down so much,that it now takes almost 6 minutes to startup.Every thing has slowed down,even the mouse and the cursor.How ever if i take out the card and boot again,my PC is having no probs at all.The task manager always shows 100% CPU usage,with my new card. I tried un-installing the old drivers,disabling the onboard video,but all without any luck.In order for this card to work,i even changed my PSU to 670 WATTS as well. I changed the BIOS primary video adapter option to PCI-E also.Is my PC too old for this upgrade??Does any one know what`s goin on here?Any help really appreciated.
i`m having an Athlon 64 3200 2Ghz,1.5Gb RAM,ATI Xpress 200(Old one) integrated graphics.My mobo is MS-7184 VER:1.0.

I got this error when installing the card( i think it`s because of the 100% CPU usage as no process could be completed)
Product
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

Problem
Could not load driver software

Date
29/11/2007 12:49

Status
Report Sent

Description
Windows was able to successfully install device driver software, but the driver software encountered a problem when it tried to run. The problem code is 21.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: PnPDeviceProblemCode
Architecture: x86
Hardware Id: PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9588&SUBSYS_200317AF&REV_00
Setup class GUID: {4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
PnP problem code: 00000015
Driver name: atikmdag.sys
Driver version: 7.1.1.646
Driver date: 06-07-2007
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 6153

Files that help describe the problem (some files may no longer be available)
DMI59D5.tmp.log.xml
oem14.inf

Extra information about the problem
Bucket ID: 124433565

J.B.

12-10-07, 09:23 AM

...and use PowerDVD with hardware deinterlacing in options/video/advanced forced to 3C (vector-adaptive, the best) or 55 (motion-adaptive, next best). This avoids the enormous hit of mpeg2 HD decoding, which is around 50% GPU on a 2400pro or 35% on a 2600pro, but still gets you hardware deinterlacing.

Very interesting. This method works fine with MPEG-2 but have you tested if it works for AVC? I tested with this file (http://rapidshare.com/files/75605987/bundesliga_1080i50.ts.html) and an x1950 Pro in XP and deinterlacing doesn't work properly without dxva, no matter what I set the hardware deinterlacing method to in PDVD.

If the Cyberlink AVC decoder could be made to do proper deinterlacing without dxva this could solve many problems with watching live European HDTV with GPUs that don't support full AVC dxva.

topcaser

12-10-07, 12:12 PM

DJBlu

12-10-07, 12:52 PM

I have done some more testing with x264 and found that if you want Hardware Acceleration on any H264/AVC HD stream encoded with x264 then the following fixes the 1080p(black screen) & 720p (slow down)

When encoding use the following.

1080p - Number of Reference frames must be equal to or less than 4
720p - Number of Reference frames must be be equal to or less than 8
Mixed Reference Frames must be false.
B Frames must equal 2
Adaptive B frames must be false

Happy encoding!

ToughRowToHoe

12-10-07, 01:13 PM

It would probably help a lot of people to start a new 2X00 thread with a FAQ including Arfster's video settings and explanations and ExDeus' install utility.

It should probably include a small section dealing with the audio limitations (PCM stereo, 5.1 AC3), the needed sound driver for XP (uses included UAA driver in Vista), how to set default Sound devices, the BIOs automatically disabling audio devices issue, and the dongle with its applicability (apparently works on all PCI-E/might work on some AGP YMMV). Maybe it should include a link to the discount code as well?

Other potential suggestions? Maybe the Rivatuner hack above? I guess a link back to this thread.

Arfster, could you be the one to start a new thread with a FAQ? I don't mean to foist anything on you, but you have put too much into this for it to be anybody else IMHO. An alternative is to ask protovision to turn his initial post on this thread into a FAQ. The one positive of ATI's driver development "process" is there will be little needed upkeep. :)

ToughRowToHoe

12-10-07, 01:39 PM

This post is compilation of the input of many individuals on this and other threads related to the ATI HD 2000 series cards (probably applies to the 3000 series as well). Hopefully it should help solve most audio problems on the ATI HD series cards:

ATI Knowledge Base Answer: 737-28867

In order to enable HDMI support on the Radeon™ HD 2000 series board through the DVI connector, AMD has designed a unique DVI-HDMI adapter...

As ATI suggests above, the pin assignments on the ATI DVI to HDMI adapter are different than standard DVI to HDMI. You will likely not get sound over a standard DVI to HDMI cable or adapter.

Contrary to ATI's statement on the above listed support FAQ, this adapter likely works with all PCI-E cards. Many owners of AGP cards have reported difficulty enabling the DVI to HDMI sound feature (I believe most have been unable?). As always, your mileage may vary.

If you are trying to order the ATI replacement adapter in the U.S., the code Sarvatt posted many moons ago may still work (please let us know if not):
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=10998064&postcount=36

ATI Knowledge Base Answer: 737-28948

The integrated HD Audio codec of Radeon™ HD2xxx series does NOT support Multi-Channel Linear PCM (5.1). It supports 2-Channel LPCM and Multi-Channel AC3 5.1 Audio formats for HDMI output using DVI-HDMI adapter.

The card doesn't support uncompressed surround. It does handle Dolby and DTS 5.1 compressed.

ATI Knowledge Base Answer: 737-27794

After installing the drivers for the Radeon™ HD 2900 series graphics card, users may notice a (!) error in the Device Manager with an unknown device or an error with an ATI HDMI Audio device.

Solution:

To resolve this issue, please install the Microsoft UAA Audio Class System Driver and then the ATI HDMI Audio Driver, available from the links below.

1. Microsoft UAA HDMI Audio Class System Driver - English (required)

2. ATI HDMI Audio Driver

The above problem is not limited to 2900 cards. All 2x00 cards require the ATI drivers to enable DVI to HDMI sound under Windows XP.

ATI Knowledge Base Answer: 737-29037

Please note that the Microsoft UAA driver, which is included with Microsoft Vista, supports the HD Audio Device on above mentioned graphics cards. No additional HDMI Audio Driver is required to enable sound with Microsoft VISTA operating system.

If your motherboard has a Digital Output Device (SPDIF), VISTA recognizes this device as the default digital output device. You need to change the default device to HDMI. To do so, please follow the steps below:
1. Open "Control Panel" and double click on "Sound"
2. On "Playback" tab right click on "Digital Output Device (HDMI)" with the TV icon
3. Select "Set as Default Device"
4. Right click on "Digital Output Device (HDMI)" with the TV icon again and click on "Test"
5. You should hear sound from left and right speaker of your TV set
6. Click on "OK"

Quite a number of card owners have experienced problems outputting 5.1 surround over HDMI. First, make sure that you have set DTS and Dolby support under the "Supported Formats" tab. To do so:
1. Open "Control Panel" and double click on "Sound"
2. On "Playback" tab right click on "Digital Output Device (HDMI)" with the TV icon.
3. Select Properties.
4. Open the "Supported Formats" tab.
5. Put check marks in the DTS Audio and Doby Digital selections under Encoded formats and Press Apply.
6. Click "Test".
7. Click on "OK".

If you can still only output 2-channel LPCM, install the ATI HDMI Audio Device driver available on the Realtek site:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#High%20Definition%20Audio%20Codecs

Some card owners have experienced problems with their motherboards disabling onboard sound after installing a 2x00 card. If you lose your onboard sound after installing the ATI card and cannot locate it under the Sound applet noted in Step 1 above, enter BIOS during system boot and change the sound/audio option from Auto to Enabled.

The drivers haven't supported sound over both DVI outs since version 7.7. The DVI out closest to the motherboard should be the only one capable of carrying audio.

You need to select SPDIF passthrough in your program settings. Also, because the program is bitstreaming DD and DTS data, Windows sees and reports only 2 channel audio.

See Arfster's post for video settings and explanations: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11659897&postcount=2121

arfster

12-10-07, 03:07 PM

If the Cyberlink AVC decoder could be made to do proper deinterlacing without dxva this could solve many problems with watching live European HDTV with GPUs that don't support full AVC dxva.

That should be possible with a little regtweaking within PDVD itself, but almost certainly not in a third party app using the cyberlink decoder. However, I think there's probably a way with ffdshow, will try later.

mickwall

12-10-07, 03:19 PM

Mastiff

12-10-07, 03:40 PM

I have a problem adjusting colors on my HD2600 PCI-E. To get my CRT projector's image as corect as I can (since my expert guy with the color calibraiton equipment can't get here until some time in the spring!) I need to adjust saturation and hue with Digital Video Essentials test images and blue film in front of my eyes. But when I move the sliders, nothing happens in the test image, only in the small image in the CCC. Is there any way to do this without going totally mad? :D

arfster

12-10-07, 04:35 PM

That should be possible with a little regtweaking within PDVD itself, but almost certainly not in a third party app using the cyberlink decoder. However, I think there's probably a way with ffdshow, will try later.

To my surprise, it's the other way round. The ffdshow route fails, but if you use the cyberlink decoder with DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264=1 (or VForce24FPS1080H264 with cat7.8+) then it breaks acceleration, but hardware deinterlacing still works. Nice.

J.B.

12-10-07, 11:25 PM

To my surprise, it's the other way round. The ffdshow route fails, but if you use the cyberlink decoder with DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264=1 (or VForce24FPS1080H264 with cat7.8+) then it breaks acceleration, but hardware deinterlacing still works. Nice.

Sadly those regs don't have any effect on my x1950 Pro (Crysis driver), Cyberlink dxva continues working in all its blocky glory. But thanks for the ideas anyway. Basically it should be possible to use the Cyberlink decoder in software mode with forced weave and then connect that to the ffdshow raw filter and make ffdshow tell the GPU that it wants HW deinterlacing? Hmm, I wonder if could get anyone interested in adding that feature to ffdshow...

Anyway, sorry for my non 2x00 posts, carry on.

DooMer_MP3

12-11-07, 04:16 AM

ToughRowToHoe

12-11-07, 11:01 AM

Arfster, no worries. I'll just turn that post into an audio FAQ like your settings post. I hope it will be helpful if you do consider doing a new 2x00 thread/FAQ. Cheers.

dj4monie

12-11-07, 04:09 PM

Hi there, wondering if anyone can help. I have a reasonably poweful AMD x64 (single core) chip along with a ATI HD2400XT video card HTPC. I've been trying to play some Planet Earth 1080i .mkv clips... When doing so, I get some pretty badly stuttering video/sound. Basically, the ehshell.exe process is taking up about 90-100% CPU. I was under the impression that the HD2400XT chip would decode these gracefully. Am I missing something? I'm about to purchase a 1080p 42" TV, and don't want my MCE 2005 machine to crash to a halt when doing 1920x1080 resolution. Thanks!

HA! That's what I thought too... I have the Diamond 2400Pro AGP and no HWA anywhere save for DVD's.

I starting to think its decoder related....

However I was under the impression that between the TV Wonder 650 and the HD2400 both new in my old machine, something would accelerated OTA HD MPEG-2 (equal to your 1080i in many cases) and I get NOTHING but peaked CPU usage.

Already installed the reg hack, so that leaves me to believe its decoder. I used CMC that came with the TV Wonder and while can use both ATSC tuners when MCE is corrupted now and won't use any HD tuners, I still don't get HWA even using ATI's front end, strange.

HT Slider

12-11-07, 04:29 PM

Note with the 7.11 crisis hotfix there are now sliders for both denoise and sharpen, replacing both the above.

...

DI_METHOD only affects certain setup configs, particularly h264 (where it won't use best quality deinterlacing with the default auto setting, it just bobs). With Vista and a 2600, mpeg2 HD always uses best quality deinterlacing - although note there are some issues with the Cyberlink decoder with this combo, before 7.11.

Have you taken a look at the default settings with the official 7.11?

I uninstalled 7.10, cleaned out the ATI registry settings and then installed 7.11.

To my surprize TRDenoise=0 was already there and all of the other settings were already non-aggressive, including the excessive color enhancement and fleshtone being set to off.

Without a single registry tweak, 7.11 seems to include all of your recommended settings by default.

As you mentioned, it also has the "posturization" problem essentially resolved also.

I'm amazed that it took so long, but finally ATI does seem to have their driver working well for HTPC use (it was horrible, without registry hacks, prior to 7.11).

HT Slider

12-11-07, 04:42 PM

HA! That's what I thought too... I have the Diamond 2400Pro AGP and no HWA anywhere save for DVD's.

I starting to think its decoder related....

However I was under the impression that between the TV Wonder 650 and the HD2400 both new in my old machine, something would accelerated OTA HD MPEG-2 (equal to your 1080i in many cases) and I get NOTHING but peaked CPU usage.

Already installed the reg hack, so that leaves me to believe its decoder. I used CMC that came with the TV Wonder and while can use both ATSC tuners when MCE is corrupted now and won't use any HD tuners, I still don't get HWA even using ATI's front end, strange.

Prior to purchasing my genuine ATI HD2600XT, I purchased a Diamond "ATI clone" HD2600XT card.

That card was able to play video games just as well as the genuine ATI HD2600XT, but for some reason there was absolutely no DXVA hardware acceleration at all (not even DVDs). I even tried a second Diamond HD2600XT and it too had no DXVA at all. These were both installed in my HTPC running Vista and a GA-P35-DS4 Gigabyte motherboard (PCIe).

Although this makes little sense, with a huge 20" cooling fan blasting at the card it was able to get a little DXVA working, but only some features worked and the image quality was relatively poor (quite a few artifacts). The system was also prone to locking up during video playback.

As soon as I installed the genuine ATI HD2600XT, the image quality was greatly improved and it now had full DXVA support. For some reason the Vista "Windows Experience" rating went up by 0.1 points for the video card performance tests as well with the ATI card (although I didn't notice any change in gaming performance). With the genuine ATI card, the system has not locked up once running 24/7 for months.

The other huge improvement is the ATI card is virtually silent, while the Diamond clone was the noisiest card I've ever tried.

Is it possible Diamond has done something that screws up DXVA on all of their HD 2x00 series cards?

djos

12-11-07, 05:04 PM

HT Slider

12-11-07, 05:18 PM

Is anyone else getting this?
Yes and it is quite annoying with some content, especially the CBC news when captured with our PVR-250.

For some reason HD content captured through the R5000HD doesn't have this issue.

Basically what I see is a portion of the image that is a constant color (typically red) bobs up and down by a small amount.

Most of the time this is with stationary video (background).

I know the problem is with the HD2600XT because when I play the same dvr-ms files using any of our other 5 Media Center PCs, the problem doesn't exist. These other PCs are using ATI 9800Pro, Nvidia 5500 (2x), Intel 915, and Nvidia 6800 for graphics cards. Only the HD2600XT has the issue.

dj4monie

12-11-07, 05:34 PM

Prior to purchasing my genuine ATI HD2600XT, I purchased a Diamond "ATI clone" HD2600XT card.

That card was able to play video games just as well as the genuine ATI HD2600XT, but for some reason there was absolutely no DXVA hardware acceleration at all (not even DVDs). I even tried a second Diamond HD2600XT and it too had no DXVA at all. These were both installed in my HTPC running Vista and a GA-P35-DS4 Gigabyte motherboard (PCIe).

Although this makes little sense, with a huge 20" cooling fan blasting at the card it was able to get a little DXVA working, but only some features worked and the image quality was relatively poor (quite a few artifacts). The system was also prone to locking up during video playback.

As soon as I installed the genuine ATI HD2600XT, the image quality was greatly improved and it now had full DXVA support. For some reason the Vista "Windows Experience" rating went up by 0.1 points for the video card performance tests as well with the ATI card (although I didn't notice any change in gaming performance). With the genuine ATI card, the system has not locked up once running 24/7 for months.

The other huge improvement is the ATI card is virtually silent, while the Diamond clone was the noisiest card I've ever tried.

Is it possible Diamond has done something that screws up DXVA on all of their HD 2x00 series cards?

Its possible...

I don't know, the card is only 3 days old and that seems kind of silly that they would tout HD playback with nothing else added. Even with CMC (Cyberlink Power Cinema) I get no HWA and the TV Wonder 650 makes that claim and should work with it.

MCE is messed up, I am going to make an image of it and reformat the PC, I really hate to do this, but CMC no HWA, MCE I can't get my HD tuners to work after I mistakenly deleted all the cab drivers from the machine using Driver Cleaner and also any WMA content is fubard, it crashes windows and restart it.

I just want to confirm what I need to make HWA work and I guess its Power DVD Ultra...

Darn it ATI great hardware, messed drivers as usual - You think I would have learned after MMC with the AIW and using Kram drivers for MCE to see the AIW, what a mess - :)

arfster

12-11-07, 05:56 PM

Have you taken a look at the default settings with the official 7.11?

I uninstalled 7.10, cleaned out the ATI registry settings and then installed 7.11.

To my surprize TRDenoise=0 was already there and all of the other settings were already non-aggressive, including the excessive color enhancement and fleshtone being set to off.

I think you can't have cleared out all the areas it hides in the registry - remember there are backups. Trdenoise definitely isn't in the 7.11 install package.

fdisker

12-11-07, 06:56 PM

I think you can't have cleared out all the areas it hides in the registry - remember there are backups. Trdenoise definitely isn't in the 7.11 install package.

Agreed. Wasn't there for me either after a clean Vista install + 7.11.

djos

12-11-07, 08:45 PM

HT Slider

12-12-07, 01:02 AM

I think you can't have cleared out all the areas it hides in the registry - remember there are backups. Trdenoise definitely isn't in the 7.11 install package.

That's annoying.

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that since they haven't figured out what settings are needed to make the cards display properly for at least 2 years (excessive denoise) that there is no reason for ATI to ever figure it out...

Do you know where the driver gets it settings from?

I searched for TRDenoise and only noticed it in the backup control sets. I also made sure the settings were wiped out from where I had manually created them. Admittedly I didn't run a registry cleaner (I'm always concerned they will wipe out something they shouldn't since most are written for XP, not Vista).

cynic64

12-12-07, 01:27 AM

I have a new Velocity Micro system with an HD 2600 XT in it. I'm using HDMI out over the DVI/HDMI connector and I've noticed that if I have the HDMI cable plugged in when the system boots it never makes it out of the BIOS text part of boot. I can keep the cable unplugged and the system will boot fine and will output video fine if I hook up the HDMI cable later. This seems like some kind of problem with the 2600's BIOS and HDMI link, anybody seen anything like this?

wiak

12-12-07, 02:01 AM

Radeon HD 3870/3850 missing
Radeon Moblity HD series missing

as far i know only PCI Express edition of Radeon HD cards support audio via DVI>HDMI Dongle

this is due to AGPs bandwidth

i think the audio chip inside the HD chips are pci express based to

the Radeon HD series wasnt made for AGP anyway so, you must be missing somethings like audio

dj4monie

12-12-07, 05:42 AM

I am not sure if its been covered specifically but (and I searched) but I can't seem to find any information about the successful use of Elecard's MPEG Player or their DVD Player to get the decoder(s) that force ATI's AVIVO cards to HWA DXVA and it states on their web site its Vista approved, so it MUST work.

Its cheaper than Power DVD Ultra solution and since I have no plans to add an HD-DVD player and will purchase a PS3 soon, would this work for MY applications where I am using VGA(with a DV-I adapter) in and send my audio via Optical out to my new surround sound system?

Rew452

12-12-07, 06:49 AM

VisionTek has released new drivers for HD2600XT!

Has anyone tried them yet??

Does anyone know how to limit language support to only English? Since they usually install all.

Thanks
Rew

millerbrad

12-12-07, 07:22 AM

Yes and it is quite annoying with some content, especially the CBC news when captured with our PVR-250.

For some reason HD content captured through the R5000HD doesn't have this issue.

Basically what I see is a portion of the image that is a constant color (typically red) bobs up and down by a small amount.

Most of the time this is with stationary video (background).

I know the problem is with the HD2600XT because when I play the same dvr-ms files using any of our other 5 Media Center PCs, the problem doesn't exist. These other PCs are using ATI 9800Pro, Nvidia 5500 (2x), Intel 915, and Nvidia 6800 for graphics cards. Only the HD2600XT has the issue.

I see it too, on both ATSC and NTSC. for ATSC, it's in both SD (480i) and HD (1080i). It's much more noticable in SD -- the colors seem to "bob" up and down with alot more distance.

For me, if video is 100% stationary (static screen) there is no bob. If ANYTHING moves on the screen, it becomes apparent. It's pretty noticable when watching the weather on my local news. The TV station has a logo with a red square in it. When they show the radar without animation, the logo looks fine. When they animate the radar, the red block starts jumping up and down.

Not sure if it's apparent in DVDs. I'll need to watch one of my wife's Disney cartoons and check, I guess.

Also, it may only be on interlaced content. I don't think I've ever noticed it on FOX-HD (720p). I output video at 1080p from my 2600XT.

I'm still using the 7.7 drivers (I need my dual HDMI output), so your results may vary.

dj4monie

12-12-07, 08:20 AM

VisionTek has released new drivers for HD2600XT!

Has anyone tried them yet??

Does anyone know how to limit language support to only English? Since they usually install all.

Thanks
Rew

I have them and it didn't ask for language.

AVIVO settings are in place

Enable 720p and 1080i HWA, but I have to a decoder that supports that.

Try after a nap its 5am here!

Rew452

12-12-07, 09:18 AM

I have them and it didn't ask for language.

AVIVO settings are in place

Enable 720p and 1080i HWA, but I have to a decoder that supports that.

Try after a nap its 5am here!

Yes You are right but if you look at the install it installs all languages which is what I would like to limit it to English only.

Thanks
Wayne

ToughRowToHoe

12-12-07, 10:30 AM

I see it too, on both ATSC and NTSC. for ATSC, it's in both SD (480i) and HD (1080i). It's much more noticable in SD -- the colors seem to "bob" up and down with alot more distance.

For me, if video is 100% stationary (static screen) there is no bob. If ANYTHING moves on the screen, it becomes apparent. It's pretty noticable when watching the weather on my local news. The TV station has a logo with a red square in it. When they show the radar without animation, the logo looks fine. When they animate the radar, the red block starts jumping up and down.

Not sure if it's apparent in DVDs. I'll need to watch one of my wife's Disney cartoons and check, I guess.

Also, it may only be on interlaced content. I don't think I've ever noticed it on FOX-HD (720p). I output video at 1080p from my 2600XT.

I'm still using the 7.7 drivers (I need my dual HDMI output), so your results may vary.

millerbrad, I too have the problem with red shift. I thought someone posted an ATI notice stating that ATI hoped to fix it in the 7-12 driver release. I haven't searched this thread or the ATI site to confirm this. Of course I won't believe it until I see it anyhow. Based on what you said earlier I also don't think you'll ever see dual HDMI support again in these ATI drivers so I suspect you'll be forced to make a compromise. Er, I guess I should rephrase that, you'll be forced to make "another" compromise...

Edit: I think a few people mentioned that turning off pulldown detection eliminated red shift? I did a search. I was right. I believe I tried it with the same result. See: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11925171#post11925171
And: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11656583#post11656583

millerbrad

12-12-07, 10:47 AM

millerbrad, I too have the problem with red shift. I thought someone posted an ATI notice stating that ATI hoped to fix it in the 7-12 driver release. I haven't searched this thread or the ATI site to confirm this. Of course I won't believe it until I see it anyhow. Based on what you said earlier I also don't think you'll ever see dual HDMI support again in these ATI drivers so I suspect you'll be forced to make a compromise. Er, I guess I should rephrase that, you'll be forced to make "another" compromise...

Edit: I think a few people mentioned that turning off pulldown detection eliminated red shift? I did a search. I was right. I believe I tried it with the same result. See: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11925171#post11925171

And: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=11656583#post11656583

Hmm.. I remember those posts, but I guess I wasn't familiar enough with the terminology to know that's what my problem was. I'll give the pulldown detection suggestion a try. Thanks!

If things get too annoying, I'll probably need to invest in an HDMI splitter one of these days and upgrade my drivers... But, if I can get rid of red shift, I'm honestly pretty happy with the 7.7 drivers (although I have yet to dive into Blu-Ray or HD-DVD... that may change things).

ToughRowToHoe

12-12-07, 10:56 AM

ToughRowToHoe

12-12-07, 11:28 AM

I thought someone posted an ATI notice stating that ATI hoped to fix it in the 7-12 driver release. I haven't searched this thread or the ATI site to confirm this. Of course I won't believe it until I see it anyhow.

I haven't searched the ATI support site, but I don't see anything posted over here on a fix for red shift in the 7.12 release. I may have it confused with ATI hoping to fix the posturization problem. Either way, it is still the same waiting game with no particularly good chance that it'll be fixed anytime soon.

coolhd

12-12-07, 12:49 PM

Guys,
I have the Diamond HD 2400 Pro. I am only getting hardware acceleration for MPEG. No HWA for AVC or VC-1.
Also my machine keeps crashing after around 10 minutes of play time and sometimes even when just browsing without playing the video.

I have tried the old ATI CC drivers and also the new 7.11 drivers, with and without the Registry Tweaks from arfster's post.

My machine specs are
AMD XP 6400+
2 GB Ram
Sharp 46 inch LCD TV connected through HDMI
Nero Showtime for playing HD/Bluray files

Did I get a lemon with this Card ? Also do we a clear winner in these ATI HD 2XXX cards for HTPC use or is the race still on ?

Please reply

Thanks

HT Slider

12-12-07, 01:29 PM

Guys,
I have the Diamond HD 2400 Pro. I am only getting hardware acceleration for MPEG. No HWA for AVC or VC-1.
Also my machine keeps crashing after around 10 minutes of play time and sometimes even when just browsing without playing the video.

When I had the Diamond HD 2600XT, not only did HWA for AVC or VC-1 not work, but it also crashed regularly.

With the ATI HD2600XT the system is 100% rock solid stable.

I was reading through the Knowledge Base at ATI yesterday and I noticed an article about certain 3rd party HD2x00 cards not performing properly and crashing regularly. It sounds like they are going to try to fix the issue through a software update, but that sounds like a hack to me...

I'm not an expert on which cards are of high quality, but after some research I had decided to either go with an HIS HD2600XT ICEQ or a genuine ATI HD2600XT. The HD2600XT definitely has more video processing capability than the 2400's and both the HIS ICEQ and ATI cards seem well build (based on Internet reviews). I'm sure there are other quality cards (including Sapphire), but personally I'm going to stay away from Diamond. I've now owned 3 flaky Diamond cards, all of them having stability and overheating issues.

One thing for sure, I compared the Diamond HD2600XT (ATI clone) to the genuine ATI HD2600XT and the difference was very significant. The ATI card used much larger capacitors, coils and a relatively huge heat sink. The Diamond card was also missing at least half a dozen components (mainly resistors and small capacitors) compared to the ATI card. The Diamond card that I had was actually a clone of an ATI card. Basically the box was a complete copy of the genuine ATI box and the card didn't say Diamond on it anywhere, but it did have ATI all over it. The only place it said Diamond was one side of the box stated something like ATI logos and packaging used by Diamond under permission of AMD. When I tried to get tech support through ATI I was told the card wasn't an ATI card, wasn't certified to comply with ATI requirements and wasn't supported by ATI. I wasn't impressed to find out it wasn't an ATI card (especially considering it was both sold as and priced as a genuine ATI card by Future Shop in Canada).

arfster

12-12-07, 01:49 PM

VisionTek has released new drivers for HD2600XT!

Has anyone tried them yet??

Extracted and had a look, they're release 8.432-071101a-055414C. That's newer than the official 7.11, and comparable to the the crisis hotfix drivers, which are 8.43.1.1-071113a-055589E-ATI.

These are different development cycles though, as the date/build number is newer on the crisis ones - eg from the .inf it looks like there are no denoise/detail sliders in the visiontek drivers, so that's maybe a feature planned for 8.1 (ie january release), and the crisis hotfix perhaps an early beta of that. However, the visiontek ones might actually have a few more bugfixes, as they have a newer version number (8.432). At a guess, they probably won't help for HTPC stuff, as the key dlls are newer on the crisis ones.

If anyone wants to test them please post results, I don't really have time for that atm. Besides, official 7.12s are just round the corner.

Rew452

12-12-07, 02:03 PM

Extracted and had a look, they're release 8.432-071101a-055414C. That's newer than the official 7.11, and comparable to the the crisis hotfix drivers, which are 8.43.1.1-071113a-055589E-ATI.

These are different development cycles though, as the date/build number is newer on the crisis ones - eg from the .inf it looks like there are no denoise/detail sliders in the visiontek drivers, so that's maybe a feature planned for 8.1 (ie january release), and the crisis hotfix perhaps an early beta of that. However, the visiontek ones might actually have a few more bugfixes, as they have a newer version number (8.432). At a guess, they probably won't help for HTPC stuff, as the key dlls are newer on the crisis ones.

If anyone wants to test them please post results, I don't really have time for that atm. Besides, official 7.12s are just round the corner.

Thanks for taking a look but When you say around the corner, any good guess as to when? If they are a week or so no sense in playing.

Rew

millerbrad

12-12-07, 02:45 PM

Thanks for taking a look but When you say around the corner, any good guess as to when? If they are a week or so no sense in playing.

Rew

7.12 = Released in 2007, Month 12 -- they've historically been released mid-month.

So, any day now.

DJBlu

12-12-07, 03:28 PM

7.12 = Released in 2007, Month 12 -- they've historically been released mid-month.

So, any day now.

I wouldn't hold your breath, they took an age to release 7.11's 21st Nov 2007, I'd be suprised if we see them this side of Christmas.

How bad is it that we are eagerly awaiting new drivers to make the product we bought do what it should of out of the packet.

Mind you it can't be as bad as the wait we are going to have for HWA from Cyberlink with 720p & 1080p with x264 encoded streams.

arfster

12-12-07, 03:39 PM

Mind you it can't be as bad as the wait we are going to have for HWA from Cyberlink with 720p & 1080p with x264 encoded streams.

It might be the UVD isn't actually capable of decoding particularly complex h264 :-( If you run some x264 in software and look at the CPU, it sometimes uses more than the hardest Bluray, due to the very high number of reference frames used and other options for compressing it heavily.

Just speculating though.

DJBlu

12-12-07, 04:27 PM

It might be the UVD isn't actually capable of decoding particularly complex h264 :-( If you run some x264 in software and look at the CPU, it sometimes uses more than the hardest Bluray, due to the very high number of reference frames used and other options for compressing it heavily.

Just speculating though.

I was thinking the same thing, however.

There are two points to look at, one is the fact that cl264dec.ax filter with a version number less than 2 can decode anything @ 720p which means the UVD can cope with this at least.

The other point is that it isn't just ATI cards that have this problem but the geforce cards do too.

We can but hope it is a software problem.

Dave Baumann

12-12-07, 05:17 PM

arfster

12-12-07, 06:45 PM

What software are you using? My understanding is that the mainline players are only using hardware acceleration from Blu-ray or HD DVD optical sources at the moment; H.264 encoded files are not supported with acceleration.

The PDVD codec supports acceleration for all h264, except those that use extreme settings such as >4 ref frames (and some other stuff, someone a few pages back figured out exactly what). Unfortunately this includes most x264 encodes.

If you encode with Nero8 recode it accelerates perfectly though.

DooMer_MP3

12-12-07, 06:53 PM

Ok, I've been trying to do some reading in this thread, and it is LONG. I'd be really grateful if someone could clear up a few things for me. My stats:

- AMD Single Core 939 64bit 2.0GHz
- 1GB RAM
- Sapphire fanless HD2400XT
- MCE 2005
- K-Lite Codec Pack

First off, I have one of the afflicted bad BIOS Sapphire HD2400XTs. It doesn't get recognized as a valid HD series card without doing some tweaking. Is there a new BIOS I can flash onto it? Do the new driver packs handle this? What exactly do I need to tweak in the registry to make the newer drivers like the card? I haven't installed drivers since August, so I forget.

What should I have installed as far as codecs/players to try and get some hardware 264 acceleration working? Which tweaks seem to be working? Specifically with mkv files...

Thanks!

Oddish

12-12-07, 09:06 PM

I'm trying to get a Sapphire Radeon HD 2400 Pro (AGP) running on Vista (32bit). I've tried Sapphire's drivers as well as ATI's drivers (versions 7.11 and 7.7). All of them result in a bluescreen after restart. I have to restart in safe mode and uninstall the card in the device manager to get the computer started again.

Any suggestions?

I've obviously started a ticket at ati's support, but they're not exactly lightning fast.

Strecker25

12-12-07, 11:09 PM

I have an athlon xp 4400 dual core with an lg combo drive and the powercolor HD2600XT 512mb ddr3 card yet when playing blu ray or hddvd discs cpu usage is at 100% and riva tuner says the gpu is at like 13%. Im a little stumped here, ive applied the tweaks and hardware acceleration is enabled in pdvd ultra? anyone any idea?

heres my system info while playing pirates3 bluray

Player Information:
Player Region Code: Not Specified
Current Drive: E:

Display Information:
Video Mode: Progressive
Display Mode: DirectShow
FourCC Code: NV12
Surface Type: Hardware Video Accelerator (DxVA)

Audio Attributes:
Audio Coding mode: Dolby Digital
Sampling Rate: 48kHz
Number of Audio channels: 2.0
Bitrate: 224 Kbps

Hardware Information:
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ running at 2309 MHz
3DNow! Technology: In Use
Enhanced 3DNow! Technology: In Use
3DNow! Professional Technology: In Use
IA MMX Technology: In Use
IA Streaming SIMD Extensions: In Use
IA SSE 2: In Use
Video Accelerator: DirectX VA (not in use)
Multispeaker Audio Device: Speakers (Realtek High Definiti (not in use)
SPDIF Output Device: Not Detected

JaiJoseph

12-12-07, 11:10 PM

When I had the Diamond HD 2600XT, not only did HWA for AVC or VC-1 not work, but it also crashed regularly.

With the ATI HD2600XT the system is 100% rock solid stable.

I was reading through the Knowledge Base at ATI yesterday and I noticed an article about certain 3rd party HD2x00 cards not performing properly and crashing regularly. It sounds like they are going to try to fix the issue through a software update, but that sounds like a hack to me...

I'm not an expert on which cards are of high quality, but after some research I had decided to either go with an HIS HD2600XT ICEQ or a genuine ATI HD2600XT. The HD2600XT definitely has more video processing capability than the 2400's and both the HIS ICEQ and ATI cards seem well build (based on Internet reviews). I'm sure there are other quality cards (including Sapphire), but personally I'm going to stay away from Diamond. I've now owned 3 flaky Diamond cards, all of them having stability and overheating issues.

One thing for sure, I compared the Diamond HD2600XT (ATI clone) to the genuine ATI HD2600XT and the difference was very significant. The ATI card used much larger capacitors, coils and a relatively huge heat sink. The Diamond card was also missing at least half a dozen components (mainly resistors and small capacitors) compared to the ATI card. The Diamond card that I had was actually a clone of an ATI card. Basically the box was a complete copy of the genuine ATI box and the card didn't say Diamond on it anywhere, but it did have ATI all over it. The only place it said Diamond was one side of the box stated something like ATI logos and packaging used by Diamond under permission of AMD. When I tried to get tech support through ATI I was told the card wasn't an ATI card, wasn't certified to comply with ATI requirements and wasn't supported by ATI. I wasn't impressed to find out it wasn't an ATI card (especially considering it was both sold as and priced as a genuine ATI card by Future Shop in Canada).
Were in the same boat... I got mines from Future Shop also, worked fine for about a week and now it wont let me play much games, only for about 10 - 15 mins and BANG!! Black Screen I've been trying to find a fix for this issue and so far theres nothing.. I was thinking of taking my card back to future shop, either to get an exchange for the same card to see if it will happen again or just get my money back.. I had vista installed and Media Center 2005 and I thought it was the OS or the drivers I tried all different combinations on both and its useless for me.

HT Slider

12-13-07, 12:31 AM

Were in the same boat... I got mines from Future Shop also, worked fine for about a week and now it wont let me play much games, only for about 10 - 15 mins and BANG!! Black Screen I've been trying to find a fix for this issue and so far theres nothing.. I was thinking of taking my card back to future shop, either to get an exchange for the same card to see if it will happen again or just get my money back.. I had vista installed and Media Center 2005 and I thought it was the OS or the drivers I tried all different combinations on both and its useless for me.

I would definitely take the card back.

You won't be getting a replacement from them though. Future Shop has stopped carrying the Diamond "ATI clone" line of 2x00 cards for some reason (maybe they figured out they are junk).

BTW, I tried to submit about 4 different on-line reviews (even using different e-mail addresses) for that card on the Future Shop web site. In each review, I stated that the card was not an actual ATI card (Future Shop was selling them as genuine ATI cards). Interestingly Future Shop screened all of my reviews and not one review ever showed up on-line.

I've attached a picture of the box that the Diamond card came in. I couldn't believe that Diamond had copied the ATI packaging completely, selling the card as an ATI card; yet the card wasn't even certified by ATI to perform as an HD 2600XT, nor was ATI able to provide any tech support for the card as Diamond had used a non-compliant board layout and non-compliant components (ATI told me that the board didn't comply with ATI's specs, wasn't an ATI card, and because of this there was no tech support available by ATI). I have to admit I was really PO'd to find all of this out after paying almost twice what most 3rd party HD 2600XT's were selling for. Luckily Future Shop refunded me without a hassle.

It's definitely buyer beware when it comes to these 2x00 series video cards. Take a look at that box (everyone) and tell me how Diamond can get away selling a sub-quality, semi-functional card as a genuine ATI card. Its too bad because this sort of thing can really make a bad name for ATI. I also suspect that a significant number of you having trouble with your 2x00 series cards are likely having trouble because too many corners were cut to drop the manufacturing costs and the cards are not entirely functional.

djos

12-13-07, 02:22 AM

madshi

12-13-07, 03:05 AM

Babel-17

12-13-07, 10:42 AM

Dave Baumann, I just downloaded an Apple HD (720p) h264 file and it played fine in MPC with truly excellent HA. Pretty much just using the filters installed by QuickTime Alternative, Haali Media Splitter, PowerDVD's h264 decoder, and MPC's default internal filters other than its Matroska Muxer (using Haali Media Splitter instead). Ummm, MPC uses realplayer's AAC audio decoder but you can set it to use its own.

My videocard is a Visiontek HD2600 Pro (agp). I'm running on Windows XP SP2.

General #0
Complete name : C:\gilmour_720p.hdmov
Format : QuickTime
Format/Info : Quictime movie
Format/Family : MPEG-4
File size : 151 MiB
PlayTime : 4mn 8s
Bit rate : 5099 Kbps
StreamSize : 158 KiB
Movie name : David Gilmour
Encoded date : UTC 2007-10-29 22:17:35
Tagged date : UTC 2007-10-29 22:18:08
Copyright : ©2007 EMI Records
Comment : All Rights Reserved

Video #0
Codec : H.264
Codec/Info : H.264 (3GPP)
PlayTime : 4mn 8s
Bit rate : 4969 Kbps
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.211
StreamSize : 147 MiB
Encoded date : UTC 2007-09-19 00:24:49
Tagged date : UTC 2007-10-29 22:18:08

Audio #0
Codec : AAC LC
Codec/Info : AAC Low Complexity
PlayTime : 4mn 8s
Bit rate : 124 Kbps
Bit rate mode : CBR
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 44 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
StreamSize : 3.68 MiB
Encoded date : UTC 2007-09-19 00:24:49
Tagged date : UTC 2007-10-29 22:18:08

I used MediaInfo in Text mode to grab that.

http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en

Dave Baumann

12-13-07, 07:10 PM

Hey Dave, do you happen to be the ex Beyond3D Dave Baumann who's now employed by ATI? :)
Mostly. Except I'm employed by AMD! :p

somedude22

12-13-07, 11:00 PM

In a last desperate attempt to solve this problem, I went into CCC and changed from the best looking deinterlacer, vector-adaptive, to the absolute worst one, weave. Now, bear with me... You will see the ATI flag and think there is no way in h*ll that this is going to look good, because it is completely distorted and looks like spaghetti. Well, it should not, but actually looks much better than V-A. The action is much smoother and clearer, crisper. Jaggies almost gone.

Did anyone ever come to a solution for this problem? I just installed a 2600XT on Vista32 with the Crysis hotfix drivers, and I am seeing the exact same phenomenon. This is happening on 1080i60 content. The jaggies are abundant when using automatic, adaptive, motion adaptive, or vector adaptive mode.

Here is a screenshot illustrating this, on vector adaptive mode. The jaggies are most apparent in the lower corners on the diagonal lines of the banner.

madshi

12-14-07, 03:09 AM

Mostly. Except I'm employed by AMD! :p
Heh... :p Nice to see you posting here. Are you personally interested in HTPC stuff? I'm wondering whether you would have any influence on ATI/AMD driver development? E.g. it would be awesome if we could collect a small list of most important things that should be fixed for ATI/AMD HTPC use and which you could forward to driver development? Just say "no" if this is not possible or if you don't want to do it for whatever reason. Just testing the waters... :D

xb1az3x

12-14-07, 11:58 AM

I apologize in advance if this has been answered earlier in the thread. So I just got my HTPC up and running, specs are:

ASUS P5K-VM
Core 2 Duo e6550
Sapphire HD2600XT
2G Memory
Vista Ultimate 32

TV is a Sony 55a3000

The computer is connected to the tv through the ATI DVI to HDMI converter.

The initial problem was that it was being underscanned badly but that was easily adjusted in CCC. So I fixed that and now the right, top, and bottom of the screen line up beautifully right to the edge of the screen. The left side of the desktop however is 1/2-1" off of the left edge of the screen. Is there an easy fix for this? Is this the fault of the TV or computer?

Thanks

bgbop15

12-14-07, 12:25 PM

has anyone been able to get audio over hdmi in xp/mce2005 with the sapphire 2400pro yet?

hulinning2

12-14-07, 12:59 PM

Hello guys,

Both of these cards MSI RX2600XT-T2D512EZ and Sapphire Radeon HD 2600XT Ultimate are passive cooling.

I decided to replace my Sapphire HD2400XT with one of those, but I am a bit concerned about theire dimensions.

Is there anyone that actually owns one of these two cards so he can inform us about their dimensions ??

Thanks a lot.

I got HD 2600XT from Sapphire at newegg. I think the size is just normal video card without extra thickness. I put it in my Dell GX280 PCIe 16 without a problem with other cards sit besides. The performance is also good when watching movies at different video formats from HD 1080P to SD movies

hulinning2

12-14-07, 01:02 PM

I apologize in advance if this has been answered earlier in the thread. So I just got my HTPC up and running, specs are:

ASUS P5K-VM
Core 2 Duo e6550
Sapphire HD2600XT
2G Memory
Vista Ultimate 32

The initial problem was that it was being underscanned badly but that was easily adjusted in CCC. So I fixed that and now the right, top, and bottom of the screen line up beautifully right to the edge of the screen. The left side of the desktop however is 1/2-1" off of the left edge of the screen. Is there an easy fix for this? Is this the fault of the TV or computer?

Thanks

I got Sapphire 2600xt too but I do not have to adjust anything to make the Windows fit with my HDTV. I got JVC HD61z575 model 720P.
My PC is
Sapphire HD2600XT
2.5G Memory
Vista Ultimate 32
Dell GX280 2.8 GHz
All of my movies are from a another Dell served as a Media File server and all working nicely without a hitch

mav0100

12-14-07, 01:22 PM

leeperry

12-14-07, 02:56 PM

anyone using these cards with ICC profiles ?

I have one old CRT, and one videoprojector and they both have a profile.

but when I use a hotkey to switch between the 2 devices twice, then my CRT is using my videoprojector ICC profile :(

tencom

12-14-07, 08:39 PM

mav0100

12-14-07, 10:36 PM

According to ATI website ATI is now aware of the no hardware accelaration with the AGP versions of HD2600 and HD 2600 video cards and a solution is forthcoming and is expected with the release of V 7.12 driver software later this month.

I've seen that. However, Visiontek cards use drivers directly from Visiontek and not ATI. Visiontek just released their new drivers yesterday. However, Visiontek does not note if they based their drivers off of the 7.11 or 7.12's from ATI. Just checking to see if any other Visiontek card owners had any luck with the Visiontek drivers just released. I still haven't seen a drop of HWA from the new drivers from Visiontek and wanted to know if any other Visiontek owners got different results. Any other Visiontek owners care to chime in?

tencom

12-14-07, 11:00 PM

doctorcilantro

12-14-07, 11:16 PM

I tried to go back to XP x64 SP2 with the knowledge that the MS UAA HD Audio DEvice has to be disabled (if your getting 70% cpu usage), but this OS still doesn't like the drivers provided by HIS and the hack to get anyythin newer than 7.10 from ATI working frags my system.....

Bottom line....no DXVA with x64 XP and other weird issues to boot.....

DC

dj4monie

12-15-07, 02:31 AM

I uninstalled the HD2400 for the time being and got a Geforce 7600GS AGP.

I Reformated my drive and installed a fresh version of MCE 2002 but when I tried to install the Rollup 2 disc...

I had horrid NET Framework issues with installing Rollup 2 (disc or online) and I said screw it after spending 5 hours trying to get Rollup 2 to see NET Framework (any version) and install. The reg hack that forces Rollup to see Framework I couldn't get to work from the Command Prompt.

I put on Vista instead...

Now I find out the decoders are not switchable really without some hacking as well

I did install Win DVD 8 Platinum as they claim HWA acceleration support with ATSC streams (ie: accelerating HD MPEG-2). I managed to use the old decoder check utility to change the video decoder, but so far its a no-go.

I am trying to AVOID spending more money at this point.

That's 2 video cards and a new sound card in less than 10 days. I haven't taken the ATI card back because I have 30 days to return it and if by some miracle ATI comes up with 7.12 and it finally supports all levels of HWA with ATSC streams, I might put that in or take it back.

The 7600GS was discontinued and only $89

I might return the Diamond HD2400 to Fry's for a Visiontek HD2600 from CC as its actually cheaper than the Diamond card, same DDR2 memory and faster core.

I like the Vista interface better than MCE 2005 so this might stay as well, I just want Hardware Acceleration!

dj4monie

12-15-07, 02:45 AM

Did anyone who has a Visiontek AGP card install the new Visiontek drivers and have any luck getting HWA to work? Still no dice for me.

System specs

P4 2.2 GHz
Asus P4B266C
1.5 GB RAM
Visiontek HD2400 Pro AGP
Windows Vista Ultimate 32 Bit

Yes that was the first thing I did before I reformated the drive and installed Vista instead of MCE 2005 (Rollup 2 install issues). Yep, still no HWA no matter what you do. ATI Overdrive in CCC reports a paltry 4% GPU load when watching OTA HD and I was using the Elecard plug-in for WMP and HWA is enabled (in ATI CCC).

The story is still the same -

720p (KABC, KCET-PBS LA) smooth as butter
1080i (KCBS, KNBC, KTTV-FOX LA) stutter still, not horrible no sound clipping (thanks 24-bit Montego DDL) but "jerky" motion continues; Sports makes it worst

As I said in my earlier post, all I want is smooth 1080i playback and I shouldn't have to buy a new PC to do this...

tj21

12-15-07, 07:25 AM

I recently bought fanless MSI Radeon 2600 XT (RX2600XT-T2D256E/D4) as a replacement for Radeon x1600 PRO. I am connecting the card to my Panasonic AE900 with 10 meter PROFIGOLD PGV1110 - HDMI-A - DVI-D dual link cable. However I cannot get any picture on my Windows XP HTPC. With the old x1600 PRO the DVI-HDMI connection worked fine (1280x720). With the new one I get picture only in VGA compatible mode and during boot post screens. I tried the newest MSI drivers, the newest Catalyst drivers and Microsoft drivers. The result was always the same. However I could get picture with analogue VGA cable.

The DVI-HDMI adapter was not included.

The specs of the card say:

DVI/HDMI Features
- Fully compliant with the DVI electrical specification.
- Fully integrated DVI/HDMI Interface
- Supports one single link DVI or one HDMI link (HDMI output on single-link TMDS1 only).
- Meets Vista logo requirements.
- 1650 Mbps/channel with 165 MHz pixel clock rate per link.
- Supports industry standard EIA-861B video modes including 480p, 720p and 1080i. For a full list of currently supported modes, contact your AMD CSS representative.

I see no problem here as my DVI-HDMI cable has all the pins.

Anybody has any advise what else to try? Is it faulty card? Incompatible cable? Driver problem? Should I just return the card and buy different?

Thanks

Tomas

RockySpieler

12-15-07, 01:32 PM

I recently bought fanless MSI Radeon 2600 XT (RX2600XT-T2D256E/D4) as a replacement for Radeon x1600 PRO. I am connecting the card to my Panasonic AE900 with 10 meter PROFIGOLD PGV1110 - HDMI-A - DVI-D dual link cable. However I cannot get any picture on my Windows XP HTPC. With the old x1600 PRO the DVI-HDMI connection worked fine (1280x720). With the new one I get picture only in VGA compatible mode and during boot post screens. I tried the newest MSI drivers, the newest Catalyst drivers and Microsoft drivers. The result was always the same. However I could get picture with analogue VGA cable.

The DVI-HDMI adapter was not included.

The specs of the card say:

I see no problem here as my DVI-HDMI cable has all the pins.

Anybody has any advise what else to try? Is it faulty card? Incompatible cable? Driver problem? Should I just return the card and buy different?

Thanks

Tomas

I suggest that 10m (30 feet) could be too long for the connection. Not all HDMI / DVI circuits are created equal, and even though your previous card could handle the 10m length, perhaps the MSI RX2600xt cannot.

Can you test the setup with a shorter cable?

I have the same card (512mb version), and have no issues but only have a 3m cable.

I have used various connection methods:-

1) 3m DVI (single link) to HDMI,

2) 3m HDMI to HDMI with a std DVI to HDMI adapter

3) 3m HDMI to HDMI with the black ATI DVI to HDMI adapter (to enable audio on my TV).

Initially I did have issues where I had to ensure that the TV was turned on, and the HDMI input selected prior to turing on the PC, otherwise I would not get any picture. This is probably a characteristic of my TV (Toshiba 42X3030D), more than an issue with the MSI RX2600XT (I am using cat 7.11 / XP SP2).

mav0100

12-15-07, 02:54 PM

Visiontek drivers are edited versions of the ATI software. ATI appears not to support the the AGP versions of the HD2x00 series Visiontek and other third party vendors for ATI based chipsets apparently take it upon themselves to edit the drivers to work with AGP based video cards. I believe as described by "ARFSTER" it is just a matter of changing a few lines in the inf. Driver files.

I guess since Visionteks drivers didn't fix the HWA issues I'll need to wait until the 7.12 ATI drivers come out and edit the inf, since ATI is aware of the AGP/HWA issues and perhaps Visiontek is not. It will be nice to actually be able to utilize my new HDTV. I bought the HD2400 to upgrade the Media Center since I just got a new 42" Vizio 1080p LCD TV. The TV is great. Just lacking HD content from Time Warner. :(

ralimi

12-16-07, 12:43 AM

I'm trying to enable audio via my DVI/HDMI connection. I'm using the ATI dongle, but so far I'm not having any success.

Here's my setup:

- HDTV: Sony KDS-R50XBR1
- Graphics adapter: ATI Radeon HD2400 PRO (128MB, PCI-E)
- PC: Dell Inspiron 530
- OS: Vista Home Premium

The video came up without any problem and looks great, but I'm not able to get any sound. The Vista device mgr shows Realtek HD audio as
working properly. But no audio appears to be going over the HDMI connection; I'm only getting sound on the local PC speakers. I don't see any
options to enable audio via HDMI. I updated Catalyst Control Center but that only resulted in CCC no longer working. Several attempts at removing and reinstalling CCC didn't help. I suppose something must be hosed up with registry entries .

Questions:

1) Is a working CCC required for HDMI audio, or can I just remove it and forget about it?

2) Is there a Vista setting I have to tweak to enable the ATI audio? A different driver?

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Bob

thor240z

12-16-07, 01:32 AM

ralimi/Bob,

I'm using the 2600xt so it might not be exactly the same, but one thing to check that I initially missed was...

when bringing up the sound adapters in Vista, you can test the different sound drivers, which it appears you did. However, you need to make it the default. I suggest you double-check that there is a little check-mark on the HDMI sound driver.

ReEpAaPaA

12-16-07, 01:36 AM

Hello..really curious how to get HD acceleration going in PowerDvd 7XX when playing a HD DVD.. Below are my specs and even with Hardware Acceleration checked in the PowerDVD settings, I still get 90% or more utilization in Task Manager. I have applied the tweak reg file. Any help would be appreciated as I thought I had the horsepower to run HD / Bly ray content.

Vista 32
1 GB Ram
T2500
2600XT PCIe
PowerDVD 7XX w/HD Patches
LG HD DVD / Blu Ray combo Player
DVI -> HDMI output
All hardware HDCP Compliant
Latest Catalyst and Vivo drivers / codecs

dj4monie

12-16-07, 07:52 AM

[Europe]Boogiem

12-16-07, 09:36 AM

Is Hardware acceleration possible for AGP cards at all?

Have Sapphire Radeon HD2600XT AGP

If yes, what software do I need to take advantage of the HW decode besides the normal drivers for the G-card?
- Nero8 recode ?
- Power DVD Ultra?

Best regards
Boogieman

ReEpAaPaA

12-16-07, 10:58 AM

RTFF!

What an extremely helpful post....a link might be nice.

tj21

12-16-07, 12:16 PM

I suggest that 10m (30 feet) could be too long for the connection. Not all HDMI / DVI circuits are created equal, and even though your previous card could handle the 10m length, perhaps the MSI RX2600xt cannot.

Can you test the setup with a shorter cable?

You were right on the money. I tried a shorter cable and although the cable was not dual link it worked. It is pitty because I don't want to buy new cable because it costs the same as new graphics card.

While I had the shorter cable connected I tried if the HW acceleration works. All my HD DVD movies are ripped on media server to MKV container with muxed text subtitles and I found it is not possible to display the subtitles with directvobsub and have HW acceleration. So I am returning the card and will wait until the subtitle problem is solved.

one_2go

12-16-07, 01:28 PM

What an extremely helpful post....a link might be nice.
Listen all of us are tired of scrolling through posts that ask the same question that has been answered a few pages back. If you don't have the time to do that what makes you think that your time is more valuable then ours.

Go start at page 110 and I guarantee you your question will be answered several times.

reggie14

12-16-07, 03:18 PM

ReEpAaPaA

12-16-07, 05:46 PM

Give the guy a break. This thread is ridiculously long. You can't effectively search the thread anymore because searching for anything related to hardware acceleration will give you tons of hits. I hate it when threads get this long in a forum.

By the way, I'm not having any problems, but I (quickly) looked at the messages since page 110 and I didn't find anything that looked like it would help him. I don't doubt there's a solution somewhere in this thread (maybe even in those last 10 pages), but I do question how reasonable it is to expect someone to find it.

Thanks reggie14 I appreciate the post. Thats is exactly why I posted the question. I have been scouring this thread, and yes using the search as well, but as you said it is hard to find something when a thread is soooo long. Is it too hard just to post a link to a FAQ if it exists? Some people would rather flame then help. And I never said once that my time is more valuable than anyone elses.... so DO NOT put words in my mouth.

millerbrad

12-16-07, 06:33 PM

ExDeus

12-16-07, 07:27 PM

Still on the 7.7 drivers, so maybe this is old news...

I disabled pulldown detection, and this got rid of red shift on NTSC SD material. Unfortunately, it's still evident in 1080i ATSC. NBC-HD has been putting a Santa hat on their logo lately, and I notice that it still jiggles up and down.
As this issue is so obviously related to framerate detection, do you see it with film-based or video-based content? What effect does changing the deinterlacing method have?

I haven't seen the red-shift on HD ATSC content of any kind, and I usually have auto off with VA manually set, and pulldown detection on.

I only see red-shift on video-based NTSC SD material, and if I disable pulldown, it goes away.

In PDVD, I do still see other deinterlacing issues with SD material. Every deinterlacing method aside from weave, including the auto setting, produces artifacts (a blurring b/w the frame fields). Using weave shows interlacing artifacts, as it's not really deinterlacing anything. I haven't yet played around with all the possible combinations with the deinterlacing options inside PDVD.

dj4monie

12-16-07, 07:59 PM

Listen all of us are tired of scrolling through posts that ask the same question that has been answered a few pages back. If you don't have the time to do that what makes you think that your time is more valuable then ours.

Go start at page 110 and I guarantee you your question will be answered several times.

Cha-Ching!

If you have wife and kids or spend 60% of your time playing FPS then ignore this post. But if I have time to re-format a 320gb drive, buy another graphics card to see if that will solve my problem, spend roughly 6 over a 12 hour period including going to work trying to find out what combination of hardware or software will solve my simple problem of being able to watch OTA HD content without spending money on a new machine, and I have time to read 90% of this thread, hey SO DO YOU.

If you have PCI-e HWA is enabled, no problems.

If you have an AGP interface and an older CPU, your in trouble.

Forget Blu-Ray and HD-DVD for a moment if Hollywood was remotely putting anything out there I really want to watch in those formats I would have bought a new machine earlier this year.

The issue with these cards (the AGP version) is that hardware acceleration is not enabled because from what I can tell ATI never intended the HD2xxxx series GPU's to HWA with AGP since they felt that was limiting, hogwash!

We as a collective has screamed at ATI to make a driver set that will enable HWA on the AGP card as most of us here have aging systems and don't want to invest just yet into new hardware.

Understanding the whole HTPC got its legs from people putting their older hardware to work.

There is light at the end of the tunnel and maybe this because I don't have a girlfriend and don't date anybody worthy of my free time so I have had a chance to look at this.

You can put together a HTPC that will play any of the current HD formats for around $400 for a Home Built if you have an OS already.

For about $600 you can buy a pre-built from Dell or HP/Compaq that will play OTA content as long as you don't get Intel graphics... You'll need to add a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD or combo drive and about 3G of memory if your on a 32-bit Vista or MCE system and you shouldn't have any problems with either Geforce 6150 or even better Geforce 7050 on-broad GPU.

As it stands I'm close to my wits end, the bowl games will start next week and the NFL playoffs are 2 weeks away, not to mention the NBA locally with the Lakers and Clippers and the NBA via ESPN on ABC after the first of the year.

I want to solve this NOW and I have considered building another system, even though getting just one of these cards to do HWA under Vista will cost much less and get me at least another 2-3 years out of this system.

one_2go

12-16-07, 09:49 PM

But if I have time to re-format a 320gb drive, buy another graphics card to see if that will solve my problem, spend roughly 6 over a 12 hour period including going to work trying to find out what combination of hardware or software will solve my simple problem of being able to watch OTA HD content without spending money on a new machine, and I have time to read 90% of this thread, hey SO DO YOU.
Hear, Hear

I have been scouring this thread, and yes using the search as well, but as you said it is hard to find something when a thread is soooo long. Is it too hard just to post a link to a FAQ if it exists? Some people would rather flame then help. And I never said once that my time is more valuable than anyone elses.... so DO NOT put words in my mouth.
On the top right corner under the page number listing is the link "Search this thread" click on it and enter into the box
acceleration PowerDvd "HD DVD"
you get less then 2 pages, now that wasn't that hard was it.

xb1az3x

12-17-07, 12:30 AM

NM. Got it fixed well enough, adjusted the picture position and them upped the overscan a bit, lost a little bit of the top of the screen but its good enough.

millerbrad

12-17-07, 08:36 AM

As (red shift) is so obviously related to framerate detection, do you see it with film-based or video-based content? What effect does changing the deinterlacing method have?

I haven't seen the red-shift on HD ATSC content of any kind, and I usually have auto off with VA manually set, and pulldown detection on.

I only see red-shift on video-based NTSC SD material, and if I disable pulldown, it goes away.

In PDVD, I do still see other deinterlacing issues with SD material. Every deinterlacing method aside from weave, including the auto setting, produces artifacts (a blurring b/w the frame fields). Using weave shows interlacing artifacts, as it's not really deinterlacing anything. I haven't yet played around with all the possible combinations with the deinterlacing options inside PDVD.

I don't know about film vs. video. I'll just say that I noticed the red shift when watching the NBC show "Journeyman". I don't have BluRay/HDDVD, so all of my HD content is ATSC.

The NTSC red shift was blatant and distracting. It came out and punched you in the face. Luckily, disabling pulldown eliminated it.

What I view (maybe incorrectly) as ATSC HD red shift isn't so obvious, and you really need to be looking for it to notice it. I assume because something bouncing up-and-down between 2 lines of resolution in 1080i is less noticable than in 480i.

Maybe it's only reproducable with my setup...

Sapphire 2600XT with 7.7 Arfster tweaked CCC
Resolution set at 1080p
Watching on a Panasonic 720p plasma
Using Vista's default Microsoft video decoder

mtallent

12-17-07, 11:17 AM

millerbrad

12-17-07, 02:43 PM

Over the weekend I installed the Vista SP1 RC. I have a feeling that we'll get busy in here again when it's released, because it killed my 2600XT's sound. I use the Realtek ATI HDMI Audio driver.

After SP1, system sounds worked, but I'd get an error message when trying to play video or audio in Media Center or Media Player. I tried to report this to Microsoft, but their bug report tool crashed after I spent 20 minutes putting together a bug report.

I did manage to get it fixed, at least...

1) Opened up to the ATI HDMI Device in Device Manager and used the "Update..." button to manually change the device over to the Microsoft HD Audio Device.
2) Again went into Device Manager, and this time let it automatically update the device drivers. It chose the Realtek ATI HDMI Drivers that were already installed, but this time they worked.

Dgephri

12-17-07, 03:34 PM

djos

12-17-07, 04:27 PM

I don't know about film vs. video. I'll just say that I noticed the red shift when watching the NBC show "Journeyman". I don't have BluRay/HDDVD, so all of my HD content is ATSC.

The NTSC red shift was blatant and distracting. It came out and punched you in the face. Luckily, disabling pulldown eliminated it.

What I view (maybe incorrectly) as ATSC HD red shift isn't so obvious, and you really need to be looking for it to notice it. I assume because something bouncing up-and-down between 2 lines of resolution in 1080i is less noticable than in 480i.

Maybe it's only reproducable with my setup...

Sapphire 2600XT with 7.7 Arfster tweaked CCC
Resolution set at 1080p
Watching on a Panasonic 720p plasma
Using Vista's default Microsoft video decoder

It does it with 576i@50hz and also 1080i@50hz via DVB-T so it isn't just an ATSC bug.

ToughRowToHoe

12-18-07, 10:29 AM

I have the ATI 2600HD Pro, and tried using the HDMI audio driver to my Onkyo 705.

In Vista-32 (no SP1 yet for me) I seem to only get the option for Stereo in the Driver configuration.

In PowerDVD (3319a) I tried using the "SPDIF-out" option and I get sound but in "Direct" mode on my Onkyo doesn't seem to have any multichannel properties.

When I pick PIIx or THX, I do get 7.1 right away, but I'm not sure if the HDMI is giving that, or if it's getting matrix'd UP by the reciever itself.

Any other tips?

I have the same issue. I don't use HDMI sound, but stereo is currently the only output option for my ATI HDMI output under the Sounds applet. I used to be able to pass AC3 surround per the ATI specs.

According to "Filmerit" my Microsoft MPEG-1/DD Audio Decoder is broken. It doesn't decode DTS so I assume Filmerit is right. I am currently using AC3Filter instead. I wonder if the problem is related to the broken codec?

FYI, PIIx (Dolby Prologic IIx) is a stereo to multichannel conversion program: "A newer Dolby Pro Logic IIx system is also now available, which can take stereo and Dolby Surround (sometimes called Dolby Stereo Surround) source material and up-convert it to 6.1, or 7.1 channel surround sound. Dolby Pro Logic IIx also takes signals intended for Dolby Pro Logic II, and up-converts them to a 6.1 or 7.1 channel surround sound."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Pro_Logic#Dolby_Pro_Logic_IIx

THX is a quality assurance program: "THX-certified theaters provide a high-quality, predictable playback environment to ensure that any film soundtrack mixed in THX will sound as near as possible to the intentions of the mixing engineer."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thx

ToughRowToHoe

12-18-07, 10:41 AM

Is the Microsoft MPEG-1/DD Audio Decoder supposed to be able to decode DTS? DTS is one of the input pin types, but according to Windows Media Developer Center, it "decodes MPEG-1 audio, MPEG-2 audio, and Dolby Digital audio."

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb736088.aspx

DooMer_MP3

12-18-07, 10:58 AM

I just uninstalled 7.8 and went to 7.11 last night on my 2400xt PCIe. However, now any time I start my computer, I get the crash "send/do not send" message from: "Catalyst Control Centre: host application". It also happens when I try to run CCC manually. This kind of sucks because I use CCC to overscan since 1920x1080 won't take up the entire screen on my TV. Anyone know why this might be happening?

tman247

12-18-07, 03:34 PM

I've just been through the last 40 pages of this thread looking for confirmation of the following problem. Setup is Sapphire PciE 2600XT, Vista 32-bit, CCC 7.11 with ExDeus reg fixes, and PDVDU 7.3.3104a outputting @720p.

If I play an AVC encoded blu-ray (from Pioneer BDC-202), h/w acceleration doesn't work (unchecked and greyed in PDVDU). CPU on X2 4200+ at 90-100%.

If I play a VC-1 encoded blu-ray, h/w accel is fine (checked, but greyed in PDVDU). CPU at ~10%

If I play an MPEG2 blu-ray, h/w accel is also fine in PDVDU.

If I play an MPEG2 blu-ray from HD, h/w accel ALSO works in PDVDU. I didn't think PDVDU accelerated any HD based content!

If I play a VC-1 encoded blu-ray from HD, h/w accel doesn't work.

Anyway, the real question is, is PDVDU AVC (h264) decoding broken in 7.11? I had all acceleration working fine in arfsters 7.7's, but the picture is much better in 7.11.

I know 7.12's are imminent, but is there a fix now?

arfster

12-18-07, 05:53 PM

I've just been through the last 40 pages of this thread looking for confirmation of the following problem. Setup is Sapphire PciE 2600XT, Vista 32-bit, CCC 7.11 with ExDeus reg fixes, and PDVDU 7.3.3104a outputting @720p.

If I play an AVC encoded blu-ray (from Pioneer BDC-202), h/w acceleration doesn't work (unchecked and greyed in PDVDU). CPU on X2 4200+ at 90-100%.

Weird, I have the same Sapphire 2600XT with Vista32, and h264 acceleration works fine with every driver ever released. I'm using a more up-to-date PDVD, although 3104 worked fine in the past also.

Try running this:
http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/DXVAChecker_1401.zip

Is h264 in the list?

Lawguy

12-19-07, 08:03 AM

7.12s today?

Here are the release notes.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/content/pdf/Catalyst_712.pdf

Lawguy

12-19-07, 08:25 AM

No mention in the release notes of "737-29894: Radeon HD 2xxx AGP Series - High CPU usage or system crash during HD playback."

I hope that this issue is fixed or I will have to shread my 2600xt.

dj4monie

12-19-07, 09:32 AM

Well start shreading! I will not put that card back into this system just to SEE if it works.

I want to read that the issue has been fixed, I still seem to think that AGP systems can not handle HD playback when I just found a page that shows a AMD CPU underclocked to mimic a 1.8 single core CPU, could play VC-1 with HWA - http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/hdvideodisk1-page1.html

So Dear AMD, An AGP system with will run HD content without issue as long as you enable HWA and please don't require a 3rd party decoder like Power DVD, that's an extra $99 I'd have to spend just to watch OTA HD without any stuttering????

Well I guess I should either buy Power DVD Ultra or pony up for a new system.

Fum

12-19-07, 10:28 AM

No mention in the release notes of "737-29894: Radeon HD 2xxx AGP Series - High CPU usage or system crash during HD playback."

I hope that this issue is fixed or I will have to shread my 2600xt.

That's the first thing I looked for. Seriously, if ATI can't get their hardware to work as advertised a few months after release, they've got a serious issue on their hands. I've still got hope, though; their release notes in the past have often been shallow - maybe they fixed the problem and now are going to pretend that there never was a problem? Hopeful thinking, maybe....

one_2go

12-19-07, 11:12 AM

7.12s today?

Here are the release notes.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/content/pdf/Catalyst_712.pdf
Thanks for the link. A quick search for AGP resulted in Total instances found = ZIP, NADA, NAUGHT.

Face the facts get rid of the mobo, get a PCI-E GFX card, AMD/ATI has your money and will support it maybe 3 or 4 times a year.

arfster

12-19-07, 11:22 AM

AGP isn't really ATI's issue - it's the maker of the card that has responsibility to provide a working product. Frankly, it looks like AGP just has too many incompatibilites with motherboard chipset/drivers to be a reliable product.

one_2go

12-19-07, 11:35 AM

I totally agree with it, but it looks like this thread is just being inundated with AGP problems and requests.

Do you have an early feedback on the 7.12 drivers? I am still running your tweaked 7.9 with the registry tweaks and want to switch when it is save.

I very much appreciate your devoted effort in this thread.

doctorcilantro

12-19-07, 11:37 AM

On my Nforce3 board I have to disable the MS UAA HD audio driver to stop the high cpu usage. I can't use this board with the Cat7.10 and Vista or XP x64 ...only XP. I just upgraded to new board and PCI-E even though I had DXVA working with Windows Media Engine (for WMV) and Cyberlink for x264.

DC

J.B.

12-19-07, 11:58 AM

Catalyst™ 7.12 introduces an Avivo™ update. The update allows the ATI Catalyst
™ Control Center to reflect what is supported by the driver taking into account
the graphics card installed in the system, and will not expose any video features
that is not supported by the driver. The DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA)
driver will perform a profiling mechanism to query the graphics capability and the
Catalyst™ Control Center queries the caps via the interface defined between the
Catalyst™ Control Center and the DXVA components. This feature will be supported
on ATI Radeon™ 9500 series products and above

Sounds interesting. There never was a list of which card supports which features, even official spec pages make false claims. Maybe now a decent table can be compiled. I wonder what this feature will have to say about HW accelerated encoding...

Fum

12-19-07, 01:40 PM

This from the 7.12 release notes has me a little hopeful:

DXVA is now in use when play H264/VC1 HD content on systems containing
an ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 series of product. Further details can be found in
topic number 737-31137

The topic number 737-31137 can't be found on ATI's website. Maybe they've expanded the 737-29894 topic to include more than just AGP cards? If not, I'm not sure my 2600XT card will make it from my PC to it's retail box for return...I might accidentally / intentionally snap it in half en route....

Dgephri

12-19-07, 02:25 PM

on Audio, has anybody gotten decent behavior from the 2600 HDMI interface?

Since I have Surf's Up on HDD and Blu-Ray disk, I loaded up PowerDVD with the HDD file, and the PS3 with the real disk. Set PowerDVD to use SPDIF out (tip on the HDMI output) and paused at the opening scene on the tropical Island where the Green Day song starts.

Went to the PS3, advanced movie to same, and checked what the Onkyo 705 said with "5.1 uncompressed selected." It said "multich HDMI" and sounded fine.

Then I went into the setup of my Onkyo, changed the same input to take the HDMI from the HTPC w/2600 card (so as not to change any other audio or profile settings).

The Onkyo did not say "multich HDMI" anymore, but instead reverted to "HDMI DSP-PlIIx" and didn't sound much the same since I presume it's taking a stereo feed from the ATI card and upsampled it.

I have also tested with the onboard RealTek 8 channel analog in to the Onkyo, and can only use the DVD input Multichannel inputs.

Mastiff

12-19-07, 02:28 PM

mav0100

12-19-07, 02:47 PM

Man, I'm so mad! My very good computer with a VESA local bus graphics card won't play HD accelerated! And the ISA SoundBlaster 16 does not put out DTS-ES! ;)

Seriously, get real! AGP is yesterday's news, and the HD support for it is not forthcoming because they probably think it's a lot more trouble than it's worth. Face it, the number of people complaining about these cards is pretty high, but when you count the AGP people out, the numbers look a lot better. I think that should tell somebody something...

My previuos HTPC was PCI-E, and that's two and a half year old, from spring 2005! Either get a desent computer to play the stuff on, or stick to SD DVD's, and stop complaining.

You know, it makes no sense to flame owners of these cards that are AGP based.

PCI-E is still relatively new technology, and the majority of legacy PC's out there still have an AGP slot in them - not PCI-E. Besides this fact, if a vendor is going to sell a product that is based on two different technologies, such as the AGP and PCI-E versions of these cards, and advertise that the card will accelerate HD video on both versions, then obviously it should be supported on both versions, period.

While the AGP bus does not support the bandwidth of PCI-E, there is still plenty of bandwidth for HD video acceleration.

The bottom line is, if you paid $90 for your PCI-E card that advertises HWA on HD video, and I paid $90 for the same card in an AGP flavor that also advertises that it will support HWA, then it should do so. Why is your money or business more important than mine or any other person who owns an AGP card and paid the same amount of cash as you did?

Saying you don't want to hear AGP users "whine" or however you put it is quite honestly, very rude. If PCI-E didn't do HWA and AGP did, wouldn't you be upset? Do you think the AGP owners would tell the PCI-E owners to stop whining? Isn't this thread supposed to be about owners experiences and reviews of HD 2X00 hardware? Isn't this a valid review or experience with this card? If you spent $90 to buy your PCI-E card that was advertised to do HWA and it didn't work, but it did on AGP, would you then go by new components including another $90 video card just to get it working or expect the drivers to be fixed for the original card?

While I too think that someone coming in here with an old PC with a sub par processor, old SDRAM, and a motherboard with an old VESA/PCI/AGP 2X slot and expecting miracles to happen would be reaching, someone coming in with a PC that has a processor with a clock speed of 2 GHz or over, a motherboard with an AGP 8X slot, and DDR2 RAM should still expect their hardware to be relevent, even if not cutting edge.

As far as the argument that AGP was never supposed to support HWA, why would they advertise that it would on every box that has an AGP card, and why would ATI admit to the issue on their website and state it would be fixed if it was never meant to work in the first place?

Dgephri

12-19-07, 03:02 PM

^.^ must be that other guy. I have a C2Duo with 2Gigs of RAM and have zero
\__/ problems with framerates or playback in PowerDVD over my Gigabit network.

pegucci

12-19-07, 03:30 PM

mav0100

12-19-07, 03:39 PM

I have a 2600 XT 256MB and I am trying to hook up my PC to my Sony KDS 55A3000. Did anyone with the same configuration manage to get the TV display 1920X1080 resolution correctly? I can't get the display right. Pixelmapping is not 1:1.

Check the scaling options in CCC. I also had some issues with this on my 1080p TV, and adjusting this fixed the issue for me.

Fum

12-19-07, 04:32 PM

Man, I'm so mad! My very good computer with a VESA local bus graphics card won't play HD accelerated! And the ISA SoundBlaster 16 does not put out DTS-ES! ;)

Seriously, get real! AGP is yesterday's news, and the HD support for it is not forthcoming because they probably think it's a lot more trouble than it's worth. Face it, the number of people complaining about these cards is pretty high, but when you count the AGP people out, the numbers look a lot better. I think that should tell somebody something...

My previuos HTPC was PCI-E, and that's two and a half year old, from spring 2005! Either get a desent computer to play the stuff on, or stick to SD DVD's, and stop complaining.

Bullshit. Take a look at the facts for a second: the HD 2600 / 2400 gaming numbers suck. Most reviews and most advertisments stress the biggest selling point of the lower end of the 2x00 series as it's HD and Blu Ray DVD decoding abilities. And ATI went out of their way to create an AGP version of this series, and this was intellegent, because they had to recognize that, on older AGP systems, gaming would be even less of a priority, and that an even greater majority of people interested in buying these AGP cards would be in it for the HD decoding capabilities - especially seeing how their presumably older CPU's wouldn't be able to handle HD on their own.

This is all crystal clear. And then you come here and say supporting these cards is "more trouble than it's worth"? WTF? These cards simply don't work: what ATI must've recognized as their product's greatest feature simply doesn't work on most older motherboards - and people with older motherboards is the exact demographic ATI had in mind when they created this product! And they already released the product - it's way too late now to say making these cards work is "more trouble than it's worth"!

On top of all this, this is a product that came out only months ago. It is not a ten-year-old product that fell out of sync with the flow of newer software. It is a brand new product. Yes, we expect it's most prominant feature to work.

fdisker

12-19-07, 04:32 PM

>> Pixelmapping is not 1:1

And it never will be. the A3000 series (as well as earlier versions of Sony's SXRD technology) have optical overscan that cannot be defeated. Use the "Scaling Options" slider within Catalyst Control Center to resize the screen so that it fits properly. BTW, I own a 50A2000 but don't have a HTPC hooked up to it. Don't let the fact that the TV can't do 1:1 pixel mapping discourage you from enjoying the truly outstanding PQ that SXRD offers.

one_2go

12-19-07, 05:06 PM

This is all crystal clear. And then you come here and say supporting these cards is "more trouble than it's worth"? WTF? These cards simply don't work: what ATI must've recognized as their product's greatest feature simply doesn't work on most older motherboards - and people with older motherboards is the exact demographic ATI had in mind when they created this product! And they already released the product - it's way too late now to say making these cards work is "more trouble than it's worth"!

On top of all this, this is a product that came out only months ago. It is not a ten-year-old product that fell out of sync with the flow of newer software. It is a brand new product. Yes, we expect it's most prominant feature to work.
Face the fact AMD/ATI made some easy money, AGP buyers have been had. No drivers to correct the ills of these cards and it is reflected in the posts in this thread. To make AGP cards work with the promised features, is like flogging a dead horse. No AGP problems addressed in 7.10, 7.11 & 7.12 does that tell you something?

Your best bet is get someone with clout like Annandtech, 3DGuru or some other prominent site to pick up the cause of the support for AGP buyers, but I seriously doubt that this will happen. Chock it up as an education on the bleeding AGP edge.

DJBlu

12-19-07, 05:11 PM

Bullshit. Take a look at the facts for a second: the HD 2600 / 2400 gaming numbers suck. Most reviews and most advertisments stress the biggest selling point of the lower end of the 2x00 series as it's HD and Blu Ray DVD decoding abilities. And ATI went out of their way to create an AGP version of this series, and this was intellegent, because they had to recognize that, on older AGP systems, gaming would be even less of a priority, and that an even greater majority of people interested in buying these AGP cards would be in it for the HD decoding capabilities - especially seeing how their presumably older CPU's wouldn't be able to handle HD on their own.

This is all crystal clear. And then you come here and say supporting these cards is "more trouble than it's worth"? WTF? These cards simply don't work: what ATI must've recognized as their product's greatest feature simply doesn't work on most older motherboards - and people with older motherboards is the exact demographic ATI had in mind when they created this product! And they already released the product - it's way too late now to say making these cards work is "more trouble than it's worth"!

On top of all this, this is a product that came out only months ago. It is not a ten-year-old product that fell out of sync with the flow of newer software. It is a brand new product. Yes, we expect it's most prominant feature to work.

Agree with what you are saying, ATI need to fix this problem as it is unacceptable to advertise a product with a huge selling point of HDDVD/Blu ray on your 486 and then be told erm ... you need to update your motherboard/cpu and memory too.

Luckily I am a PCI-Ex owner but for those duped into buying an AGP(And are a UK citizen) I would contact http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/ and complain about the company who sold it to you. You will probably get a refund however it might get the ball rolling on the fixes required.

HappyFunBoater

12-19-07, 05:32 PM

Sorry, I may have missed a post, but where did you folks find 7.12? When I enter Vista x64, Radeon and HD2600 on the ATI website all I get is 7.11. Is 7.12 still a beta?

Fum

12-19-07, 05:48 PM

Sorry, I may have missed a post, but where did you folks find 7.12? When I enter Vista x64, Radeon and HD2600 on the ATI website all I get is 7.11. Is 7.12 still a beta?

AFAIK, they're not out yet. Someone just found the release notes on ATI's website, and the speculation is that the drivers will be released today or tomorrow.

meyer2

12-19-07, 06:21 PM

>> Pixelmapping is not 1:1
Anyone notice the overscan/underscan slider works fine if the output is set to 1920x1080@60 but is greyed out if 1920x1080@50?

This is with a 2600XT and 7.11 drivers.

Strecker25

12-19-07, 06:44 PM

Well im officially clueless as to where to go next with the acceleration problem.
Ive done the registry hacks, updated with the crysis hotfix, manually changed and tested each registry key that could possibly have an effect. and tried both bluray and hddvd discs, all to result in nothing. Where i should go now short of buying a new mobo and cpu combo i do not know.

the rig is
athlon 4400 dual core
4 gigs ddr2 667
radeon 2600xt 512mb ddr3
lg super blu drive
most up to date powerdvd version

cpu @90-100% both cores. GPU @ 13-20%, Avivo checked, but goes gray and unchecked for playback. Stays checked during dvd playback?:confused:

J.B.

12-19-07, 07:51 PM

dj4monie

12-20-07, 02:53 AM

That's a joke, No Vesa Local Bus GPU (was there discrete cards back then???) can barely play DOOM, let alone render HD.

Some people just flipped the "I'm Stupid" switch on and their wives/gf forgot to turn it off.

Elitist make me sick, they think the world revolves around them. It doesn't, more AGP systems out there than anything else my friend. ATI and Nvida through 3rd parties supply this market with hardware.

Nvida says PureVideo won't work with Vista. If you use XP, you have no playback issues (100% HWA), but I guess the drivers have some issues with picture quality.

I got a Gerforce 7600 and now I have to use Power DVD Ultra because I have converted to Vista, how nice.... Or Nero Showtime.

6 driver revisions and no UVD hardware acceleration??

Yes we should sue AMD for false advertisement, it says on my box - "Combines advance HD hardware video processing......that will delight a home theater enthusiast."

It doesn't WORK!

RockySpieler

12-20-07, 05:38 AM

Anyone notice the overscan/underscan slider works fine if the output is set to 1920x1080@60 but is greyed out if 1920x1080@50?

This is with a 2600XT and 7.11 drivers.

Yes, it is the same with mine at 1080p, additionally the scaling options for 1280x720p are also only available at 60hz. However for my TV at 50hz it scales fine to the full panel size even though the default at 60hz has a black border,and the slider needs to be set at overscan.

The 60hz scale can be set at normal or underscan (with black borders.....on my TV) but it does not seem to apply to the other refreshrates at that particular resolution. I am just lucky I suppose that my TV is fine at 50hz, which I use for UK broadcast video / DVD and with reclock on 24fps material. Call me a pessimist, but I fully expect the 7.12 drivers to "fix" the 50hz scaling so it defaults to black borders, with the slider greyed out.

My previous Nvidia card had no issues.

MSI RX2600XT 512mb / cat 7.11 (with reg hack) / XP Home SP2

arfster

12-20-07, 07:05 AM

Nvida says PureVideo won't work with Vista.

I wish they wouldn't. It works fine with Vista, but only with VMR9. Since Nvidia can't be bothered updating their product, it doesn't support acceleration (dxva2) with EVR.

However, plenty other mpeg2 decoders do support dxva2, eg cyberlink, arcsoft, bitcontrol etc.

tetsuo55

12-20-07, 10:06 AM

At least 7.12 does fix the annoying display corruption during/after dvd playback with powerdvd

pnyberg

12-20-07, 10:10 AM

At least 7.12 does fix the annoying display corruption during/after dvd playback with powerdvd

Where did you get the drivers? They are not on the AMD/ATI site yet...?

Mastiff

12-20-07, 10:18 AM

tetsuo55

12-20-07, 10:29 AM

Where did you get the drivers? They are not on the AMD/ATI site yet...?

I've only read it in the changelog

PS

I filed a report about the x264 files issues over at doom9

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=132924

DPlettner

12-20-07, 01:04 PM

He-he! Every now and then it's fun to provoke! I still stand by my opinion, though. AGP is old news. But I must say that it was a big, fat mistake of ATI to try to HD acceleration on AGP if they weren't shure it would work right. They should have dropped AGP all together, which should be pretty obvious now that the results are in (and have been in for quite some time). Then again AMD/ATI hasn't really been known for their smart thinking lately...

And if you call more than three years (2004) a "relatively new technology" we don't even live in the same universe!Just to be clear, HA is not broken for all AGP owners. VC1 and AVC acceleration works great for me (both HD DVD and Blu-ray) on an old nForce2 AMD 3200+ AGP PC. However, for driver versions at 7.9 and above, I do need to use the version of ati3duag.dll from the 7.8 drivers. I am hoping ATI will eventually fix this DLL, but I am pretty happy with the way everything is working now.

I never could get HDMI sound to work, but that is OK since it does not provide much advantage over S/PDIF. If ATI's HDMI sound could carry 7.1 LPCM, I would be more worried about trying to make it work.

-Dave

Fum

12-20-07, 02:00 PM

Well, I've gotten a little more optimistic about these upcoming drivers based on this exchange between some members and someone I assume is an ATI beta tester, this all on ATI's forum regarding the release notes that came out:

Member #1: "did they even fix AGP?"

Presumed Beta Tester: "Depends on your definition of "fixed"...."

M1 : "when this patch comes out and ur on AGP plz come back and let me know if it runs normal"

PBT: "Depends on your definition of normal. they fixed what they said they would fix in it..."

Member #2: "So do you think hardware acceleration issues are solved ?"

PBT: " ;) Let's just say I'm currently under a NDA of sorts"

M2: "Ok i really think they have solved hardware acceleration issues. I think hardware acceleration issues is a subject that AMD/ATI dont wants to talk about because its is a kind of defectively in there drivers/hardware that could make AMD/ATI products look bad. Thats why there aren't any statement about hardware acceleration issues solved in the release notes"

PBT: "For certain issues they just don't put them in the release notes. as to why they don't?yeah your more than likely right.Just saving face. They will most certainly update the KB article about the issue though."

All emphasis is my doing. I assume both items in bold are refering to ATI's knowledgebase topic number 737-29894 (the one about HA not working with some AGP cards), which would indicate that the problem has been fixed.

Hopefully I'm not reading too much into this or putting too much stock into unreliable sources, but this has got me optimistic nevertheless. I mean, I'm sure ATI is all about the money and all that, and that's a good reason to neglect AGP - seeing as most of the money in the future will be coming from PCI-e - but you've got to think that they've got some lawyers who point out how having a product not work as advertised could seriously cost them money through litigation. So, again, I'm optimistic. Hopefully we'll find out today one way or another....

alluringreality

12-20-07, 03:52 PM

the A3000 series (as well as earlier versions of Sony's SXRD technology) have optical overscan that cannot be defeated. Use the "Scaling Options" slider within Catalyst Control Center to resize the screen so that it fits properly. BTW, I own a 50A2000 but don't have a HTPC hooked up to it. Don't let the fact that the TV can't do 1:1 pixel mapping discourage you from enjoying the truly outstanding PQ that SXRD offers.

The A3000 just seems messed up where it doesn't quite display the checkerboard correctly like the A2000 can. These cards can pixel map to RPTVs. A 1080p image will not fit on a 1080p RPTV because of overscan like you said. Rather than scaling with the video card though, you can use centered timings and then set the scaling slider so that the ATI does not scale. For typical desktop use it's possible to use a custom resolution that will pixel map and fill the screen. This will allow some programs, like zoom player or MPC, to swap to 1080 in order to also pixel map 1080 video.

ToughRowToHoe

12-20-07, 03:55 PM

If ATI's HDMI sound could carry 7.1 LPCM, I would be more worried about trying to make it work.

-Dave

That would have been a really large selling point. It would be great if it could be added to these cards as partial compensation for the rough release.:D

Lawguy

12-20-07, 04:58 PM

7.12s are up!

Someone please report if hardware acceleration now works.

DJBlu

12-20-07, 05:28 PM

J.B.

12-20-07, 06:41 PM

Has anyone been able to find this new feature?
Catalyst™ 7.12 introduces an Avivo™ update. The update allows the ATI Catalyst
™ Control Center to reflect what is supported by the driver taking into account
the graphics card installed in the system, and will not expose any video features
that is not supported by the driver. The DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA)
driver will perform a profiling mechanism to query the graphics capability and the
Catalyst™ Control Center queries the caps via the interface defined between the
Catalyst™ Control Center and the DXVA components. This feature will be supported
on ATI Radeon™ 9500 series products and above

Or maybe they forgot to add it like they forgot to update the download link for the 7.12 CCC suite...

Oh, and I lost the new denoise slider that was in the Crysis hotfix.

Derek K.

12-20-07, 08:59 PM

I just replaced a 7600gt with a gigabyte 2600xt so I can watch hd movies on my mce 2005 htpc. I downloaded the 7.12 drivers and ccc and it seems to be working pretty well. CPU utilization playing transformers hd-dvd is 20-30% on a 3.4 p4. Yeah!

However, I have two questions:

1. How do I adjust the screen size and position? I found a slider that allows me to scale the screen size, but it scales both vertically and horizontally. I need individual control like nvidia has along with the ability to center the screen.

2. CPU utilization when playing back ota hd jumped from <10% with the 7600gt to >60%. This is using the nvidia decoder to watch ota hd in mce. Obviously the nvidia decoders aren't using hw acceleration. How do I enable hw acceleration? Do I need different decoders?

Other than these issues, the ati card is pretty nice. The picture looks better than my nvidia cards (could be imaginary), and hd dvds looks great! This is my first ati card for htpc use, and I'm pretty impressed, but these two issues need to be resolved.

Thanks for any help!

Derek K.

12-20-07, 09:05 PM

Since I had asked for the dimensions of the heatsink on the passively cooled gigabyte 2600xt but never got an answer, I though I'd post my findings for others.

The heatsink sticks 9/16" above the top of the card. Additionally, there are 4 screws that protrude about 3/8" from the backside of the card that hold the heatsink in place.

I have 15/16" clearance in my silverstone lc-10 so it fits, barely. :)

arfster

12-20-07, 09:14 PM

Has anyone been able to find this new feature?

Or maybe they forgot to add it like they forgot to update the download link for the 7.12 CCC suite...

Oh, and I lost the new denoise slider that was in the Crysis hotfix.

That's odd, the internal layout of the drivers is built in the same way as the Crysis ones, with denoise/default registry entries ready to be accessed by sliders. Makes sense - these are 8.442-071204a1-055816C-ATI, which is newer both in build and version numbers

Only other thing that jumps out immediately is that the 2600 now has color/flesh set to 0 by default, with minimum 0 also.

Will do some tests later.....

Socio

12-20-07, 10:13 PM

The 7.12's like the 7.8 through 7.11 do not recognize the HD 2600 XT AGP thus will not install at least not for me.

However there are a couple fixes for those who can install them;

Release notes (https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206/0/www2.ati.com/gamesite/Catalyst_712_Release_Notes.html)

Vista;

Cyberlink: Playing an h.264 disk no longer results in corruption being noticed on the lower portion of the playback window. Further details can be found in topic number 737-30581

Playing an HD-DVD title using the Cyberlink player no longer results in corruption or the Windows Vista operating system failing to respond after a short period of playback time. Further details can be found in topic number 737-30585

Cyberlink: Playing an h.264 disk no longer results in corruption being noticed on the lower portion of the playback window. Further details can be found in topic number 737-30581

XP

HD-DVD content is no longer blocked over native HDMI when using the cyberlink player. Further details can be found in topic number 737-30596

DXVA is now in use when play H264/VC1 HD content on systems containing an ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 series of product. Further details can be found in topic number 737-31137

neiltoe

12-20-07, 10:14 PM

No idea what exactly I did but installed 7.12 I have a HD2400XT and when play DVD I would get a frame of the movie frozen like a still shot and the movie would play on top of it. Flashing that still in between so many frames on playback. Interesting little flaw in this set of drivers. I'll try and replicate it later but right now we need our HTPC.

Rememdied it by resetting to Factory Default for now.

arfster

12-20-07, 11:04 PM

Strecker25

12-21-07, 01:29 AM

beautiful. after a nice install of 7.12 i see no difference, no HD acceleration

good thing i ordered a 6400+ tonight, looks like ill need it

its an 2600xt 512 paired with the lg and a 4400+ currently. 100% cpu

Tric_101

12-21-07, 03:24 AM

Yes the Video does not seem as good with these 7.12 when watching DVB-S MPEG2 singnal. I will try them out for a bit but if I can't get them to look as good back to 7.11 I go.

mine

12-21-07, 05:24 AM

Jesus. Worst drivers I've seen yet.

stupid bug no2: like in 7.10, they broke HD mpeg2 acceleration for the 2600, even when you finally persuade it this actually is a 2600. dxva_nohddecode 0 fixes though

s

hi arfster

lucky you (with 3850 you can´t go back to 7.7)

no sliders for NR and De here (only in the beta)

in xp so far fewer problems (broken MPEG 2 DXVA)

severe problems with dvbviewer in every VMR mode
(but thats a well known problem )

arfster

12-21-07, 05:41 AM

Yeah, not entirely surprised if XP isn't hit quite so hard, since VMR9 seemed to work OK in Vista. I tried it again just now, but half my screen turned green in fairly short order so my tests were cut short. Only thing I learned is that VC1/HDDVD discs don't work either.

At present, looks like the best drivers available are the Crysis ones (at least for Vista).

Incidentally, just noticed the key video dll has almost doubled in size, whereas previously it's stayed at the same size (roughly) for many generations - maybe they rewrote it or something. Perhaps it might help if they tested it before release though. Just once.

A few new keys in there (I think, off the top of my head). The interesting sounding ones:

DXVA_ENABLE_UVD_TILING
HWUVD_ForceMPEG2 (looks like they're thinking of fixing mpeg2 acceleration in UVD, which would boost the capability of the 2400 a lot)
HWUVD_UseGartForBitstream (AGP related)
HWUVD_ForceFamily

leeperry

12-21-07, 06:34 AM

When I had the Diamond HD 2600XT, not only did HWA for AVC or VC-1 not work, but it also crashed regularly.

there's been some major screw up with a LOT of 2600 PCI-E cards BIOS.

mostly related to the separate 2D/3D speeds.

some retard put the wrong GPU voltage for the 2D(1.05V instead of 1.2V), so my Sapphire 2600 PCI-E card was giving black screens randomly in windows.

need to ask your manufacturer for update.

now all is fine if you check with RivaTuner :

$ffffffffff ATI VGA BIOS information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0a00000000 Title : 113-B14802-X02 RV630 GDDR3_16Mx32 128bit 256MB 700e/700m
$0a00000001 Date/time : 08/08/07 00:43
$0a00000002 Core clock : 700.000MHz
$0a00000003 Memory clock : 700.000MHz
$0a00000004 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$0a00030000 PowerPlay state 0 : 700MHz/700MHz/1.25V/boot
$0a00030100 Performance level 1 : 700MHz/700MHz/1.25V
$0a00030200 Performance level 2 : 700MHz/700MHz/1.25V
$0a00030001 PowerPlay state 1 : 700MHz/700MHz/1.25V/Overdrive
$0a00030101 Performance level 1 : 700MHz/700MHz/1.25V
$0a00030201 Performance level 2 : 700MHz/700MHz/1.25V
$0a00030002 PowerPlay state 2 : 700MHz/700MHz/1.25V/UVD
$0a00030102 Performance level 1 : 700MHz/700MHz/1.25V
$0a00030202 Performance level 2 : 700MHz/700MHz/1.25V
$0a00000008 Memory type : DDR3

and now it's 1.25V instead of 1.2V so this card overclocks really well with my VF700 :D

it's discussed here :
http://www.mvktech.net/index.php?option=com_joomlaboard&func=view&catid=12&id=47394

Lawguy

12-21-07, 07:09 AM

Socio

12-21-07, 08:57 AM

I got the HD 2600 XT yesterday to replace my 1950 Pro to get rid of the intermittent stutter I was getting with PDVD 3000 series patches.

I am running XP with 7.11's from Visiontek as the 7.12's do not recognize my card. I now have stutter free HD DVD playback but the PQ is very poor compared to what I was getting with the 1950 pro. For example watching Borne Identity the faces appear to have a layer of gray dust smudges on them this did not happen with the 1950 pro. Also a lot of bluring when panning it is like watching a DVD that has been forced to 1920 x 1080, it just looks bad.

What I think is happening is even though I am setup for 1080p I am getting 1080i instead with the 2600 XT. Do you have to use Powerstrip with these HD cards to force 1080P?

arfster

12-21-07, 09:46 AM

it's discussed here :
http://www.mvktech.net/index.php?option=com_joomlaboard&func=view&catid=12&id=47394

Interesting, thanks. Looks like it should be possible to add auto-downclocking to my sapphire 2600xt - anyone seen a saved bios out there with this tweak already?

Strecker25

12-21-07, 09:57 AM

there's been some major screw up with a LOT of 2600 PCI-E cards BIOS.

mostly related to the separate 2D/3D speeds.

some retard put the wrong GPU voltage for the 2D(1.05V instead of 1.2V), so my Sapphire 2600 PCI-E card was giving black screens randomly in windows.

need to ask your manufacturer for update.

and now it's 1.25V instead of 1.2V so this card overclocks really well with my VF700 :D

it's discussed here :
http://www.mvktech.net/index.php?option=com_joomlaboard&func=view&catid=12&id=47394

Heres what i have an i think it is wrong then , The card is a Powercolor 2600xt with 512mb ddr3 and the voltages seem way low

$ffffffffff ATI VGA BIOS information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0a00000000 Title : 11X-B148 RV630 GDDR3_16MX32 128BIT 512MB
$0a00000001 Date/time : 07/23/07 06:35
$0a00000002 Core clock : 800.000MHz
$0a00000003 Memory clock : 700.000MHz
$0a00000004 Reference clock : 27.000MHz
$0a00030000 PowerPlay state 0 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.20V/boot
$0a00030100 Performance level 1 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.20V
$0a00030200 Performance level 2 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.20V
$0a00030001 PowerPlay state 1 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.05V/Overdrive
$0a00030101 Performance level 1 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.20V
$0a00030201 Performance level 2 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.20V
$0a00030002 PowerPlay state 2 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.20V
$0a00030102 Performance level 1 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.20V
$0a00030202 Performance level 2 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.20V
$0a00000008 Memory type : DDR3

is contacting the manufacturer the only way to find somthing to flash it?

millerbrad

12-21-07, 10:29 AM

Still no dual-HDMI output with the 7.12.

I keep sending Catalyst driver feedback reports on this, but I'm pretty sure that I'm fooling myself to think ATI will ever acknowledge, much less fix, this problem.

I'll never be able to go beyond the 7.7 drivers.

ditcho

12-21-07, 12:49 PM

Jesus. Worst drivers I've seen yet.

stupid bug no1: thinks my 2600xt is a 2400pro, just like 7.11 and crysis hotfix drivers did. Fixed by editing inf files to remove 2400 references.

stupid bug no2: like in 7.10, they broke HD mpeg2 acceleration for the 2600, even when you finally persuade it this actually is a 2600. dxva_nohddecode 0 fixes though

stupid bug no3: these drivers really don't like cyberlink. EVR+mpeg2 = greenscreen. arcsoft decoder works though

stupid bug no4: no h264 acceleration anywhere. Might be a EVR thing. vforce24fpswotsit didn't help.

stupid bug no5: try to render with EVR, and parts of the desktop turn green/splotchy at random

stupid bug no6: tried to play a Bluray AVC with arcsoft to see if it was all PDVD's fault. Top half of the screen turned black, and my PC booted. Never seen this PC hang because of drivers before, nice one ATI.

At that point, I gave up :-) I didn't get around to testing VC1 acceleration or HDDVD playback, but frankly would be surprised if either works - pretty much nothing else does. This card/setup typically has less problems than most, and has never failed with previous drivers to get acceleration or play discs.

As someone else said, denoise/detail sliders aren't there. Needless to say, no fix for expansion issues either, or Vista WMV acceleration.

Note this is on a clean machine too, ghosted back to a fresh install. Given what a mess it made, I'd strongly advise not to touch these with a bargepole.

arfster, I also did a clean install of the 7.12 drivers on a Vista 32 with Gigabyte 2600XT. The strange thing is that I noticed none of your issues on the things that I have tried (don't know about the arcsoft ones).

In fact, the new drivers fixed a problem I had with ZoomPlayer with Nvidia filters under 7.11 - it did not display the correct derived aspect ratio for 4:3 video material, now it's OK.
Also, I am not 100% sure, but now the expansion of levels also extends to SD material, without having to apply the registry entry.
In fact, with this version, for the first time I have no need to apply the registry fixes recommended by you. The one before the expansion thing was the one that disabled VC1 hw accelleration (it caused PDVD to crash the system when playing VC1 material with HW accel), but it was no longer necessary since I upgraded the firmware of my 2600XT in October.

In other words, HW accel works well on all codecs with EVR in WMP and PDVD and everything is stable. I had some frame drops with ZoomPlayer and Nvidia filters on VMR9, but tweaking of the 3D settings fixed it. Overall the drivers look good to me and I am keeping them.

The fact that you have so many issues makes me think that you probably need a firmware upgrade of your video card. The other thing that is probably different with me is that I have zero registry tweaks now.

arfster

12-21-07, 01:00 PM

The fact that you have so many issues makes me think that you probably need a firmware upgrade of your video card.

Hrrm, you're maybe right there. It did seem unusual that so many things broke all at once (although the issue with the 2600xt being misrecognised is definitely a driver fault). This card has never had any of these issues before though.

Possibly the elements of atiumdva.dll that got a major rewrite for this version were done with later BIOSes in mind?

leeperry

12-21-07, 01:03 PM

Interesting, thanks. Looks like it should be possible to add auto-downclocking to my sapphire 2600xt - anyone seen a saved bios out there with this tweak already?

fugghetaboutit, the 2D downclock is not working properly on these cards....hence the newest BIOS that disable it ;)

you might still check this link to see if they got a compatible BIOS :
http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_joomlaboard/Itemid,34/func,showcat/catid,12/

and if you feel adventurous, those chinese peeps get all the BIOS updates live from Sapphire :
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&langpair=zh%7Cen&u=http://group.xiyuit.com/51/6_50461.html

...or bitch at your manufacturer :D

Heres what i have an i think it is wrong then , The card is a Powercolor 2600xt with 512mb ddr3 and the voltages seem way low
[...]
$0a00030001 PowerPlay state 1 : 800MHz/700MHz/1.05V/Overdrive
is contacting the manufacturer the only way to find somthing to flash it?

well check this URL and see if you can find a BIOS for the same reference card(brand doesn't matter) :
http://www.mvktech.net/component/option,com_joomlaboard/Itemid,34/func,showcat/catid,12/

then dump your BIOS, open both the old and the new in RaBiT and see if the data matches(speeds, ram size, etc..)

then boot in DOS, and force the update with "atiflash -f"

then black screens in 2D will be history ;)

otherwise you can hack the BIOS and "fix" the voltages, I've seen a topic on their forum about that I think...just make sure to fix the BIOS checksum with RaBiT before flashing it otherwise atiflash will refuse to proceed no matter :D

dj4monie

12-21-07, 01:20 PM

These drivers have messed up DXVA with 1080i content for me. Will have to test further. ** Fixed by installing 3615 version of PowerDVD

Still got 20fps slow down on x264 but still beleive this is a Cyberlink problem.

DJ! Are you serious? Which card do you have? I already packed up the HD2400Pro for its trip back to Fry's. What I wasn't sure of was to get my money back, or get a PCI-e version of it or ?

v3615 is Power DVD Ultra correct?

arfster -

If I download PureVideo decoders from Nvida, and install the video decoder with the Vista Decoder Utility that it will work?

I tired WinDVD 8 Premium and it was a mess!

I'll try the other decoders you suggested, thanks.

I am THIS close to buying a new system I know will accelerate even H.264 with software decoder, I was hoping I wouldn't have too.

Update:

I tried BitControl, windowed its fine, still have 90-100% CPU usage. I get a stop-motion effect at Full Screen. With Software decode it was smooth until the CPU peaked and then it would skip. This is the trial version of BitControl, default MPEG-1/2 resolution is set at 720x480 and my screen is set at 1920x1200. Does the full version allow for full screen monitor default?

Going to try Nvidia PureVideo next...

When is my CPU usage going to drop down to a watchable 70-80%????

Fum

12-21-07, 03:20 PM

I can't get these to install at all on my 2600xt AGP unless I force a driver install from the device manager.

Good news is that HD material through bluray and HD-dvd is now stutter free.

I can wait untill Visiontek mods these to allow a real install so I can get the Catalyst Control Center.

So you had no hardware acceleration before, and these fixed it for you? If so, that gives me a lot of hope. I had to force an install same as you, and while no HD files on my hard drive are accelerated, PowerDVD crashes after a few seconds when I try to play a Blu ray or HD DVD disk, so I don't know for sure that these don't work for me. Although, it doesn't do me much good if these fix HA but break PowerDVD.... Anyways, I'll continue fiddling around.... :(

Lawguy

12-21-07, 05:08 PM

So you had no hardware acceleration before, and these fixed it for you? If so, that gives me a lot of hope. I had to force an install same as you, and while no HD files on my hard drive are accelerated, PowerDVD crashes after a few seconds when I try to play a Blu ray or HD DVD disk, so I don't know for sure that these don't work for me. Although, it doesn't do me much good if these fix HA but break PowerDVD.... Anyways, I'll continue fiddling around.... :(

No, I retract that actually. No hope.

What I saw was a fluke and I can't watch anything without the stutters.

Fuz

12-21-07, 05:31 PM

The fact that you have so many issues makes me think that you probably need a firmware upgrade of your video card. The other thing that is probably different with me is that I have zero registry tweaks now.

WTF??? Another possible reason for problems? Since when did firmware on a video card need to be updated to work properly with new drivers?

So, if this is true, and considering that people might have different firmware on older cards vs newer ones, we are never going to see a set of drivers that will work the same for every one!

I am having a hard time swallowing this.

It really shouldn't be this dificult to get a god damn bloody video card to work properly!!!

I remember ages ago on beyond3d, there was an ATI employee( ATIGuy if I remember correctly) that would frequent the forums... ATI need to start doing that again.

Derek K.

12-21-07, 06:33 PM

Is it possible to adjust the position of the screen with the latest (7.12) drivers?

I found the way to create a custom resolution, but the screen is shifted up and to the right. If I set the resolution so that it fills the screen, the top portion of the screen is really chopped off.

Thanks!

leeperry

12-21-07, 07:30 PM

It really shouldn't be this dificult to get a god damn bloody video card to work properly!!!
well this PCI-E 2600 from Sapphire was my first ATI card, and yes it does feel like an "Engineering Sample" to me :D

drivers refuse to install because they conflict with my X-Fi crapware.....the "notify" bullcrap.

stock BIOS that gave black screens in windows when the damn computer was idle....I had to read a lot of chinese webpages to find a fix.

I've never encountered any of this with my previous nvidia cards.

BUT, that's a big BUT.........the PQ looks a lot sharper on the ATI, and all that matters in the end is that my HD movies look awesome on my DLP projector.

but if I was just a gamer, there's NO CHANCE I would ever touch an ATI card :eek:

bryanb

12-21-07, 07:44 PM

Looks like 7.12 turns off the fleshtone and colorvibrance by default. At least it's that way on my 3850.

arfster

12-21-07, 08:38 PM

Looks like 7.12 turns off the fleshtone and colorvibrance by default. At least it's that way on my 3850.

Yes, that's for certain this time - you can see it in the inf file. The 3850 uses the same settings as the 2600 btw: ie flesh/colour/denoise/detail default and off position at 0, range 1-100 (although for some reason the denoise/detail sliders are removed, the values are still settable in the registry).

ExDeus

12-22-07, 04:10 AM

I installed the ATI 7.12 drivers and AVIVO decoder, and everything is working as well or better than ever.

DXVA works for AVC, VC-1, and MPEG2. The problem I was having with deinterlacing artifacts on SD NTSC video content is mostly gone, also. The picture does appear a little soft when VA deinterlacing is forced; a little less so with plain old BOB. There is still improvement to be had with deinterlacing for SD NTSC video content, though I think I have some particularly difficult content that was converted to NTSC from PAL.

Graphics card: VisionTek HD2600PRO AGP 512MB
OS: WinXP SP2
DXVA, AVC: HD DVD in PDVD, BD in PDVD, MKV in ZoomPlayer w/ Cyberlink H.264 decoder (though the 20fps bug persists w/ adaptive b-frames)
DXVA, VC-1: HD DVD in PDVD
DXVA, MPEG2: DVD in PDVD, MPEG2-TS in ZoomPlayer w/ AVIVO & Cyberlink MPEG2 decoders.

The "Notify" installer error was gone, so the normal install worked after following the usual process (http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/#AGP) to add my AGP card to those supported by the driver.

The (lack of) registry keys added by the installer looked the same as usual, so I added all the HD2600 tweaks (http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/#details) except SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps and VForceMaxResSize (I'm not at 1080p, so I don't mess with them).

DJBlu

12-22-07, 07:36 AM

DJ! Are you serious? Which card do you have? I already packed up the HD2400Pro for its trip back to Fry's. What I wasn't sure of was to get my money back, or get a PCI-e version of it or ?

v3615 is Power DVD Ultra correct?

Sorry got the number messed up.

Using PowerDVD Ultra v3516, XP SP2, Sapphire 2600XT PCI-Ex, arfster's reg tweaks, ccc v7.12. De-Interlacing method is vector adaptive.

Am able to watch BBC HD and the free to air HD Channels on 19e with 2% cpu usage.

arfster

12-22-07, 09:38 AM

Reg tweaks might be all a bit pointless for 7.12 - certainly color/flesh aren't needed anymore.

Would love to test myself, but sapphire can't be bothered releasing new BIOSes.

mine

12-22-07, 11:08 AM

X-Fi crapware.....

so true ,so true

best

mine

tetsuo55

12-22-07, 11:59 AM

mule

12-22-07, 12:40 PM

Same for me: No hw acceleration at all with my sapphire 2600pro for hd-material after installing 7.12! Official 7.11 and crisis-fix worked perfectly! :mad:

TheMule!

Joe Hendrix

12-22-07, 12:50 PM

DXVA works for AVC, VC-1, and MPEG2. The problem I was having with deinterlacing artifacts on SD NTSC video content is mostly gone, also. The picture does appear a little soft when VA deinterlacing is forced; a little less so with plain old BOB. There is still improvement to be had with deinterlacing for SD NTSC video content, though I think I have some particularly difficult content that was converted to NTSC from PAL.

Excuse my ignorance in these matters. I try to follow most of the technical aspects of tweaking my system, but sometimes it gets a bit overwhelming.

I just got this card, the HIS HD 2600XT Zalman Fan 256MB GDDR3 PCI-E, Dual DVI, TV-Out, HDCP... attached to a new Intel MB and Core 2Duo processor running Vista.

Ever since going to Vista, I have not found any way to tweak my PVR-150 in order to clean up the SD NTSC video content. Is there a way to do this through tweaking the video card? Does this tweak also effect the resolution of OTA HD material (through my Avermedia 180)?

If you could walk me through the steps of applying this tweak, that would be muchly appreciated.

brew99

12-22-07, 12:57 PM

I'm a newbie with the HD video playback thing, and think I am having trouble with getting the Hardware acceleration to work with h264 .mkv files. I've read almost this entire thread, but am overwelmed with the amount of information, and it is starting to confuss me. I don't have a HD-DVD or BD drive, so I can't verify if HA works by just playing a disk.

My understanding is that I need a software decoder that supports UVD, along with a filter for h264. I'm running Vista32 with a AMD X2 4400+, 2 GB RAM, and the 2600 PCI-E card, but the CPU is at around 60-70% when I try to play these mkv files.

Can I just look at the Overdrive screen in CCC to see if the GPU is working or not, or is there a better way?

What player and filter do you suggest for playing these h264 files in the mkv conatiner? I've tried many combinations of player and codecs, and can get the files to play ok, but can't seem to get any indication of the GPU to go over 7% in CCC.

Does anyone know of a step by step for getting HA to work with the mkv?

Thanks all

arfster

12-22-07, 01:28 PM

What player and filter do you suggest for playing these h264 files in the mkv conatiner? I've tried many combinations of player and codecs, and can get the files to play ok, but can't seem to get any indication of the GPU to go over 7% in CCC.

That GPU figure refers to the shaders, which do deinterlacing/scaling/denoising etc. Decoding of h264 and vc1 is done elsewhere (although mpeg2 decoding is still on the shaders).

For h264 with Vista, the only decoder that can do acceleration is Cyberlink's (arcsoft can accelerate h264, but only within the main player, and that doesn't like mkv). You also need to use a player that renders with EVR: Windows Media player always does, while Theatertek/MPC Home Cinema edition/ZP all have the option to do so.

However, there's a major problem with most mkv/x264 content: most are encoded via methods the Cyberlink decoder can't accelerate with. One symptom of this is the "20fps bug", which seems to be caused by the encoder using mixed-refs/adaptive b frames. The other is that either the decoder, or possibly the hardware, don't accept >9 ref frames for 720p, or >4 for 1080p (Bluray/HDDVD h264 limits). The former isn't commonly used, but the latter is - the result is no video when you hit the play button. Unfortunately, there's no way round this short of re-encoding the offending files.

brew99

12-22-07, 02:14 PM

Thanks arfster, I appreciate your direct information, as this has cleared up many things for me.

Is there an application that will allow me to see if the GPU is doing the HA (i.e. what percentage)?

Can you point me to a source for HD video that will allow me to definately see that the HA is working, something other than a .mkv file?

Thanks

Socio

12-22-07, 03:26 PM

bryanb

12-22-07, 05:54 PM

It looks like the issue I'm having with seek performance in Vista Media Center is directly related to digital cable recordings from the ATI Digital Cable Tuner (with CableCard). If I record an analog program on a different tuner, the seeking is responsive.

The nvidia 8600GT I had previously worked fine with both digital and analog recordings however. Are others having better luck with seeking/skipping on digital cable recordings with an ATI video card?

Here's another issue that happens that maybe others can verify:

Seek to about 15 minutes into a recorded program and begin playing
Rewind at max speed
When the timeline reaches 0:00, the seek bar stops, but the video displayed continues to rewind very slowly for about 10 more seconds.

arfster

12-22-07, 06:35 PM

Little update: all the problems with the sapphire 2600xt are voltage issues. Fiddle with the card's bios to get it to use 1.2, and force motherboard BIOS to exactly 1.2V and 100mhz, and all is OK. Never had to do any of this with previous drivers though.

Anyway, looks like they fixed auto deinterlacing mode selection: for both h264 and mpeg2 it selects VA now. Expansion issues are not changed though, SD doesn't expand, HD does, so you still need use UseBT601CSC=1. Other than that, the 2600 doesn't need any tweaking now. Possibly the 2400 will though - vforce at a guess?

videopierre

12-22-07, 08:44 PM

Please help me understand...

i've this 1080p LG set, and want to add a good graphic card to HTPC. I manage to find the said Gigabyte for about $110 and i was ready to go with it until i downloaded the Manual from Gigabyte web site. At the last page of the manual there is an Appendix
(1) Resolutions and Color Depth Table (in WindowXP)
(2) Radeon HD 2600 XT Series HDTV Display Modes

In the later (2) table THERE IS NO 1080p possible !!! Max display mode seems to be 1080i (1920x1080 30Hz)

What is there to be understand here...

TIA

videopierre

Siriusfilms

12-22-07, 10:02 PM

I'd like you to read my story. It's over 1500 words long, but the point at the end should make it worth your while.

Like so many forum members, I've been following along every week or so for about 6 months ever since buying a Philips Blu-ray RW and realizing after install I needed an HDCP card.

I replaced my Workstation grade (i.e. expensive) nVidia Quadro card with a Sapphire 2400Pro. Then for a month I tried to understand how the he!! Philips could let Cyberlink bundle software called BD Solution, when it doesn't even allow BD playback.

There was supposedly a free upgrade for PDVD but over a month's worth of inefficient Cyberlink message based support couldn't explain why the upgrade kept calling for a retail version to be installed before upgrading. Support had me downloading old versions off their FTP site that would allow the upgrade. This never worked so after nosing around I found their PDVD Ultra in some folder and was able to install it with the License key support had told me to use.

I thought I had made it, but this was probably back in August. I found that I couldn't get anything other than a Green Screen on BD playback in PDVD. I wasn't going to be beat and upgraded the whole innards of my HTPC. I replaced the 2 year old Intel 915 MoBo with a 965 that supported DDR2 RAM for which I added 2GB. Then I put in an Intel E4400 (2.0GHz w/ 800MHz Bus) because I didn't want to spend more for the E6X00 series.

I was able to reimage my old XP Pro from the 915 chipset to the 965 using Acronis Universal Restore, but performance was indicating the need for a fresh install. This encouraged me to switch to Vista Ult. 32.

With essentially a new system except for the 4 month old SATA 750GB and original 500W PSU (w/ 1 big 40A 12V rail), I thought I'd be enjoying the 4 BD's from Netflix that had been awaiting playback for a few months now. NOPE! I couldn't get more than 10 min of Playback before something would cause a Video Driver crash. I did deal with this constant crashing of the Vid Drivers which would simply require a restart of PDVD. I tolerated it long enough to finish Black Snake Moan, but my wife couldn't handle the "commercial" interruptions while I had to restart PDVD every 10-20 min (crashing intervals improved during playback). Still this was too intolerable.

So I decided to upgrade to the 2400XT because I thought the 2400Pro was too underpowered. After a couple of weeks trying to make the HDTV out work in Expanded Mode with a monitor on the VGA, I was finally informed by a very responsive and knowledgeable tech at ATI that the Sapphire probably had one DAC shared between the VGA and the HDTV out. So my whole point of having a 2400 was moot since now I had to use the DVI port with a DVI-VGA converter to feed my LCD monitor on the 50' VGA cable. I should've just gone with a 2600XT.

When I finally got 1080i HD on my big old Mitsubishi HDTV and 1680x1050 on my primary LCD I thought I'd be watchin and returnin those neglected BD's from Netflix. NOPE, not really! I did get to watch Flag of Our Fathers, and 300 on BD, but my CPU was at 80-90% during playback and any other systems processes would choke and stutter playback about every 5-15 min. It would only stutter a second, so my wife was able to tolerate watching these titles. Still she didn't see the difference between BD and DVD, and certainly the irregular playback didn't rationalize the cost or frustrations involved with making it "work."

The CPU usage was obviously an indicator that Hardware Acceleration wasn't working. I ran the Reg Tweak VB utility someone created and my playback's still didn't use HA. I thought I read somewhere in the forum that the 2400 series wouldn't allow HA of BD content if it was h264 encoded. I've tried to get confirmation on this comment here, but I've gotten no response. I've debated on just trying a 2600XT since they too are now around $100.

Before upgrading AGAIN, I decided to try watching a couple other BD's. I had Apocolyto which had been neglected since August as well as the newly released SuperBad and Live Free or Die Hard. Not ONE of them played without immediate unbearable stutter (the freezing frame kind). WHAT HAD CHANGED? My CPU was at 96-100%. I posted here in the forum and someone said I should overclock my E4400.

So I modified BIOS settings and got a few more Hz, but oddly, I wasn't seeing anywhere in the POST screen an indication of my expected increased CPU speed. At a full 5 step overclock I still had no better BD playback results and still maxed CPU.

Support from Cyberlink or ATI suggested making sure I had the latest BIOS along with a whole laundry list of reasons why problems shouldn't be pointed to their hardware or software. Though I had checked for updated BIOS's a few months ago and didn't see anything newer than 6 months before I bought my board, I checked again. Sure enough there was a 1-2 month old BIOS update. Since my HTPC doesn't have a floppy, updating the Foxconn BIOS was a PAIN, but I was sure glad I did. After upgrade, for the first time since running this G965 Foxconn, I actually saw the correct CPU clock speed in the POST screen. Also my Memory Clock was now accurate. Before I was seeing some multiple of a number that I just assumed was correct. Could it have been that my CPU and RAM was being completely underutilized because of a bad BIOS?

After the upgrade I tried SuperBad BD again, and SURE'nough it worked... sort of. I had similar playback to what I had for 300 and Flag, including the CPU showing 80-95% with a rare, hardly noticeable stutter. I had to conclude that previously somewhere my BIOS was completely underperforming. Now I still could benefit from Hardware Acceleration.

Since I still haven't gotten any confirmation that a HD2600 will utilize HA better than the 2400XT, I haven't made the upgrade, but I did find I had an Intel E6750 (2.66GHz & 1333MHz FSB) that might improve my % CPU usage. Unfortunately the Foxconn G965 doesn't support a 1333MHz FBS CPU even if OC'ing the Bus (which really couldn't be done). So I went to my favorite online store and started browsing for new 1333MHz FBS compliant boards.

Getting close to the point to this whole dissertation. I found 3 mATX boards that would suit my needs. The most interesting of which is an EVGA board with a NVIDIA nForce e-7150/630i chipset which includes the GeForce 7150 onboard that SUPPORTS HDCP via BOTH the included HDMI and DVI ports. What makes this interesting MoBo INCREDIBLE, is that you can get it for $70 at newe@@ with MIR before 12/31/07. Since this is SO cheap and has HDCP video onboard, why spend $100-$200 on an ATI HD card when this $70 board should do the trick?

I ASK: Isn't the MAIN reason for using ATI HD2X00 series cards supposed to be to take advantage of the Hardware Acceleration made possible ONLY with PowerDVD Ultra? Oh, and I forgot to mention that PowerDVD also cost an extra $100 for the benefit of this integrated UVD video hardware acceleration. I know that this is the only option for people wanting to use older CPU's and MB's with maybe only an AGP slot, but has this worked for anyone? Not from what I've read.

This whole forum's single ATI 2X00 thread with its 3666 posts (probably 3670 be the time I'm done with this massive post) indicates that a lot of people have spent some serious unpaid time trying to get PDVD to work as designed with ATI's UVD. I'm an IT consultant, and at my rates, I've cost myself probably several THOUSAND DOLLARS in time spent with this blasted HD-DVD & Blu-ray playback issue. If I was a gamer, I would've bought a PS3.

FINALLY, the QUESION: Wouldn't it be much more cost effective to buy something like this EVGA board with its integrated HDCP for less than any ATI card and simply invest the significant savings in a MASSIVE Quad Core or at least one of the FASTEST Core 2 Duo's available to handle any video decompression for ALL your HD content?

I've ordered 2 MoBo's that I'll spend my Xmas assembling. I'm going to try the 2.66GHz E6750 FSB 1333 CPU on the EVGA MoBo with the nVidia onboard and see how BD plays. If it doesn't work, I'll stick with the Intel G33 board and maybe upgrade to the 2600 series. I just read in Wikipedia a great article on Radeon R600 that states the 2400 series had known issues with the UVD.

If you've read my whole post here, you probably don't have much sympathy for the time and trouble I've been through because most all of you have had similar trials and tribulations.

PLEASE REPLY, COMMENT, OR SPEW: Post your constructive thoughts on anything I've mentioned. I'd like to see comments explaining why YOU have chosen to mess with ATI HD cards over any other solution. Just don't complain about the length of my rant because this isn't .01% of the treads content which you die-hards have read probably from the first page why back in 7-9-07.

Thanks for reading, and MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

huffydmb

12-22-07, 10:21 PM

I searched and searched and searched first, but I could not find my answer! Without reading through all 150+ pages of this thread, I thought I'd ask my question here.

I'm trying to get my ATI 2600 XT to send both audio and video to my Onkyo SR605 A/V receiver via HDMI. I'm using the included DVI->HDMI adapter and video is coming through just fine.

How do I tell my PC to send the audio as well? Will only certain file types work with the HDMI audio out (h264, etc). I'm able to watch my xvid, dvix, etc videos, but I don't have any sound. Same goes for mp3 files. I can see that they're playing, I just can't hear anything.

I'm running 32-bit Vista.

Many thanks to anyone who can help me out!

topcaser

12-23-07, 01:42 AM

dj4monie

12-23-07, 02:25 AM

Sorry got the number messed up.

Using PowerDVD Ultra v3516, XP SP2, Sapphire 2600XT PCI-Ex, arfster's reg tweaks, ccc v7.12. De-Interlacing method is vector adaptive.

Am able to watch BBC HD and the free to air HD Channels on 19e with 2% cpu usage.

What are you using to watch TV with? I have since this thread started upgrade to Vista Home Premium. I took the card back and seriously considering a full hardware upgrade.

Thanks for the reply and I guess by watching the BBC in HD, your in the UK? Only the Top Gear Ice Race to the North Pole was in 1080i.. lol

Tric_101

12-23-07, 04:42 AM

leeperry

12-23-07, 07:36 AM

Little update: all the problems with the sapphire 2600xt are voltage issues. Fiddle with the card's bios to get it to use 1.2, and force motherboard BIOS to exactly 1.2V and 100mhz, and all is OK. Never had to do any of this with previous drivers though.

told you ;)

so did you actually do it ?

I'd like to send 1.3 or 1.35 in order to overclock even further :D

[jammer]

12-23-07, 09:35 AM

I can feel your pain Siriusfilms :) I wrote in my blog (http://jammer.blog.com) a bit about my experiences in setting up my HTPC with 2600 Pro if you are interested.

vvista

12-23-07, 12:30 PM

Getting close to the point to this whole dissertation. I found 3 mATX boards that would suit my needs. The most interesting of which is an EVGA board with a NVIDIA nForce e-7150/630i chipset which includes the GeForce 7150 onboard that SUPPORTS HDCP via BOTH the included HDMI and DVI ports. What makes this interesting MoBo INCREDIBLE, is that you can get it for $70 at newe@@ with MIR before 12/31/07. Since this is SO cheap and has HDCP video onboard, why spend $100-$200 on an ATI HD card when this $70 board should do the trick?You may find that the on-board HD res. is only 1280x720 max. Download and read the mobo manual before purchase.

I ASK: Isn't the MAIN reason for using ATI HD2X00 series cards supposed to be to take advantage of the Hardware Acceleration made possible ONLY with PowerDVD Ultra? Oh, and I forgot to mention that PowerDVD also cost an extra $100 for the benefit of this integrated UVD video hardware acceleration. I know that this is the only option for people wanting to use older CPU's and MB's with maybe only an AGP slot, but has this worked for anyone? Not from what I've read.Tests have shown that the ATI's UVD solution is effective when it works properly, i.e. driver implementation.

FINALLY, the QUESION: Wouldn't it be much more cost effective to buy something like this EVGA board with its integrated HDCP for less than any ATI card and simply invest the significant savings in a MASSIVE Quad Core or at least one of the FASTEST Core 2 Duo's available to handle any video decompression for ALL your HD content?No!

I've ordered 2 MoBo's that I'll spend my Xmas assembling. I'm going to try the 2.66GHz E6750 FSB 1333 CPU on the EVGA MoBo with the nVidia onboard and see how BD plays. If it doesn't work, I'll stick with the Intel G33 board and maybe upgrade to the 2600 series. I just read in Wikipedia a great article on Radeon R600 that states the 2400 series had known issues with the UVD.Stay with what you have and start the software rebuild from scratch. Update all hardware BIOSes. Re-install OS and update w/ all patches. Install Catalyst 7.12 and Good Luck!:) You may end up getting an HD 2600XT though.

protovision

12-23-07, 01:32 PM

if there's any moderators around, could you update the name of this thread to start with 'UPDATED FIRST POST:'

I'm slowly trying to piece together some new info for the first post to turn it into a min-faq, suggestions are welcomed.

p.

samw97

12-23-07, 03:15 PM

New to HTPC. Just built a system with a 2600xt card. I'm running into what appears to be a simple problem but can't find a good solution.

Key components:

Vista Home Premium running Media Center
Powerdvd for HDDVD/Blu-ray playback
Samsung DLP 46" 720p display
2600xt connected using HDMI output and 7.12 Catalyst driver

Here's the issue I'm running into. With the video card set to 720p (1280x720, 60Hz), I get a little bit of underscan in the horizontal direction (i.e. there 's a tiny sliver of a black on the right side of the display).

To fix this I tried the following:

1. I used a custom resolution (that is lower than 1280x720) to get the windows desktop to perfectly fit the display area. This seemed a little counter-intuitive, but somehow the display or video card scales the lower resolution to fit the display area. With the custom resolution, Powerdvd during playback still has the tiny black bar on the right side of the display.

2. I tried using the scaling feature in the display driver. But this is only available (i.e. not greyed out) when the display is not set to a custom resolution. It does not allow scaling in one direction only, so when I scale the display, I lose the top and bottom of the windows desktop. Its a very small area but still annoying. Now, when I use Powerdvd, the tiny blackbar on the right side is gone.

The question is, are there some settings I'm missing that allows me to have the best of both worlds? Perfect fit when in windows desktop. Perfect fit in Powerdvd.

alanytical

12-23-07, 03:38 PM

I've finally got VC1/H264 HWA working with PowerDVD Ultra Blu-Ray and HD DVD titles, with this moderate system:

Diamond 2400pro 256mb
Athlon X2 3800+
LG GGC-H20L
PowerDVD Ultra OEM bundled with LG drive
CCC 7.7
WINDOWS XP MCE 2005
2GB RAM
AnyDVD HD
1080p output to HDTV via DVI-to-HDMI cable

I'm using TheaterTek, K-Lite Codec, FFDShow for upscaling DVDs, and PowerDVD Ultra for Blu & HD content. That's all I do with this rig, no broadcast content in 1080i.

I tried different versions of PowerDVD 3104, 3319, 3516, but I find that the OEM bundled w/ the LG supermulti drive works the best for me and it's played everything I throw at it so far such as: Transformers, Live Free or Die Hard, Superbad, Pirates 1 &2, MI3, etc.

It was watchable with CCC 7.11 & 7.12 but both cores would hit 99% utilization and then stutter on certain scenes, such as the Kraken scene in Pirates 2. Parts with lots of action would just slow to a crawl. It was bad.

I thought it was the video card not being up to the task, but then from reading around different posts it turns out CCC 7.8 and newer break the HWA with PowerDVD Ultra. So I found CCC 7.7 off the ATI site and gave it a shot.

Now with CCC 7.7 I'm hitting maybe at most 30% on the heaviest data movie scenes, but mostly it stays down at 10%, so the offloading to the GPU UVD is working for sure. I hope that ATI fixes this problem with their January release.

So, after a lot of worrying that I needed a beefier system, CPU, video card, and the thought of sinking more and more money and time into the build, I'm happy to say that it works perfectly with this setup now. :D

Could anybody fill me in on what REG Tweaks may enhance the image, like removing denoise or sharpening etc. Thanks.

sarah99

12-23-07, 03:50 PM

Since I still haven't gotten any confirmation that a HD2600 will utilize HA better than the 2400XT, I haven't made the upgrade, but I did find I had an Intel E6750 (2.66GHz & 1333MHz FSB) that might improve my % CPU usage.

The HA only works in Vista with drivers 7.7 and up (or in XP with drivers 7.7 and down)
my 2400pro and HD2600Pro work perfectly in Vista (and only one of the DVI sockets works properly on these cards for non LCD)
Ati are basically not supporting XP

[jammer]

12-23-07, 04:51 PM

sarah99

12-23-07, 04:57 PM

;12571915']That's BS. I got XP, HD2600Pro and everything is working fine with 7.11 drivers.

I'm glad it works for you, many of us find it doesn't work for us.

sharangad

12-23-07, 05:05 PM

The HA only works in Vista with drivers 7.7 and up (or in XP with drivers 7.7 and down)
my 2400pro and HD2600Pro work perfectly in Vista (and only one of the DVI sockets works properly on these cards for non LCD)
Ati are basically not supporting XP

That's nonsense. The UVD supporting ATi cards only came out in July. How would "7.7 and down" work with them?

I had a 2600 XT for a while and it worked perfectly under XP. I gave up on it as I hated CCC and having to tweak the registry with every Catalyst update. There was also a lot of instability with the new ATi OpenGL driver ( re-written from scratch for the HD series under XP and all cards under Vista ).

karrih

12-23-07, 05:11 PM

;12571915']That's BS. I got XP, HD2600Pro and everything is working fine with 7.11 drivers.

This is my current setup as well. HD2600Pro PCIe, Athlon3200 and XP. TrDenoise and DXVA_DETAILENHANCE tweaks applied. I use it for daily viewing and it works pretty well, occasional crashes do occur, not every day, though.

[jammer]

12-23-07, 05:13 PM

I'm glad it works for you, many of us find it doesn't work for us.
You mean Bluray/HD-DVD content and not just any 1080p material, right? If I download some random .mkv files and try to play that back, it doesn't work as HW accelerated, but Bluray/HD-DVD & any "properly" encoded H.264 material does. For example if you download I am Legend 1080p trailer (http://iamlegend.warnerbros.com/myspace/hidef/index.html) that's H.264 I get something like 5% CPU utilization on my HD2600Pro (PCI Express) when playing it back with PowerDVD (3516). Playing back the same clip without HWA the CPU utilization is at max and playback stutters.

Siriusfilms

12-23-07, 07:01 PM

Just got back from picking up a 2600XT at Fry's. Forgive me for talking about purchasing here, but I have a point. The DIAMOND 2600XT was on special after MIR for only $80 where the original sticker was $199.

Usually getting something like this is too good to be true. There was also an ATI 2600XT that had a Diamond label on it, but it was packaged different and was not discounted from the $199. I should've bought both for testing because I'm sitting here after upgrading my 2400XT (in the HTPC I posted 1500 words here on the other day) and the 2600XT STILL isn't doing any Hardware Acceleration.

What am I doing wrong. I uninstalled the 2400XT, put in the 2600XT and got an Out Of Sync error so I removed the ATI 7.12 drivers via RDP. I rebooted and reinstalled the 7.12 drivers I downloaded yesterday. Blu-ray played in PDVD still was at 97-100% CPU and 0%-10% GPU. So I reapplied the Reg Tweaks (ATI_HD2x00_Reg_Tweaks_0.11.vbs) that I got from this forum. Rebooted and SAME THING, 100% CPU during LIVE FREE DIA HARD playback in PDVD Ultra build 3514 (updated last month).

Now I just read alanytical's post:

Finally got my Diamond 2400pro VC1/H264 HWA working

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've finally got VC1/H264 HWA working with PowerDVD Ultra Blu-Ray and HD DVD titles, with this moderate system:

Diamond 2400pro 256mb...

...Now with CCC 7.7 I'm hitting maybe at most 30% on the heaviest data movie scenes, but mostly it stays down at 10%, so the offloading to the GPU UVD is working for sure.

That's incredible, and I'm envious. So I guess I need to try the 7.7 Drivers, but I'm running Vista Ult 32. I'm reading below that 7.7 is the latest that will work for XP, but 7.7 on up to 7/12 which I'm running should work for Vista. If ANYONE has any other thoughts as to WHY NONE of my 3 cards: SAPPHIRE 2400PRO, SAPPHIRE2400XT and NOW DIAMOND 2600XT have NOT PERFORMED any sort of Hardware Acceleration, I should would appreciate your input. Would I likely have a better experience with the ATI boxed 2600XT?

Strecker25

12-23-07, 09:15 PM

Just got back from picking up a 2600XT at Fry's. Forgive me for talking about purchasing here, but I have a point. The DIAMOND 2600XT was on special after MIR for only $80 where the original sticker was $199.

Usually getting something like this is too good to be true. There was also an ATI 2600XT that had a Diamond label on it, but it was packaged different and was not discounted from the $199. I should've bought both for testing because I'm sitting here after upgrading my 2400XT (in the HTPC I posted 1500 words here on the other day) and the 2600XT STILL isn't doing any Hardware Acceleration.

What am I doing wrong. I uninstalled the 2400XT, put in the 2600XT and got an Out Of Sync error so I removed the ATI 7.12 drivers via RDP. I rebooted and reinstalled the 7.12 drivers I downloaded yesterday. Blu-ray played in PDVD still was at 97-100% CPU and 0%-10% GPU. So I reapplied the Reg Tweaks (ATI_HD2x00_Reg_Tweaks_0.11.vbs) that I got from this forum. Rebooted and SAME THING, 100% CPU during LIVE FREE DIA HARD playback in PDVD Ultra build 3514 (updated last month).

Now I just read alanytical's post:

That's incredible, and I'm envious. So I guess I need to try the 7.7 Drivers, but I'm running Vista Ult 32. I'm reading below that 7.7 is the latest that will work for XP, but 7.7 on up to 7/12 which I'm running should work for Vista. If ANYONE has any other thoughts as to WHY NONE of my 3 cards: SAPPHIRE 2400PRO, SAPPHIRE2400XT and NOW DIAMOND 2600XT have NOT PERFORMED any sort of Hardware Acceleration, I should would appreciate your input. Would I likely have a better experience with the ATI boxed 2600XT?

I have the TUL (powercolor) 2600xt and im about ready to trash it personally, It performs absolutely no HW accelleration on any HD formats. as a matter of fact during playback the avivo checkbox is grayed out and blank during hd playback. really sucks...

uolsona

12-23-07, 10:00 PM

I posted the below in the LG dual format drive thread but nobody else seems to be having this problem. In addition to the below I updated the driver and CCC to the 7.12 revision. But I'm still getting stuttering wiht Borne Identity. I bought Casino Royale today and it seems to run just fine.

I have a feeling it is the way I have CCC set up, but I have no idea what it would be specifically. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Quote:
Originally Posted by uolsona
Hey guys,

I need some advice from some knowledgeable folks. I have been following this [LG drive] thread fairly consistently since it was started but the idea of going back through it to see if anyone else has had a similar problem isn't to appealing. Would appreciate some help.

I just got this drive yesterday and installed if today. Everything went smoothly. I installed the bundled version of PDVD and then upgraded to version 7.3 when it asked me to.

I'm trying to play my first HD-DVD (Bourne Ultimatum). It started playing fine but I'm getting some very light, to at times severe, stuttering. :mad: I think my PC has plenty of power to handle this drive smoothly (specs pasted below). I have tried to make sure that as much of the acceleration is offloaded from the CPU as possible. CPU utilization is running 15-45% but the GPU is only running at 7-9%.

I don't know if I should be looking in CCC for the solution or in the PDVD configuration menu . . . . or somewhere else?

Here are the pasted specs from my VM HTPC. Haven't had any other problems like this.

Motherboard 2919 Genuine Intel® P35 ATX Motherboard with DDR2, PCI Express, 1333MHz FSB, RAID DP35DP

Processor 3007 Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6750, dual 2.66GHz cores, 1333MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache

CPU Cooling 2044 Arctic Cooling® Freezer 7 Pro Heatsink, Ultra Quiet Fan, Copper Heat Pipes, plus Arctic Silver™ 5 Thermal Compound

DDR2 Memory 2960 2048MB Corsair™ DDR2 PC6400 DDR2-800 (2x1024)

PCX Video 2866 256MB AMD ATI® Radeon™ HD 2600XT, 2 x DVI HDMI+Audio HDCP GDDR4

TV Tuner 2779 ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner - Internal* (HDCP Video Card Required)

Second TV Tuner 2779 ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner - Internal* (HDCP Video Card Required)

This disc stutters like crazy for me also. So far it's the only disc that I've tried that does, so I think it's a problem with this specific drive/disc combination. On another PC with the Xbox 360 drive Bourne plays fine. If I get ambitious I'm going to move the LG to the other PC and test there, but right now I'm sick of messing with this.

doctorcilantro

12-23-07, 10:50 PM

Now I'm using an HIS 3750 on Vista x64...same MKV that was accelrated with DXVA and Cyberlink won't work now...wtf!
Using 7.12 and very similar setup...CCCP issued Haali and Vista Codec pack 12-21-07.

And here's the cherry....PQ is aliased in this MKV....it looked better with the 2600xt!!!!
DC

Strecker25

12-23-07, 11:32 PM

Siriusfilms

12-24-07, 12:49 AM

wow after so long and so many install/uninstalls i went to 7.7 as you suggested and get full HWA with my 2600xt on hddvd and blu ray. The strange thing is gpu is at only like 15% even though cpu is at only 20-30%. but at least the cpu isnt 100% all the time anymore.

Are you running XP or Vista? If you're successful with Vista on 7.7, GOOD BYE 7.12

arfster

12-24-07, 02:27 AM

The strange thing is gpu is at only like 15% even though cpu is at only 20-30%. but at least the cpu isnt 100% all the time anymore.

That's quite normal - the "GPU" measured there isn't the bit used for decoding h264/vc1, it only does deinterlacing, scaling and other postprocessing. If you minimise the window so it's not scaling it'll be at 2% or something.

Try playing some interlaced mpeg2, then you'll see the poor thing working its nuts off.

Luar Azul

12-24-07, 04:46 AM

If you've read my whole post here, you probably don't have much sympathy for the time and trouble I've been through because most all of you have had similar trials and tribulations.

PLEASE REPLY, COMMENT, OR SPEW: Post your constructive thoughts on anything I've mentioned. I'd like to see comments explaining why YOU have chosen to mess with ATI HD cards over any other solution.

Hi! I spent way too many hours trying to get my Sapphire 2400pro to work. In my opinion it is best to rely on software decoding. The main problem with these GPU processors is that we can only rely on one decoder (Cyberlink), the other problem is that problems in Ati driver or Cyberlink decoder are not really being addressed as a priority; so I would expect these drivers probably never to be problem free (to work with mkv files for instance), or, if they do, only in more than a year or so.

Strecker25

12-24-07, 06:09 AM

Are you running XP or Vista? If you're successful with Vista on 7.7, GOOD BYE 7.12

yup its vista 32bit, just google "7.7 catalyst vista 32" came up from some 3rd party site for me.

Strecker25

12-24-07, 06:27 AM

That's quite normal - the "GPU" measured there isn't the bit used for decoding h264/vc1, it only does deinterlacing, scaling and other postprocessing. If you minimise the window so it's not scaling it'll be at 2% or something.

Try playing some interlaced mpeg2, then you'll see the poor thing working its nuts off.

any idea where some samples of this interlaced content can be had? id like to see it do some work just for fun. thanks

alanytical

12-24-07, 06:46 AM

DJBlu

12-24-07, 10:00 AM

What are you using to watch TV with? I have since this thread started upgrade to Vista Home Premium. I took the card back and seriously considering a full hardware upgrade.

Thanks for the reply and I guess by watching the BBC in HD, your in the UK? Only the Top Gear Ice Race to the North Pole was in 1080i.. lol

Media Portal with TVServer3 with Cyberlink v3516 AVC/H264 codec, This is running on Windows XP. Using a Hauppauge Win-TV HD Card and Sapphire 2600XT.

doctorcilantro

12-24-07, 02:39 PM

Reverting to XP re-enable DXVA of H264 w/ Cyberlink with my HIS 3750. Using the 7.10 or 11 from the disc....haven't tried 7.12.

Sounds like for Vista we need 7.7? Maybe I'll flash back to Vista x64 and try. Too many bugs in Vista x64....little things like Irtrans support (supposed to work but doesn't), Peerguardian not working (works for some and not others), etc....makes me just want to stick with XP.

I don't game and DX10 isn't essential.

I should try the 7.7 to see if it works and confirm.

DC

Siriusfilms

12-24-07, 03:26 PM

yup its vista 32bit, just google "7.7 catalyst vista 32" came up from some 3rd party site for me.

Strecker25, you are MY HERO! I'm not sure if it was the 7.7 downgrade, or the fact that I totaly deleted EVERY instance of ATI on my system, but IT WORKED. I FINALLY have HWA. My E6600 CPU is at 20-40% during LIVE FREE DIE HARD. I'm not sure what the GPU is doing because all I can see in CCC is the Temp at 48C.

I went in to my HTPC to feel the temps and in moving the case the system crashed. I hope I just jiggled something loose. I'm back up, and I'm going to test run LIVE FREE for about 30 min or so and see what happens.

I can't believe reverting to CCC 7.7 would've made HWA work. Again it could be the clean up I did. Here is what I did before installing 7.7

1. Run ATI Uninstall Manager and Remove EVERYTHING
2. Delete ALL Program Folders with ATI
3. Delete any files in Windows\Systems32 and Windows\System32\drivers\ that were named "atixxx.xxx"
4. Delete any Reg Key's releated to ATI
5. In Device Manager SHOWING Hidden (not connected) Devices, DELETE ALL disconnected\old devices. There will be instances of any previous Vid cards installed in your system.

This clean up likely has something to do with the fact I'm 5 min into LIVE FREE running with HWA and haven't hit more that 40% CPU and 48C Temp on the GPU.

Next I may try to update just the CCC version and keep the old driver. If that's possible, maybe this will let me monitor GPU activity.

I'm almost curious if the 2400XT will now work with 7.7. Any wagers out there?

Strecker25

12-24-07, 03:41 PM

glad to hear you also got it working. Who knows where they went wrong between 7.7 and now but it works. Download rivatuner to check your gpu activity. Id be curious to see what yours is, mine sits at 9-13% with cpu at 30-40% (4400+ dual core). Thursday i'll have a Black Edition 6400+ dual core so well see how that performs.

Siriusfilms

12-24-07, 03:50 PM

I'm going to try a new build today with a new E6750 on an Intel G35 board. We'll see how it compares. I'll test with RivaTuner first. THanks again.

MitchBart

12-24-07, 04:05 PM

mav0100

12-24-07, 04:19 PM

wow after so long and so many install/uninstalls i went to 7.7 as you suggested and get full HWA with my 2600xt on hddvd and blu ray. The strange thing is gpu is at only like 15% even though cpu is at only 20-30%. but at least the cpu isnt 100% all the time anymore.

I can also report that I am finally seeing *some* HWA with my setup after reverting back to the Catalyst 7.7 drivers.

P4 2.2Ghz
Visiontek HD2400 Pro AGP 256MB
1.5 GB DDR
Windows Vista 32 Bit
Powerdvd Ultra 7.3.3304

Watching the BBC Motion Gallery Reel from the Apple website (.mov container, 1080p, AVC), CPU usage never gets much above 40% using Powerdvd, and there is no stuttering of the video. This used to stutter all the time.

Watching the Transformers HD-DVD is a different story however. It is also AVC format. CPU usage is always at or very near 100%, with frequent stuttering, also while using Powerdvd.

WMV HD still shows no accelration at all. The 1080p Alexander trailer from the WMV HD site Microsoft has stutters like crazy and loses A/V sync almost immediately.

I have not yet tried any VC1 format HD material yet. *Edit* Apparently WMV HD IS VC1... Doh!

I may attempt a "clean" install of Vista and then reinstall Cat 7.7 and Powerdvd to see if that helps, as this install has gotten quite "dirty" while trying to get HWA to work.

Some progress has now been seen, at least on my end! :)

cganesh75

12-24-07, 06:25 PM

you guys only get the 7.7 ccc or including the driver?

one_2go

12-24-07, 06:43 PM

I'm going to try a new build today with a new E6750 on an Intel G35 board. We'll see how it compares. I'll test with RivaTuner first. THanks again.
Many of us have found the tweaked drivers that Arfster so kindly provided to be an excellent solution until stability and fixed errors arrive in drivers released by AMD/ATI.

You can find them in this post (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11485622&postcount=1785) in this thread combine that with the tweaks from HERE (http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/#details) and you will be liking your PQ.

Siriusfilms

12-24-07, 08:39 PM

I purchased Diamond HD2600XT 512 PCIe at Fry's. I expected it to have two DVI interfaces and have the special DVI-HDMI adapter. Instead the card I purchased has 1 VGA interface, 1 DVI interface and a physical HDMI interface.

I purchased the card just for it single cable HDMI capability. When I connect the HDMI interface either through the Sony STR-DG810 receiver or direct to the Sony KDL-V40XBR1 Display I have no video or audio output on the HDMI interface, both the DVI and VGA interface have video output.

This is the exact card I got a Fry's yesterday. Great deal, huh. I've learned now with my 3rd ATI HD card that you must be mindful of the ports with independent DAC's. Each card will have 2 Dig-Analog Converters and depending on which ports share the DAC's you won't be able to have more than one display resolution. Since this card has 4 connection options all ports will share a DAC.

Without an HDMI set to test, I will assume from testing the VGA, DVI and Component outs that the Component and VGA share a DAC, and the DVI and HDMI share a DAC. If you are trying to connect monitors with just the DVI and HDMI you must have identical monitors or at least identical resolutions and refresh rates.

If you not getting the HDMI and that's all your testing, I'm sorry I can't help.

Good luck.

Siriusfilms

12-24-07, 08:51 PM

Originally posted by Streacker25:
glad to hear you also got it working. Who knows where they went wrong between 7.7 and now but it works. Download rivatuner to check your gpu activity. Id be curious to see what yours is, mine sits at 9-13% with cpu at 30-40% (4400+ dual core). Thursday i'll have a Black Edition 6400+ dual core so well see how that performs.

Just swapped the CPU back to my original E4400 from the E6600 I was testing from my workstation. I also installed RivaTuner.

Live Free or Die Hard still played well. I have no more than 30% on the GPU in RT averaging about 15%. The CPU was higher on the E4400 (which is OC'd to 2.19GHZ from the stock 2.0). The E6600 never really got above 40% at it's stock of 2.4GHz, while the OC'd E4400 was occasionally hitting 60%. This isn't bad, but I sure do see alot of underutilized GPU. Makes me think the 2400 series really is all I should need.

I'd go back and test, but I think switching cards and not doing combersome clean driver installs will likely render poor results.

Who here ALWAYS does a clean install of drivers when updating, etc? By clean, I mean at least using the ATI Uninstall Manager and not just running an Update install of new drivers.

rdewey

12-25-07, 12:00 AM

Sorry if this has come up before it pretty hard to search this thread!

I purchased Diamond HD2600XT 512 PCIe at Fry's. I expected it to have two DVI interfaces and have the special DVI-HDMI adapter. Instead the card I purchased has 1 VGA interface, 1 DVI interface and a physical HDMI interface.

I purchased the card just for it single cable HDMI capability. When I connect the HDMI interface either through the Sony STR-DG810 receiver or direct to the Sony KDL-V40XBR1 Display I have no video or audio output on the HDMI interface, both the DVI and VGA interface have video output.

I upgraded to the new 7.12 drivers and there was no change. It seems like the display is being detected but when I try to enable it it just goes back to "disabled" and when I turn off or on the receiver the display flashes in VGA mode like the display is being detected or detected as gone.

My OS is Vista Premium (no SP1).

Maybe a HDCP issue?

Thanks in advance for you help.

I got this card at Fry's also this weekend, and after spending at least 6 hours with the card, I finally got it working right. The two major issues are 1) how to get the HDMI output to work correctly for displaying your video and 2) how to activate the HDMI sound chip on the card so you can send sound through your HDMI connection to your connected receiver or TV.

The first step was very easy for me; I connected ONLY the HDMI connector via a standard HDMI cable directly to my HDMI equipped monitor (I tested this on two monitors, one is a true computer monitor 1080P (the 24 inch Westinghouse) and the other is a 720P LG LCD HDTV. Both worked flawlessly for video (remember, the only cable connected to my card was the HDMI cable). All screen modes displayed correctly from the initial dos boot screens to all windows display modes.

The second step is what took me 5 hours; when reading on this forum and on ATI's web site, there is a driver intended for enabling the sound chip on the card for XP (I'm running windows XP media center edition 2005) but this driver simply DOES NOT WORK! No number of installs or re-installs of this driver would work; I continued to see the yellow exclamation mark in device manager regarding the audio device, but the driver would not install. Finally, in desperation I typed in the exact name of this device as listed in device manager into the google and the first hit I got referenced a Realtek HDMI driver on their web page... I installed this driver, and PRESTO-- HDMI audio now works. This driver will appear as a selectable option in the sound applet in control panel allowing you to select it as your default audio output device, and when you do, your sound will come through correctly via your HDMI cable into your TV.

Right now, I am CRAZY about this card; I tested it with my LG combo Blu-ray/HD DVD drive and it plays full resolution high-def movies with PowerDVD ultra directly though the HDMI cable to my HDCP enabled HDTV and monitor.

This is working EXACTLY like I want it to. If anyone is looking for the magic Realtek driver that enables the HDMI sound chip on this card, it is here:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false#High%20Definition%20Audio%20Codecs

Note, this is the last driver in the table at the bottom entitled ATI HDMI Audio Device. It's a real shame that ATI couldn't do us the courtesy of posting this driver on their site...