ATI Radeon HD 2X00 (2400,2600,2900) series owners thread [Text View] - Page 7

Andy o

08-19-07, 03:45 PM

Hmmmm, that's what crossed my mind at first too which is why I ducked out into CCC to check the temperature whenever the corruption was occuring. I'm sure the temp was only a few °C higher than normal at about 64°C.

I'm using the passive Sapphire 2400 pro too but I'm going over VGA. Is this a duff card? Should it be going back do you think? What would I replace it with? A 2600XT? Do they run cooler?

well, technically the 2400pro is the coolest of the lot. Maybe because of that they feel they don't need to put a good heatsink on. The 2600pro was giving me low temps passively as I said above, but that's with the VNF100, which I switched the stock fan heatsink with. I never tried the stock. How cool your card runs will probably depend more on what cooling solutions the manufacturers implement than on the GPU itself. That said, you haven't made sure that your problem is with overheating, so upgrade if you need more power, if not, look for another 2400pro maybe with a better cooling solution since you're at it. For some of us the 2400pro has proven not to be up to the task, but close nevertheless.

Andy o

08-19-07, 03:51 PM

where in riva tuner is the % GPU useage? i've got 2.02 installed but dont see the load anywhere.
In the "main" tab, Target adapter, click on the arrow next to "Customize..." and then click on the icon of the magnifying glass over a chip. That's "hardware monitoring".

jkcheng122

08-19-07, 06:09 PM

In the "main" tab, Target adapter, click on the arrow next to "Customize..." and then click on the icon of the magnifying glass over a chip. That's "hardware monitoring".

thank you.

tekno

08-19-07, 06:25 PM

Anybody using XP that can recommend a ATI HD 2600 series card over Nvidia? I have another computer with a Linux partition and I learned that ATI has virtually no 2600 series drivers for Linux. But, if ATI's XP drivers for the 2600 series cards are improving and you can have low cpu utilization %, I would just use the computer for Windows. But, if there are still drivers problems...

I read on an online article of cpu % being around 12 with a ATI HD 2600 (not sure which one) so that is good and enough to convince me if the drivers issues aren't too bad.

Can anyone comment? Pretty puhhhhhlease. ;=)

arfster

08-19-07, 06:37 PM

CPU % still depends a little bit how slow your machine is, because playing HDDVD/Bluray is more than just the graphics. However, the actual graphics handling is totally offloaded to the card with the 2400/2600, while for the 8500/8600 only h264 is. See here for the difference that actually makes:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3047&p=1

In practice, VC1 is so easy to decode that Nvidia doesn't really suffer from this difference, except with very slow single cores. The 5th page of the above article shows Serenity VC1 on a top C2D as 5% ATI vs 16% on NVidia, and with a P4 3.6ghz 13% vs 30%. In both cases, essentially no difference. However, drop down to a 1.6ghz sempron, and you're talking 20% vs 100% (aka unplayable):

http://www.hardspell.com/english/doc/showcont.asp?news_id=622&pageid=654

With h264 Nvidia and ATI are pretty much the same.

millerbrad

08-19-07, 06:43 PM

I think it's safe to say you are using the dongle provided with the card. Only the DVI port nearest the motherboard is HDMI audio capable, so make sure you are using that one as I had exactly the same issue as you and that was the simple answer.

I have the Sapphire 2600 XT. Using two of the ATI DVI-to-HDMI dongles, I have audio coming from BOTH DVI ports simultaneously using the 7.7 Catalysts. If I try to install the 7.8 drivers, I only get audio from one of the DVI ports.

|StarscreaM|

08-19-07, 08:20 PM

Yes - it only works with their dongle, it does something beyond the standard DVI>HDMI connector conversion

yep, i believe the standard dvi->hdmi connector will only pass video signals and not audio.

Thank you for the replies gentlemen. That most likely saved me several more ours of frustration.

Any of you know where else I can find the ATI DVI to HDMI adapter that supports audio passthrough? I found the dongle on ATI's website but unfortunately it is out of stock.

http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=3526142

Sarvatt

08-19-07, 09:48 PM

I would go ahead and order it from their website anyway, both times I've ordered out of stock items they shipped within 2 days :D Waited 6 months for the darn free remotes for the tv wonder 650 to come in stock and finally broke down and ordered the out of stock one anyway but it still shipped right away. I posted a coupon code for that adapter somewhere in the first 5 pages or so of the thread, comes out to under $7 including shipping and it is well worth the cost as its hard to find non-ATI dvi/hdmi adapters that cheap and its not limited to just ati cards :D

tfugit

08-19-07, 09:51 PM

I have MSI HD2400pro with generic DVI-HDMI cable and get video and audio out (ccc 7.8).
But audio is not clear --- very noisy.
I see MS HDAudio driver beeing used for ATI HDMI audio on the device manager.
I use analog 5.1 audio right now since it is difficult to locate where problem is.

I once installed Realtec HDMI168 driver but got strange noise just like Mic echo cancel ajustment.

billqs

08-19-07, 10:41 PM

Well, several hours and many driver installs later I figured out my large blocking problem in PowerDVD. Apparently, I can get normal SD DVD playback by turning off the advanced 3D Features in Catalyst Control Center. Maybe once drivers improve I will be able to use some of these settings and still have the card work.

indieke2

08-20-07, 02:22 AM

Well maybe I got the most stupid question of this thread:

Where an I find a comprehensible guide how to use the catalyst settings?

I noticed yesterday that with 50 hz dvd I got strange fluorisent colours, maybe I can fix that there?

Btw, with Powerstrip, selecting 50 hz, when I need it, my computer crashes easy

kiffies

08-20-07, 02:24 AM

Hi All, long time listener, first time caller.

I've got a 2600XT running Vista Media Center 1920x1080 @50Hz over DVI to HDMI

Using MS decoder I get a decent picture wth live/recorded TV however only Bob and Weave deinterlacing give smooth playback, all other modes cause fast moving images such as ticker tapes and sports to stutter

Using Avivo decoder I better picture with live/recorded TV plus all deinterlacing modes including auto work great on fast images, problem is you can't ffw or rew live or recorded TV (DVRMS) or playback DVD's.

What a PITA

I hope they sort out the avivo codec issues in the next driver release

Sarvatt

08-20-07, 03:42 AM

You aren't using 3:2 pulldown are you kiffies? Bob and weave are the only 2 modes that dont use backwards reference frames and the 3:2 pulldown checkbox is greyed out with them. Just trying to think of common potential causes of problems at the other modes. I dont use 50hz so I have no idea how 3:2 pulldown interacts with the material you have, just a shot in the dark :D Forcing VSync/disabling catalyst AI/lowering 3D settings in CCC may also be worth trying.

kiffies

08-20-07, 04:22 AM

Well I used to use 60Hz with the same issues- I changed to 50Hz cos apparently Australian TV is broadcast @ 50Hz and I think it did make a improvement. Also changing to DVD-HDMI from VGA made a difference to PQ.

As far as 3:2 pulldown goes I just leave enabled, it doesn't seem to make much difference with the stuttering

voicecoils

08-20-07, 06:49 AM

dreaddan

08-20-07, 07:33 AM

voicecoils, are you using a AGP card?
If so have you tryed the 7.9 beta drivers?

voicecoils

08-20-07, 07:42 AM

voicecoils, are you using a AGP card?
If so have you tryed the 7.9 beta drivers?

thanks for the quick reply, it's the PCI-e version.

Where can the 7.9 beta drivers be found?

fallenturtle

08-20-07, 09:08 AM

This weekend I decided to wipe my drive clean and start again. With just WinXP SP2, the latest Radeon driver and CCC, Media Player Classic, PowerDVD 7.3 Deluxe, and Haali Media Splitter, I'm getting more movies playing then before the wipe, but some are still messed up and a few others are exhibiting new problems, like jittery playback and odd artifacting.

The thing that is driving me up the wall is that when using MediaInfo to examining these different files, I can't see what the difference is that makes some work and some not. They all pretty much are the same stats except with varying bitrates.

Also, while I had them before I wiped my drive, I don't seem to have any of the ATI codecs you all have mentioned. I checked using Radlight Filter Manager and the only ATI directx filter I have is called "ATI Ticker" (which I have no idea what that does). How did you guys get the mpeg decoder and stuff?

Mntneer

08-20-07, 09:16 AM

Hi, I'm having an impossible time getting hardware acceleration happening.

I have:
ASUS 2400Pro PCI-e
AMD 3200+ processor
PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra
WinXP Pro SP2

On the Hardspell.com review, they show an AMD 2800+ playing Serenity HD-DVD with very low CPU utilization. When I try to play it, I get 75-100% CPU utilization. It stutters and is unwatchable. The drivers I'm using were downloaded straight from ATI.com, and "hardware acceleration" is ticked in the PDVD video configuration.

Anyone have a suggestion/solution?

I'm having a similar problem. I've got an AMD 3500+ and can't seem to get hardware acceleration working right either. My HD-DVD discs are maxing out the CPU, giving me the occassional stutter. I was able to get it working for MPEG2 HD stuff, but not HD-DVD. I've tried both 7.7 drivers and 7.8 drivers, and can't figure out if I've got a setting wrong somewhere.

digitlman

08-20-07, 10:17 AM

I have a 2600 AGP card running with an old athlon 2600xp cpu in XP and hd-dvd and bluray are accellerated perfectly, almost no CPU usage and flawless playback.
However i still dont know how to play .h264 files with acceleration, someone told me to try KMplayer so that is my next step.

My other problem is monitor detection, i am using 7.8beta CCC and i have a sanyo projector and a denon reciever with HDMI switching. i am having problems with the ati drivers detecting my DENON reciever as my monitor instead of my SANYO projector, and when it does this it automatically changes my resolution to 1024x768 instead of the 1280x720 it needs to be set to. is there a way to force windows to never detect and change my monitor? or is there a way to force it to 1280x720? it only wants to do like 800x600 or 1024x768 rez and if it does give me 1280x720 available, i choose it and it does nothing. (sort of random results on this part) I can plug my projector in directly and get it back to 1280x720 but sometimes back on the DENON it reverts. driving me nuts...

Mntneer

08-20-07, 10:22 AM

fallenturtle

08-20-07, 11:05 AM

I'm also finding that my GPU crashes and reboots sometimes during these files that play funny. Anyone else have the same thing?

mine

08-20-07, 11:20 AM

2900 pro has the same r600 core though with no UMD, not really a HTPC card.. And that is really nasty looking mine, I'd be using cyberlink in your case too! Are you by any chance watching 25/50hz material? I do not watch HD interlaced material anymore and it works the same as cyberlink for me on 720x480 29.97fps material captured over svideo and 1080i50 h264 which only supports bob deinterlacing on my HD 2400 pro. GPU usage is steady at 30-33% using auto deinterlacing, 35-37% forcing VA with 3:2 pulldown checked on SD mpeg2 and 15-20% for the HD 1080i h264 clips (only bob supported on my card at HD resolutions) I have tested. CPU usage is trivially better using cyberlink for me, less than 5% difference but it is not a factor because its still under 25% CPU with both.

Yes SD DVB/s footage @ 576i (720x576) . VA C3 is @ 99% GPU with the 2400 HD

concerning HD 2900 pro :

Very difficult to say @ the moment :

The 2900 pro is placed against the 8600 GTS (which supports H.264 DXVA).

without UVD this card simply has no chance.

so :

2900 pro with UVD : "PC inpact" and "vtr hardware "

http://www.vtr-hardware.com/news/radeon-ati-rv670-n10218.html

Best
Mine

IAM4UK

08-20-07, 11:55 AM

Hi IAM4UK!

You get PV2 activated with what FW?
Have you given it a try with 163.16? Are you under XP?
Thanks!

Sorry for the delayed reply; I've been away. I'm using Vista x86 with 162.22. PV2, or PVHD as they call it, is working brilliantly.

Andy o

08-20-07, 03:38 PM

The 2900 pro is placed against the 8600 GTS (which supports H.264 DXVA).

without UVD this card simply has no chance.

so :

2900 pro with UVD : "PC inpact" and "vtr hardware "

http://www.vtr-hardware.com/news/radeon-ati-rv670-n10218.html

Best
Mine
Definitely interesting, but I think that the the 2900pro would be up against the 8800 GTS, don't you think? Maybe the 2900GT would be at just about 200 USD closer to the 8600 GTS. But I noticed it's based on 55nm, so I wonder how it would affect heat ouput. My 8600GTS is not running very cool, but still within specs, I guess.

Nils_lars

08-20-07, 04:05 PM

thanks for the quick reply, it's the PCI-e version.

Where can the 7.9 beta drivers be found?

These are the ones that I was given the link for from Visiontek techsupport and I think there specifically designed for XP and their cards so not sure how it will work with others.

http://www.visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/7.9_XP_driver.html

digitlman

08-20-07, 05:11 PM

And you running XP? And how much memory do you have?

yes i run XP and have 1GB of ram

arfster

08-20-07, 06:00 PM

emilot

08-20-07, 06:14 PM

Demi9OD

08-20-07, 06:22 PM

I don't see anywhere to download from that link arfster.

arfster

08-20-07, 08:20 PM

Working link, hopefully:
http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&questionID=29041

These are dated 16th August and build 52185, so are really new (ATI drivers usually get released weeks after). They're a lot newer than the Visiontek 7.9s, which are build 50590.

Quick tests:

No fix for HD levels expansion.

2900 H264 HD with auto deinterlacing in CCC still selects bob. Setting the slider peramently to VA fixes this, as before, so no big deal.

Same odd (Vista?) bug as 7.8 with MPC, and a few other VMR9 apps: deinterlacing breaks. It doesn't even try, regardless of what you set anywhere, it just weaves and frame repeats=judderfest. However, good news is that this bug doesn't affect DVBviewer anymore, which is probably the only significant Vista app that still uses VMR9. I'm going to assume VMR9 in XP isn't a problem, cos nobody said it was with 7.8.

Unlike 7.8, performance is good. I think average GPU while deinterlacing is actually lower than 7.7 marginally. Clocking down my 2600xt to 2600pro ddr2 speeds (600/500), it managed the toughest 1080i mpeg2 with VA deinterlacing, while outputting to a 1080p screen.

Usual suspects are not set to 0 by default (dxva_detailenhance, trdenoise, fleshstone/colour defaults and min). Haven't checked if they fixed the bugs that makes this necessary though.

CCC GPU % thingy updates in realtime now (7.8 version you had to go to another tab and back again to refresh it).

Tried some HDDVD/Bluray discs, mpeg2, vc1 and h264. No instantly obvious problems.

Looks like SORT still defaults to 2mpixels, so >1080p screens may need it to be manually increased for HDDVD/Bluray. This may mean 2400 users don't have to change the default setting to get fullscreen on >720p screens though.

My Sapphire 2600XT still doesn't auto-downclock for power/heat saving, like the 2400 models seem to do. This may be down to settings in the Sapphire BIOS, which appear to only allow 100% speed. My Sapphire 2400pro did auto-downclock with 7.8, but I don't have it to test anymore. Possibly we'll need BIOS tools to alter this.

Overall, nothing critical wrong, but without the performance probs of 7.8 for me. However, internally apparently a lot of settings have changed names, so 2400 users may find things like mpeg2 and DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264 can no longer be used to bugfix things. Then again, who knows? Perhaps ATI actually fixed the bugs? (yes, that was sarcasm, of course they won't have).

Once we figure out what new registry settings do, and how the 2400 behaves with these, they could be the basis for new tweaked drivers.

voicecoils

08-20-07, 08:34 PM

I'm having a similar problem. I've got an AMD 3500+ and can't seem to get hardware acceleration working right either. My HD-DVD discs are maxing out the CPU, giving me the occassional stutter. I was able to get it working for MPEG2 HD stuff, but not HD-DVD. I've tried both 7.7 drivers and 7.8 drivers, and can't figure out if I've got a setting wrong somewhere.

I guess I'll try the drivers/software from the card manufactures website next. Asus in my case.

No one seams to have a fix-it-all soloution.

I did look through regedit as suggested in post #148" http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11019368&postcount=148

and did not see:
DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264
DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2
DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1
on the list. This may indicate a problem... Do you see them on yours?

Mntneer

08-20-07, 08:46 PM

I guess I'll try the drivers/software from the card manufactures website next. Asus in my case.

No one seams to have a fix-it-all soloution.

I did look through regedit as suggested in post #148" http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11019368&postcount=148

and did not see:
DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264
DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2
DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1
on the list. This may indicate a problem... Do you see them on yours?

I've not seen them in the drivers (7.8) on my XP machine. It makes no sense to me as I was under the impression CPU use would be below 30 or 40 for HD-DVD discs. I may try adding them. Problem is finding the correct place to add them as there are a number of locations within the registry that repeat the ATI entries.

I wanted to work on it this evening but I think a thunderstorm has fried my Network Switch, so now I have to spend the evening figuring out if I've got a number of bad NIC's or a bad switch.

lpphreakx06

08-20-07, 09:36 PM

I was planning on purchasing the gigatech 8500gt, but I heard the radeon HD 2900xt had built in audio coding. IS it a worth while option?

eklee

08-20-07, 10:13 PM

I still can't get broadcast 1080i MPEG2 to play nicely. Anyone seeing this problem as I am?

Windows XP MCE 2005, 1920x1080 res
Catalyst 7.8
Athlon 64 3000+, 1GB RAM
MSI 2600 PRO PCIe.
PowerDVD 7.3 Deluxe decoders.

If I set deinterlace mode to Bob/Weave/Adaptive, my CPU usage is around 20 to 30%. Motion Adaptive, it's about 40% to 50%. Vector Adaptive it's 60% to 90%. If pulldown detection is enabled, the CPU usage is consistently around 100% and I got dropped frames.

So, is there any tweaks I can try besides upgrading my CPU to X2 4400+, which I could have done so without getting this video card in the first place.

arfster

08-20-07, 10:25 PM

arfster

08-20-07, 10:28 PM

So, is there any tweaks I can try besides upgrading my CPU to X2 4400+, which I could have done so without getting this video card in the first place.

Tried the new drivers above? Might be worth adding the standard regtweaks to reduce the load on the shaders - trdenoise/dxva_detail to zero, and same with colour/fleshtone defaults/mins, then switch em off in CCC.

Rick Guynn

08-20-07, 10:53 PM

arfster

08-20-07, 11:07 PM

About this 'HD levels expansion'. Am I misunderstanding something? I test my system with DVE-HD, and on the PLUGE test (Chapter 1), that -4% bar is clearly not the same as the background, which is video black. That leads me to believe that there is no signal expansion going on. Otherwise, those two would be the same as video black (16) would now be 0, and everything below it (i.e. -4%) would also read as zero, so they would look the same. So either I am misunderstanding something, or I don't have any expansion going on.

BTW, I am running Sapphire 2600XT GDDR3, WinXP, Cat 7.8. PDVD 7.3 2911.

Interesting - have you got HD acceleration on? Might also be a result of the mode PDVD uses for XP HDDVD/Bluray playback. Perhaps also it won't expand if there is <16 detail already.

Anyway, I got an email back from ATI, and they say HD levels expansion is both correct and intended. Idiotic.

Sarvatt

08-20-07, 11:16 PM

New drivers out at support.ati.com:

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894

They are build 52185, well ahead of the visiontek "7.9" version. Past officials were:

7.8 50974
7.7 49713,
7.6 48646.

Looks like these are about the real 7.9s, more or less.

They include the AVIVO mpeg2 codec, same version as 7.8. The ones Visiontek have are a few months newer.

Visiontek vista 7.9's were actually 51484, just the inf and catalog files were from 50590 for some reason. Not that it matters though! :D Once again I'm eagerly awaiting being able to try the drivers out but I don't doubt theres no fixes after all this time :D No interesting new reg keys that I can find in 7.9 vs 7.8 :( ATI finally got back to me on my mpeg2 acceleration ticket from july, asking me to provide a program to survey what levels are available so they can verify that those are the only ones available... that dxva2 info program was pretty much a code sample straight out of the directx SDK too! :lol:

edit: older video acceleration dll in these, same one from 7.8. It's obvious these are just for game fixes so not going to waste hours testing everything like usual again :D these 7.9 betas are 8.401.1.0000 and visiontek ones were 8.410.0.0000 with most of the files having newer versions on the latter :( dxva2 and deinterlacing options available to a hd 2400 are still absolutely pathetic. Also noticed that forcing bob in CCC only allows weave to directshow, available deinterlacing modes are the same for both here (VideoProcProgressiveDevice) whereas if you pick auto VideoProcBobDevice is available among the other ones.

gtgray

08-21-07, 12:17 AM

I installed the Visiontek 2600 pro.. HP Pavilion X2 5000+ MCE2005.. in place of a 7600GT. I have an ATI 650 theater card in the box and 2 Gig of ram. On board nic and onbard audio disabled.

This card firmware/drivers seems like quite a mess. I don't know where to begin to troublesshoot this. You would think this card should dp o simple SD mpeg cleanly, it was never an issue with the Nvidia card.. I have the deinterlacing set to highest level for what it is worth. With all the tearing and stuttering how can you really tell what the deinterlacing is really doing. It is watchable but a major disappointment so far.

I just tried the drivers installed the 8.4 whatever... supposedly 7.9 from the BIOSHOCK hotfix. After the install it still says 7.8... I get a lot of flickering and tearing in mpeg playback both with SD and at ATSC resolutions of 720P and 1080I sources. Even get some lines occasionally on the desktop. HD DVD playback looks fine but PowerDVD says it is not accelerated even though the CCC panel is set to accelerate Windows Media. CPU utiliziation is around 50% with VC1.

I have an HDMI cable and the DVI adapter using the ATI audio and removed my DD Live card.

Running 1920x1080P 60HZ to an HP DLP. I tried to set it to 24P and the desktop grew bizarrely big. The Nvidia did not do anything weird when the I set it to 24P.

I can eliminate underscan with the scaling options but why should I have to do that? I notice the desktop text is much fuzzier than the Nvidia which required no special setting. Plugged it in got a corner to corner desktop with 1 to 1 mapping.
Do I have a bad card, need a bios upgrade (date is 6/29). I don't really relish a lot of registry hacking.

I see above the mention of a later mpeg deccoder with the Visionteck stuff. Any ideas how to just get that out of the Vistiontek stuff with doing their driver install. I know I should be seeing 7.9 as I had 7.8 before the BIOSHOCK Hot fix.. The CCC panel appears different.

Where do I start to sort this out?

I also tried overclock autotune and it did not raise the clocks at all. If I try to raise them manually they won't move.
I turned down all the 3d settings to the lowest level as I don't game.

mine

08-21-07, 12:22 AM

Sarvatt

08-21-07, 01:08 AM

Hmmmm, I take that back.. 1080i mpeg2 is working for me without dxva_nohddecode in the registry on 7.9 ATI betas using the ATI Mpeg Decoder filter only now, but the CPU usage is a little too high for my liking. I have a feeling that the CPU usage is as low as it is going to get until they get to working on enabling UVD mpeg2, and it is the same as it was with dxva1 mode C level acceleration on a 6600gt in the same system. Even if it is just switching between bob/weave from flags that is enough for me for HD material, vector deinterlacing is working perfect for SD material where I actually notice it. With the test clip I am using (http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/HDTV/LingerieBowl.ts) I was getting maxed out GPU loads and crappy decoding performance with horrible deinterlacing on every previous driver, but the CPU load is the same and the GPU load is down to 20% with functional deinterlacing now. This clip is pretty stressful because there are glitches in the stream that always spiked the GPU load to 100% even with software decoding and hardware deinterlacing, but it doesn't go above 40% now. Mpeg2 GPU loads do not go over 40% for me now in these drivers on anything I have tried actually! I still have to check a 1080p24 mpeg2 clip I used before which was playing back at 48hz before to see how it handles it though, didn't have time to check it. No other codec is working right for me though, without dxva_nohddecode everything except the ati codec just gives a black or green screen as before. This is on a Sapphire HD 2400 Pro over VGA on vista x86 using EVR.

RussKingUK

08-21-07, 03:14 AM

No other codec is working right for me though, without dxva_nohddecode everything except the ati codec just gives a black or green screen as before. This is on a Sapphire HD 2400 Pro over VGA on vista x86 using EVR.

You have exactly the same setup as me "Sapphire HD 2400 Pro over VGA on vista x86 using EVR". I'll install this Bioshock (7.9) update and see what happens. I don't normaly get a green/black screen though. Well, only with 1080p x264 mkv's with HA enabled.

indieke2

08-21-07, 03:30 AM

I screwed up yesterday, so I have to install the drivers again!

Now a simple question!

Would I better install the new 7.9 driver, or reinstall the 7.6 fixed that was posted here?

I am under XP and have a Sapphire 2400 pro and play all kind of files also Mpeg 2 1080 i.

I am tired of playing around with this, if this continues I will go back to Nvidia!

For the guys, where the HW acceleration do not work, I have noticed, it works with every driver, but not with every version of PWDVD!!! I had an ultra from March, where it did not work, but the full 2911 installation is fine. I did not install the 2 latest patches, who did not gave any benefit, but just put the fullscreen in 4/3.

Andy o

08-21-07, 03:42 AM

Solution to 7.8 or 7.9 problems with PDVD not filling the screen with HDDVD/Bluray playback: set VForceMaxResSize to a higher value under umd\dxva, or under the root 0000 or 0001 in XP (depending on which output socket you're using). It refers to the number of pixels in use, so have it >2.25 million for 1080p screens, >4 million for 2560*1600. If you set it zero there's no limit, but probably better to play safe and just set it to a large value.

By default it seems to allow up to around 1080p output, maybe less with the 2400. This replaces sortoverridevidsize which was used for the same purpose in 7.7 and before.
Did you try this yourself on a 1080p screen? It was suggested by Sarvatt a while back, and I tried it with 7.8 and it didn't work at all. I set it to some numbers ranging from 2 to 5 million and nothing, still the same max window/picture size.

Anyway, I got an email back from ATI, and they say HD levels expansion is both correct and intended. Idiotic.
I was gonna suggest something like that actually, that they intended it and it was no error. After all, I still have it on my x1900GT. But then they "fixed" it for SD content didn't they? So I kept it shut.

Anyway, I know it's an annoyance and ATI don't know what they're doing since they did fix it for SD, but is it such a big deal for HTPCs? I mean I would understand for standalone players or something, but with a PC if you calibrate your display so gray-16 is black and gray-235 is white, you will lose the dark detail and blow whites in everything else that is not video-related with that PC. I think it makes more sense to calibrate only the overlay for gray-16 to black and gray-235 to white, than calibrating your display. That's actually what I'm doing with the Nvidia card. And as I said before, I've yet to see any posterization due to changes like these.

voicecoils

08-21-07, 04:06 AM

HW acceleration success!

I uninstalled PDVD and the ATI display drivers & control centre and did the following:

*First downloaded and installed: ati_8.401.1_bioshock_hotfix_xp
*Restarted
*Installed PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra (anyone know how to find the exact version number? I think I have build 2911)
*Restarted
*Tried a decrypted HD-DVD from my hard drive, <30% CPU utilization, yay!

HD-DVD's do not play correctly in non-full screen mode however. Attached is a screen shot of what I'm seeing, a garbled green flashy mess. Anyone know the fix for this?

Thanks everyone for tips on how to get things going for me!

voicecoils

08-21-07, 04:09 AM

attachment for above post

roosterx

08-21-07, 07:37 AM

This is maybe a bit off topic but i need to know if i am the only one with these issues.

First off i've been trying to get HW acc on h264, vc1 and mpeg 2 with mixed results, so i gave that up, and runs like most of you with some registry hacks and ati mpeg 2 codec + ffdshow SW decode of all other material, since all other things makes the computer unstable, and even tried coreavc 1.5 and that works fine for so - so long, before picture gets 'an overlay of garble'(much like one picture i saw somewhere of these ati cards with capacitors that aint working - but for me it does not fill whole screen, just partially and even goes away after a second or something)

Now to my real problem/worry - why can't i even start any version of 3dmark without computer freeze and then automaticly reboot(after half a minute freeze), any 3d game that i have tried do work, and i also have latest patches + DirectX on WinXP pro.

Can this be a compatibility problem between Motherboard chipset maybe?
Is anyone else having similar problems on nforce chipsets?

I believe i have tried everyting..I have even RMA'd my first Asus EAH 2600XT GDDR3..

My HTPC hw is:

Asus EAH 2600XT (PCI-e)
Asus A8N-sli premium (latest 1303 bios - nforce 4-sli)
2x 1Gb Corsair TWINX cl2 - 1T
X2 3800+ with Cool&Quiet enable
Coolermaster 500W psu

+++

tobytwo

08-21-07, 08:55 AM

roosterx Try running 3DMark from the command line and type the following C:\Program Files\Futuremark\3DMark06\3DMark06.exe" -nosysteminfo. That should fix it!

Back to topic, does anyone have 5.1 AC3 audio working over the HDMI output into an HDMI 1.2 or higher receiver. I am only ever able to get 2 channel PCM. It will will not run any compressed 5.1 audio format from standard or high definition DVDs using PowerDVD Ultra (latest build) tried 7.7 and 7.8. I've seen several users who have posted here with this problem. I know optical or coaxial digital works fine, as does analogue.

I also had a very old pre-release driver, and strangely, with this I could get 5.1 audio over HDMI to be picked up by my receiver, but only when a non-hdcp display device was also connected to the system as a secondary display! So my theory is there are problems with the HDCP handshake and multichannel audio. Video appears to work fine though.

Please note, this is only when audio is sent over the HDMI connection. I am using Windows XP Media Center. Have tried 3 receivers, including a Denon and the latest Onkyo with the same results.

Thanks,

Toby

arfster

08-21-07, 11:21 AM

Did you try this yourself on a 1080p screen?

Yeah, it works :-)

Anyway, I know it's an annoyance and ATI don't know what they're doing since they did fix it for SD, but is it such a big deal for HTPCs?

It is if your HDTV clips <8, like a lot do :-( Also, it means switching calbration between SD and HD, which is just a pita.

arfster

08-21-07, 11:24 AM

Can this be a compatibility problem between Motherboard chipset maybe?

That's my best guess too - there are just too many weird random problems with these cards. That or some hardware component failure.

mine

08-21-07, 11:47 AM

Now to my real problem/worry - why can't i even start any version of 3dmark without computer freeze and then automaticly reboot(after half a minute freeze), any 3d game that i have tried do work, and i also have latest patches + DirectX on WinXP pro.

+++

you need a 3D mark fix for ATI 2xxx cards . sorry for the missing link..
you may try to google for it.

best
m

DooMer_MP3

08-21-07, 11:48 AM

Hi all,
I've been reading this thread a bit. I'd like to purchase one of these cards for my HTPC. I was leaning towards the 2400XT, specifically this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102699

However, I noticed in the reviews that the drivers and/or BIOS have an issue when trying to install new drivers. Can anyone give me a brief rundown on this? From what I'm seeing in this thread, its that the BIOS or drivers don't recognize the card properly. I'm leery of ordering one until I know exactly whats going on. Some of those reviews on Newegg say the card needs to be sent in to manufacturer to get re-flashed?

Anyhow, what do people recommend here? 2400Pro, 2400XT, or 2600Pro? I want fanless cooling.

Thanks!

DooMer_MP3

08-21-07, 11:54 AM

Also, I should mention - I'm using MCE 2005. If I purchase a Blu-Ray burner in the future, will MCE 2005 be able to decode these? I'd rather not have to use PowerDVD. Also, will this card automatically pick up the slack on my 720p/1080i content that my onboard x300 struggles with?

eklee

08-21-07, 11:55 AM

Tried the new drivers above? Might be worth adding the standard regtweaks to reduce the load on the shaders - trdenoise/dxva_detail to zero, and same with colour/fleshtone defaults/mins, then switch em off in CCC.

Couldn't find those registry keys. Do they exist for 2600PRO in Windows XP?

arfster

08-21-07, 12:13 PM

Couldn't find those registry keys. Do they exist for 2600PRO in Windows XP?

Trdenoise and dxva_detailenhance don't exist by default on any install, you have to add them (i think dwords in XP? reboot needed also). They're like a number of other ATI keys which default to 1 (aka on) when they don't exist in the registry - the infamous dxva_nohddecode is another of these, although that doesn't affect 2600s.

ColorVibrance_DE_MIN and ColorVibrance_DEF should exist already though, and default is 25 on the 2600. Set both to zero, cos they cause problems. You can do the same with Fleshtone_DE_MIN and Fleshtone_DEF. Then reboot for the new defaults to take hold, goto CCC, advanced color, hit default and the sliders actually go to zero now (before these regtweaks they go to 25 when default is hit, or they're turned off). Then turn em off, and OK.

With some drivers (or perhaps XP?) these options don't seem to appear in CCC though, in which case you should manually set the registry settings ColorVibrance and Fleshtone to 30 00 (aka zero).

Hopefully at some point this will be fixed, I haven't tested with 7.8/7.9 but I'd be surprised if they had sorted it.

Demi9OD

08-21-07, 12:26 PM

TRDenoise and dxva_detailenhance are both strings in XP.

butters2006

08-21-07, 01:25 PM

I think the consensus is that these cards (more specifically their software/drivers) are not ready for prime time. I have the 2600xt but not recommend it unless you like playing around with your registry settings.

Hi all,
I've been reading this thread a bit. I'd like to purchase one of these cards for my HTPC. I was leaning towards the 2400XT, specifically this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102699

However, I noticed in the reviews that the drivers and/or BIOS have an issue when trying to install new drivers. Can anyone give me a brief rundown on this? From what I'm seeing in this thread, its that the BIOS or drivers don't recognize the card properly. I'm leery of ordering one until I know exactly whats going on. Some of those reviews on Newegg say the card needs to be sent in to manufacturer to get re-flashed?

Anyhow, what do people recommend here? 2400Pro, 2400XT, or 2600Pro? I want fanless cooling.

Thanks!

dildano

08-21-07, 01:51 PM

HD-DVD's do not play correctly in non-full screen mode however. Attached is a screen shot of what I'm seeing, a garbled green flashy mess. Anyone know the fix for this?
Voicecoils, do you by any chance have an MSI card? The picture you posted looks exactly like what I was getting on both an MSI RX2600XT and an RX2600PRO. Here's the deal: If you use the MSI drivers from their website, you can play HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays in non-full-screen-mode without corruption, however you won't be able to adjust for any underscan on your HDTV (the old MSI drivers don't have the slider). I've got a 1080p LCD and not being able to adjust for the underscanning was a dealbreaker for me, so I have a Sapphire 2600XT on the way now. If you do want to use the latest ATI drivers, then you'll always have to run PDVD in full-screen, and you'll have to hope that your machine doesn't crash before you can get it into full-screen.

roosterx

08-21-07, 02:15 PM

roosterx Try running 3DMark from the command line and type the following C:\Program Files\Futuremark\3DMark06\3DMark06.exe" -nosysteminfo. That should fix it!

This did actually work, thank you very much. :)
Now i am only curious of why this worked..

however you won't be able to adjust for any underscan on your HDTV (the old MSI drivers don't have the slider)

If i understand the problem right is the solution a registry entry, or the really easy way, use an executable that fixes this in a click, i don't remember where i read about this when me myself got this problem, but a google for 'FixMyUnderscan.exe' size - 1 318 971 bytes should fix the underscan problems.

What i really can't understand is why Ati did have underscan as a default setting for 1080p resolution, though now that they included this as a part of CCC settings it's more like a bonus for those who bought a LCD without support for 1:1 pixelmapping.

If you can't find this file, i would gladly send it to you.

dildano

08-21-07, 02:58 PM

If i understand the problem right is the solution a registry entry, or the really easy way, use an executable that fixes this in a click, i don't remember where i read about this when me myself got this problem, but a google for 'FixMyUnderscan.exe' size - 1 318 971 bytes should fix the underscan problems.
Very interesting! A quick Google search reveals that FixMyUnderscan.exe doesn't work with Vista32, but there is a registry hack (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/printthread.php?t=729041&page=6&pp=30) to accomplish the same thing. I'll try it out tonight, and let you know how it goes.

As a side note, it still drives me up the wall that I can't use the regular ATI drivers with the MSI cards. Will probably still switch to the Sapphire card...

KeithHurst

08-21-07, 04:30 PM

arfster

08-21-07, 05:34 PM

The vforce ones only exist if you put them there - the sort ones only existed in 7.7 and earlier.

For XP, look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video

Under there, you have lots of entries, each representing a particular card. To find yours, browse through all until you find one with tons of entries under its 0000 and 0001 keys (most are empty or semi-empty). In theory, there should only be one that's full of keys.

Then, make a new key called VForceMaxResSize under 0000 and 0001 (each one represents one socket, so just do both unless you know which is which), and set it to 2500000 (2.5 million). Only problem is I'm not sure whether it's a string or dword in XP, since I use Vista - try a string first. Then reboot, and see if it works.....

Sarvatt

08-21-07, 06:45 PM

I don't normaly get a green/black screen though.

Do you use dxva_nohddecode on yours though? I only got that problem you were quoting without it using the MS decoder at HD resolutions in pre 7.9 beta drivers, cyberlink played fine but it only used software decoding in YUY2 colorspace which doesn't have anything more than bob and weave available on hd 2400 pro at HD resolutions and only adaptive level available for SD resolutions for directshow :( You need a decoder that can interact directly with ati's deinterlacing and not one that picks its options through directshow because these are the only ones the crappy drivers enumerate..

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/1706/deintos8.jpg

voicecoils

08-21-07, 06:53 PM

Voicecoils, do you by any chance have an MSI card? The picture you posted looks exactly like what I was getting on both an MSI RX2600XT and an RX2600PRO.

If you do want to use the latest ATI drivers, then you'll always have to run PDVD in full-screen, and you'll have to hope that your machine doesn't crash before you can get it into full-screen.

Mine's an ASUS EAH2400Pro. But I'm experiencing what your talking about. I'm using the latest ati website drivers and it works fine in full screen, if the computer doesn't crash before it gets there. If I could just get PDVD to automatically start in full screen...:rolleyes:

Sereny

08-21-07, 06:53 PM

Hi,

I bought a Club3D HD2400 AGP for my older K7S5A Athlon XP 1600+ Mobo/CPU, using WinXP SP2 pro.

However, I am not able to get acceleration for h.264 content at all. I've tried with .TS caps and .mkv encodes. Mpeg2 works in some combinations.

PowerDVD gives this info while playing such a file:
Video Accelerator: DirectX VA (not in use)
It does write '(in use)' when playing mpeg2.

Playing it via Graphedit (to rule out vobsub or other filters which could possibly be problematic) or mpc also results in no acceleration.

I've tried this with 7.6 (arfster edition), 7.7, 7.8, 7.9 beta drivers and powerdvd 2911 and newer on a fresh winXP SP2. Modifications to .inf files were necessary as the drivers otherwise would not detect the card (vendor 94C4).
All necessary registry keys were set (especially DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264), taken from mine's guide: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11019368&postcount=148

This is getting frustrating. Does someone of the HD2400 AGP owners have a definitely working .TS/mkv h.264 clip? If yes, which OS, catalyst version and powerDVD version do you use. Also, which CPU do you have? My AthlonXP 1600+ does not have much of sse2/3, which could possibly be related.

If someone needs more information about this piece of AGP hardware, I can provide.

jkcheng122

08-21-07, 07:02 PM

This is getting frustrating. Does someone of the HD2400 AGP owners have a definitely working .TS/mkv h.264 clip? If yes, which OS, catalyst version and powerDVD version do you use. Also, which CPU do you have? My AthlonXP 1600+ does not have much of sse2/3, which could possibly be related.

If someone needs more information about this piece of AGP hardware, I can provide.

.ts and .mkv files from what i understand are x264 rather than h264. i dont think powerdvd even plays those file formats. as far as i know there isn't a way yet to use hardware acceleration on .ts and .mkv files. you need a much faster cpu, prob 2.6GHz or higher, to play 1080p video smoothly.

Sereny

08-21-07, 07:09 PM

.ts and .mkv files from what i understand are x264 rather than h264. i dont think powerdvd even plays those file formats. as far as i know there isn't a way yet to use hardware acceleration on .ts and .mkv files. you need a much faster cpu, prob 2.6GHz or higher, to play 1080p video smoothly.

Wow, fast reply :)

x264 and h264 are basically the same. One is a short BBC sample I frequently use to test is called BBC.HD.Robin.Hood.S01E03.H.264.1080MBAFF.AC3.5.1-BBC.sample.ts. [note: I hope this does not go against board rules]
It does play in Cyberlink, however very slow with dropouts, ie not accellerated.
I know for sure that this clip does work flawlessly on some pci-e cards.

The Cyberlink Codec in conjunction with HD2x00 can generally be used to watch DVB-S2 (which uses h264), if I remember correcty, fellow board user mine does this.
However, my AGP card does not seem to be able to do this.

Sarvatt

08-21-07, 07:12 PM

Do you have .net 3.0 installed? I am not sure if PowerDVD uses EVR in XP or not but .net 3 (or manually registering dxva2 and evr dlls) is needed for EVR. It's very possible SSE2 is required though as I know nvidia's purevideo needs SSE2 for h264 acceleration or at least did when I was in that situation, cyberlinks codec refused to use DXVA when it loaded cl264sse.dll instead of cl264sse2.dll :( Can you run this and post a screenshot of the main screen if you have .net 3.0 and VC2005sp1 runtimes installed?

http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/DXVAChecker_1200.zip

edit: Also, do you have the latest august 2007 DX9 runtime installed?

Sarvatt

08-21-07, 07:15 PM

Wow, fast reply :)

x264 and h264 are basically the same. One is a short BBC sample I frequently use to test is called BBC.HD.Robin.Hood.S01E03.H.264.1080MBAFF.AC3.5.1-BBC.sample.ts. [note: I hope this does not go against board rules]
It does play in Cyberlink, however very slow with dropouts, ie not accellerated.
I know for sure that this clip does work flawlessly on some pci-e cards.

The Cyberlink Codec in conjunction with HD2x00 can generally be used to watch DVB-S2 (which uses h264), if I remember correcty, fellow board user mine does this.
However, my AGP card does not seem to be able to do this.

Ahh interlaced, that brings another set of variables as to what the problem could be. Do you have any progressive clips to test to start?

Sereny

08-21-07, 07:26 PM

@Sarvatt: Thanks for the fast reply. I will install dotNet3 now and run the checker tool.

I have also used progressive clips with 23,976 and 25fps, the BBC MBAFF one was just one of many.

Sereny

08-21-07, 08:09 PM

Rick Guynn

08-21-07, 08:45 PM

Interesting - have you got HD acceleration on? Might also be a result of the mode PDVD uses for XP HDDVD/Bluray playback. Perhaps also it won't expand if there is <16 detail already.

Anyway, I got an email back from ATI, and they say HD levels expansion is both correct and intended. Idiotic.
Yes, everything is working great. I only have HDDVD at the moment. I am currently using a full-build install of 7.3 2911, and 7.8. I previously was using a pathced install of 2911 and 7.6. With that setup, I was getting some weird glitches, like the movie sometimes crashing the system unless I waited for the feature to start before going full screen. But now, everything is pretty much perfect. Very smooth and very pretty.

When I saw the comments about levels expansion, I decided to check it out. I boosted brightness to make the blacks come out and the -4% bar was definitely darker than the background. I was pretty sure this would be the case since I set it up not long ago and thought it was then.

gvagolf

08-21-07, 09:15 PM

Hello. I have a 2600 Pro AGP with 512 MB of ram on the way and wanted to ensure I have everything ready for its arrival. I have a P4 3.2Ghz system with 1 GB of ram and currently using the built in audio from ASUS (which only gives me analog in Vista).

Is anyone having problems with using the HD 2600 as the audio source? This would be a nice addition as I can only get anolog sound in Vista.

Did the DVI to HDMI dongle come with the video card or will I need to get that seperately? If so will a standard DVI to HDMI cable work or will it not include the sound.

Lastly, I have the 7.8 version drivers for Vista 32 downloaded from AMD. I have read about version 7.9 but have had some difficulty finding them.

Is there anything else I should need?

I forgot to mention that I have the Xbox 360 HDVD drive and PowerDVD Ultra 7.3.

Thanks in advance.

dildano

08-21-07, 09:48 PM

Very interesting! A quick Google search reveals that FixMyUnderscan.exe doesn't work with Vista32, but there is a registry hack (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/printthread.php?t=729041&page=6&pp=30) to accomplish the same thing. I'll try it out tonight, and let you know how it goes.
Unfortunately, the registry hack did not solve the underscan problem with my MSI RX2600PRO. I'm guessing that the registry key only works with the X1000 series cards, but who knows? Guess I'll definitely switch to the Sapphire...

mine

08-22-07, 12:20 AM

Do you have .net 3.0 installed? I am not sure if PowerDVD uses EVR in XP or not but .net 3 (or manually registering dxva2 and evr dlls) is needed for EVR. It's very possible SSE2 is required though as
http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/DXVAChecker_1200.zip

edit: Also, do you have the latest august 2007 DX9 runtime installed?

Hi
so far under XP no luck with EVR and PDVD

tested : EVR works with MPC (casimir edition)
and DVBViewer GE (as player)

more testing needed

only benefit under XP I found on the fly was a slightly reduced judder of the alltime dvb/s orgasmic judderqueensisters NVidia /7600/ 8600 GT .....:rolleyes:

best
mine

Mntneer

08-22-07, 01:22 AM

Finally success! Like voicecoils, I uninstalled the 7.8 drivers, uninstalled PDVD, did a cleaning of the registry, installed the new "hot fix" drivers mentioned a couple pages back, reinstalled PowerDVD and applied a few of the registry tweaks. Rebooting along the way.

Jutter free playback on all my HD-DVD titles, with CPU use down around 30-40. HW Acceleration on my MPEG2 .TS files. HW Acceleration on my DVD's. I also thought the tweaks arfster mentioned about Colorvibrance and Fleshtone helped with the picture quality of my DVD's. Many thanks to him and everyone else that has researched these cards and drivers to the point that it greatly helps the rest of us.

Now if I can just get a new NIC to replace my fried one I can test playing back my HD-DVD's and TS files over my network.

BTW. I think a big part of the problem I was having was I was running an older version of PDVD.

Nils_lars

08-22-07, 01:30 AM

Wow, fast reply :)

x264 and h264 are basically the same. One is a short BBC sample I frequently use to test is called BBC.HD.Robin.Hood.S01E03.H.264.1080MBAFF.AC3.5.1-BBC.sample.ts. [note: I hope this does not go against board rules]
It does play in Cyberlink, however very slow with dropouts, ie not accellerated.
I know for sure that this clip does work flawlessly on some pci-e cards.

The Cyberlink Codec in conjunction with HD2x00 can generally be used to watch DVB-S2 (which uses h264), if I remember correcty, fellow board user mine does this.
However, my AGP card does not seem to be able to do this.

I am running a 2600pro AGP with 7.9 drivers on a Athlon 2800 and was having similar problems and it finnaly got acclerated from patching version 7.3 2911 of Powerdvd up to 3104 and then I got acceleration and my CPU went from 100% to 15% and GPU runs at 30-40% at 44C.

I had a heck of a time clearing old versions of Powerdvd and finally went with a format/reinstall and that worked.

roosterx

08-22-07, 02:14 AM

Unfortunately, the registry hack did not solve the underscan problem with my MSI RX2600PRO. I'm guessing that the registry key only works with the X1000 series cards, but who knows? Guess I'll definitely switch to the Sapphire...

It did work for me and my x2600xt when i tried to install older ati official drivers to get the card more stable, but this was under winxp.

voicecoils

08-22-07, 04:09 AM

is there a consolidated post with all the registry tweaks for XP? I've been searching through the thread but it's easy to get lost, it's so long!

Also, does anyone know if there is a DWORD that could be used to get video to be stretched for Constant Image Height purposes (anamorphic horizontal expansion lens on my projector)?

A registry tweak that would stretch VC-1 video to go from say 1920x1080 to 1920x1440?

voicecoils

08-22-07, 04:10 AM

great! glad to hear you've got things working. can you play hw accelerated hd-dvd's in windowed (non-fullscreen) mode for more then a few min with out things getting garbled or crashing?

alfonxs

08-22-07, 04:39 AM

I am running a 2600pro AGP with 7.9 drivers on a Athlon 2800 and was having similar problems and it finnaly got acclerated from patching version 7.3 2911 of Powerdvd up to 3104 and then I got acceleration and my CPU went from 100% to 15% and GPU runs at 30-40% at 44C.

I had a heck of a time clearing old versions of Powerdvd and finally went with a format/reinstall and that worked.

I have PDVD 2911 and my 2400 Pro AGP is HW-accelerated. The problem for Sereny is somewhere else, I guess.

My Config:

Gecube 2400 Pro
XP SP2
Catalyst 7.7 with Reghacks
PDVD 7.3.2911
DVBViewer Pro with Overlay or VMR7/9 (doesn't matter)

Graphedit is ok with HW-acc. too.

I can give further details when I'm back home in a few hours.

Sarvatt

08-22-07, 05:15 AM

Installed dotNet3 and the mentioned sp1, did a reboot, acceleration stays unchanged.

Screenshots of DXVAChecker are attached. Perhaps you can see something in them, I can only guess, without something to compare them to.

It is getting late here, so I'll get back here after a few hours of sleep.

Interesting!! So deinterlacing support is either much better on XP, or it is a difference between the PCI-E and AGP versions as your's is much better than mine. Your screenshot of the acceleration capabilities is odd, why only 720p for WMV postprocessing for instance? No resolutions reported for mpeg2 or h264 is ok, readme said it could do that with XP and it wouldn't be there at all if there was no support. Here are what the HD 2400 pro PCI-E acceleration capabilities look like with 7.9 hotfix drivers and no registry tweaks

http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/4750/dxva2rp9.jpg

I'm at a loss towards the fix though.. sounds more like a problem with cyberlink since it persists through other drivers, but it could be something else. you also could try those visiontek 7.9 betas that arfster linked a few pages ago made for AGP cards as they have newer acceleration dll's.

TheFranchise

08-22-07, 05:16 AM

Hmmmm, I take that back.. 1080i mpeg2 is working for me without dxva_nohddecode in the registry on 7.9 ATI betas using the ATI Mpeg Decoder filter only now, but the CPU usage is a little too high for my liking.

With the test clip I am using (http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/HDTV/LingerieBowl.ts) I was getting maxed out GPU loads and crappy decoding performance with horrible deinterlacing on every previous driver, but the CPU load is the same and the GPU load is down to 20% with functional deinterlacing now. This clip is pretty stressful because there are glitches in the stream that always spiked the GPU load to 100% even with software decoding and hardware deinterlacing, but it doesn't go above 40% now. Mpeg2 GPU loads do not go over 40% for me now in these drivers on anything I have tried actually!

I've been reading this thread the past few days, and this and Mtneers's mpeg2.ts mention was the news I was hoping for since my main HTPC use is for OTA ATSC.

For comparison, I played that clip on a 1.8 or so ghz e2140 with an underclocked-at-half-speed-because-it-overheated-and-is-now-broken 7600gt, and VLC player plays it fine with the cpu around 25% with occasional spikes to 35%, and then add 10-15% to that when turning the various built-in VLC deinterlacings on. The infamous "The Greatest Game Ever Played" 1080p trailer is around 45%, maxing about 60%.

Of surprise to me is the fairly small difference I saw playing clips on an e2140 @ 1.6-1.8ghz and an e6300 @ 2.8-3.0ghz. Good news for people who might otherwise think they need a top-line cpu for this stuff. Even the e2140 is overkill if I didn't plan on encoding other files while watching 1080i ATSC.

This is a thanks post for everyone. I already had a 2400pro on order since I knew if ATI can't get hardware acceleration/decoding working right on these things that someone here probably could. This thread and some faith are the main reasons I didn't buy an 8500GT or 7600GT.

KeithHurst

08-22-07, 07:27 AM

The vforce ones only exist if you put them there - the sort ones only existed in 7.7 and earlier.

For XP, look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video... ..

Arf,

many thanks for this I will try when I get home later.

Keith

Mntneer

08-22-07, 09:07 AM

great! glad to hear you've got things working. can you play hw accelerated hd-dvd's in windowed (non-fullscreen) mode for more then a few min with out things getting garbled or crashing?

I've not noticed any corruption yet. Though with 300, if I tried switching monitors while PDVD was running I'd get some screw ups. And I don't think PDVD likes me using the Media Center remote that much, because if I tried going to fast with the remote (going to menus, jumping to scenes, etc.) I'd get some brief stuttering and once I got a crash.

Sereny

08-22-07, 09:09 AM

I'm at a loss towards the fix though.. sounds more like a problem with cyberlink since it persists through other drivers, but it could be something else. you also could try those visiontek 7.9 betas that arfster linked a few pages ago made for AGP cards as they have newer acceleration dll's.

I installed Visionteks 7.9 AGP drivers on a fresh WinXP SP2, followed by powerdvd 2911, followed by patch to 3104 after having tested 2911.

The only thing which I could get to accellerate is a SD DVB-S mpeg2 TS from a TV station. GPU goes up to 50% then, I guess with Vector adaptive deinterlacing.

However, HDTV mpeg2 streams do not get accelerated, as well as anything h264. I also tested LingerieBowl.ts, and I'm running out of ideas. Perhaps its time to test this card in another computer.

/edit: I just put the card into another computer (intel celeron 2.8 something), using my standard procedure, and h264 just worked out of the box , mpeg2 not as of yet.
So it has either something to do with my athlon-mobo and its drivers or there really is a requirement for sse2.

Mntneer

08-22-07, 09:10 AM

I've been reading this thread the past few days, and this and Mtneers's mpeg2.ts mention was the news I was hoping for since my main HTPC use is for OTA ATSC.

For comparison, I played that clip on a 1.8 or so ghz e2140 with an underclocked-at-half-speed-because-it-overheated-and-is-now-broken 7600gt, and VLC player plays it fine with the cpu around 25% with occasional spikes to 35%, and then add 10-15% to that when turning the various built-in VLC deinterlacings on. The infamous "The Greatest Game Ever Played" 1080p trailer is around 45%, maxing about 60%.

Of surprise to me is the fairly small difference I saw playing clips on an e2140 @ 1.6-1.8ghz and an e6300 @ 2.8-3.0ghz. Good news for people who might otherwise think they need a top-line cpu for this stuff. Even the e2140 is overkill if I didn't plan on encoding other files while watching 1080i ATSC.

This is a thanks post for everyone. I already had a 2400pro on order since I knew if ATI can't get hardware acceleration/decoding working right on these things that someone here probably could. This thread and some faith are the main reasons I didn't buy an 8500GT or 7600GT.

I've got 2 1.8Ghz Pentium machines in the house that I use as HTPC's as well, and the success I've had with the 2600XT in my bedroom, makes me want to try an AGP version for those machines now as well. On both of those I've never had trouble playing TS files I recorded over the air, or captured from my cable box via firewire (for example, I've watched TNT's The Company that way), but I'd also like to store my HD-DVD's on a media server, like I do many of my favorite DVD's, and then watch them anywhere in the house.

arfster

08-22-07, 11:40 AM

When I saw the comments about levels expansion, I decided to check it out. I boosted brightness to make the blacks come out and the -4% bar was definitely darker than the background. I was pretty sure this would be the case since I set it up not long ago and thought it was then.

OK, here's a possible explanation, posted by Andy O:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11377727&postcount=2701
---------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: So a bit more testing made me realize that the reason why "normal quality" shows no levels expansion, is that the latest ATI drivers don't do expansion for SD content, but they do for HD content. And this "normal" quality setting is actually downsampling to SD quality, as far as I can tell. Looks horrible, compared to HD, that is. So the no levels expansion thing should be a unintentional by-product of them doing that. In any case, if SD quality in HD video is "normal" quality for Cyberlink, we probably should question their video quality standards."
---------------------------------------------------------

He's in XP like you. I use Vista, with the exact same Sapphire DDR3 2600XT as you - no change between PDVD normal/best settings though.

Sarvatt

08-22-07, 12:48 PM

I installed Visionteks 7.9 AGP drivers on a fresh WinXP SP2, followed by powerdvd 2911, followed by patch to 3104 after having tested 2911.

The only thing which I could get to accellerate is a SD DVB-S mpeg2 TS from a TV station. GPU goes up to 50% then, I guess with Vector adaptive deinterlacing.

However, HDTV mpeg2 streams do not get accelerated, as well as anything h264. I also tested LingerieBowl.ts, and I'm running out of ideas. Perhaps its time to test this card in another computer.

/edit: I just put the card into another computer (intel celeron 2.8 something), using my standard procedure, and h264 just worked out of the box , mpeg2 not as of yet.
So it has either something to do with my athlon-mobo and its drivers or there really is a requirement for sse2.

Yeah HD mpeg2 will not be accelerated without applying the DXVA_NOHDDECODE registry entry, that is normal for the 2400. I have HD mpeg2 acceleration working without it in vista ONLY with the ATI Mpeg Decoder from the avivo package, any other codec requires the registry entry and has problems with HD deinterlacing. I've waited 32 days now for a response from ATI about the MPEG2 acceleration problems on HD 2400 and they just now got back to me asking how they can determine DXVA2 capabilities available.. Not holding my breath on getting that fixed anytime soon :D You may not have the issue with the DXVA_NOHDDECODE though as it seemed to be a deinterlacing mode problem and your deinterlacing cap list would be fine in XP! It is really low acceleration level so do not be surprised by 60% CPU usage or something with DXVA working, my 6600GT was the same way but had nowhere near the deinterlacing abilites these have. Hate to say it but it does sound like a SSE2 problem that I've ran into before :(

roosterx

08-22-07, 05:55 PM

With CCC bioshock beta drivers and ati avivo mpeg2 codec, it seems every thing with a pink tone to it (like human skin can be) gets amplified so it does not look good, but not extremely much, just a little bit too much, is this the Fleshtone_DEF setting that controls this?

Im running XP pro and Fleshtone_DEF = 0.

Something i've forgotten?

millerbrad

08-22-07, 05:59 PM

Still can't get audio from both DVI-to-HDMI ports at the same time with the Bioshock hotfix...

...Back to the 7.7 tweaked drivers...

Sereny

08-22-07, 06:00 PM

Small update (still on the sse2 capable comp):

All my mpeg2 caps play in PowerDVD and directshow players. Fighting with various de-interlacing stuff is the only thing left to do.

Basically all h264 .TS caps play in powerdvd, but not in directshow players, x264/mkv not at all, yet.

When playing in directshow players, I sometimes get green junk (no picture, only screen filling flickering bars, boxes and stuff) instead of a totally black picture. CPU usage ranges are from what I would expect when playing back such content, roughly about 20-30%.

Is there some trick to directShow? :) Considering the same content h264/.TS plays basically flawless in PowerDVD.

My best hope would be that ATI pushes out some nice h264 codec. It can't be that hard, can it? Given that the card does almost all hard work ...

KeithHurst

08-22-07, 06:50 PM

Andy o

08-22-07, 09:43 PM

OK, here's a possible explanation, posted by Andy O:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11377727&postcount=2701
---------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: So a bit more testing made me realize that the reason why "normal quality" shows no levels expansion, is that the latest ATI drivers don't do expansion for SD content, but they do for HD content. And this "normal" quality setting is actually downsampling to SD quality, as far as I can tell. Looks horrible, compared to HD, that is. So the no levels expansion thing should be a unintentional by-product of them doing that. In any case, if SD quality in HD video is "normal" quality for Cyberlink, we probably should question their video quality standards."
---------------------------------------------------------

He's in XP like you. I use Vista, with the exact same Sapphire DDR3 2600XT as you - no change between PDVD normal/best settings though.

Mind you that I'm using a x1900GT on that machine, though, so no HW accel option for me. It could be Rick's problem too, but he'd have to have HW accel unticked, and his picture besides not having expansion, would look pretty much like an upscaled SD source (pretty bad for HD) so he would probably have noticed that, especially when running DVE-HD. I was suggesting that the other poster in the other thread had that because he's running the non-beta Nvidia drivers that don't allow for HW accel on XP, but Rick should be perfectly able to do so.

On the other hand, it may happen too with HW acceleration ticked. I would like to know more about this, if it's an XP thing, or a Cyberlink thing.

By the way, arfster, do you know how to manage deinterlacing options with the Nvidia 8600 cards in Vista 32? I do get deinterlacing, but I have no control whatsoever. The PowerDVD HW deinterlacing options don't seem to do much, nor differentiate from each other. I still get the 3c5 or whatever the ATI Vector thing was, and I think the other ATI options too. I get those and 3 or 4 more from Nvidia. Nothing in the Control Panel, though, and even when deinterlacing is disabled in Powerdvd, I still get it, HD 1080i/60 OTA mpeg2 runs just fine even in weave or with deinterlacing off altogether, which makes me think Nvidia is just applying auto deinterlacing. Doesn't look bad, though. Using 163.44 betas

Rick Guynn

08-22-07, 10:34 PM

arfster

08-22-07, 11:03 PM

I went and made sure that it was set to 'best' and tried it again. The -4% field is still darker than the background. And I'm using the .evo from my HDDVD disk, that I ripped with DVDFab to get rid of HDCP, so I don;t think it's downconverting. I have watched Serenity, or certain scenes of it, several times. I very certain I am seeing full res. oh, and I am running with accel on. Being that I only have a single-core XP3000, I kinda have to. Accel is definitely working, and working well.

So does anyone else have DVE HD that they can test with to see if they get the same results?

Thanks. Can you try some HD in other apps?

arfster

08-22-07, 11:04 PM

By the way, arfster, do you know how to manage deinterlacing options with the Nvidia 8600 cards in Vista 32?

Sorry, no idea. The PDVD control is kinda dependant on the drivers allowing it - some ati drivers don't either.

Joseph Clark

08-23-07, 03:32 AM

There's a thread in the HTPC section which some of you here might find interesting. Its goal is to simplify the whole process of putting together a working HTPC. It has over 4,600 views in the last 6 days, and I think it has the potential to help a lot of people. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=891768

I think some of the people here who are providing valuable information about nVidia and ATI graphics driver issues might be able to lend their expertise to this project.

I'm cross posting this in the ATI 2xxx threads, too.

dastrong

08-23-07, 07:18 AM

Just a quick one folks Can you use the avivo codecs in Vista MCE they dont show up using the Vist MPEG 2 codec changer app!!

Rick Guynn

08-23-07, 09:00 AM

Thanks. Can you try some HD in other apps?

What would you like me to check? I have ZPlayer, which I use to watch my recorded OTA .TS files. That, by the way, uses about the same-maybe a bit more- CPU than the HDDVDs I have checked. I use the NVidia decoder for this.

I haven't really tested any .wmv material. And I haven't tried an h.264 HDDVD yet, but I am willing to d/l and try some different files if you have suggestions.

arfster

08-23-07, 09:34 AM

That mpeg2 ts sounds fine, as long as it's outside PDVD and it's hardware accelerated. Could you pls post a screenshot?

Thanks

chenjc

08-23-07, 09:40 AM

On my magnovox 42" 1080p lcd... via hdmi,
the radeon 2400 displays very brightly.. but
the windows xp text is blurry and looks overscanned.

excel and internet explorer also display blurry text.

it plays 1080p ok.. there is skipping.

horrible job on 3d games such as scarface

only good at playing standard definition dvd's

overall.. my old nyvidia 6800 beats it everywhere except
in being able to display brightly hdmi (nyvidia cannot display hdmi)

any suggestions?
disappointed, i will probably return it.

IAM4UK

08-23-07, 09:59 AM

any suggestions?
disappointed, i will probably return it.
My suggestion is do what I did after trying two different 2x00HDPro cards: return it and get an 8500GT (or 8600GTS if you want some gaming performance along with your HD media playback).

chenjc

08-23-07, 10:22 AM

Were you able to get the nyvdia cards to work
with hdmi ?

dildano

08-23-07, 10:23 AM

It did work for me and my x2600xt when i tried to install older ati official drivers to get the card more stable, but this was under winxp.
Yeah, you're right. I initially got the wrong registry entry, so I found another one and tried it out last night. It did work and got rid of the underscan on my MSI RX2600PRO, however my hardware acceleration stopped working properly. Or maybe that's not the right way to say it. Basically, with the MSI cards if you get true full-screen 1080p 1-to-1 pixel mapping working (whether using newer Catalyst drivers or the registry hack with the MSI drivers), then H264 and VC1 video will be horribly corrupted in a window in PDVD (not full-screen). It may work in full-screen in PDVD if you can manage to get to full-screen before Vista32 crashes. It's truly bizarre.

My Sapphire card shows up today, so I'm crossing my fingers for a better experience.

IAM4UK

08-23-07, 11:06 AM

Were you able to get the nyvdia cards to work
with hdmi ?

My 8500GT has HDMI, but I use DVI. My Samsung DLP has DVI and not HDMI, and I would never use the speakers in the television set anyway.

Andy o

08-23-07, 11:19 AM

Were you able to get the nyvdia cards to work
with hdmi ?

All DVI-D connections can be converted to HDMI via an adapter, but without audio. If you want audio via HDMI on an Nvidia you have more limited options,though those for me work much better than the ATI one. Check out these MSI cards http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_list.asp?class=vga&cpu=1#NVPCI

The ones that say "HDMI Ready" have an HDMI output which supports audio, but you need to connect your sound card's S/PDIF audio output to it. So you'd need a sound card or mobo that has a coaxial or a two-pin S/PDIF output, but if you do, it works excellent, just like any other S/PDIF connection. Meaning you can pass through multichannel digital audio to your receiver without having to reconvert to Dolby Digital, which is what people have to do right now to bypass the current incompatibility of software like PowerDVD that cannot detect ATI's HDMI output as a direct digital out, not to mention the troubles people are having with this particular HDMI audio device.

I also like IAM4UK had trouble with the ATI cards, and got tired of messing with the registry at every new driver release, so I got myself the MSI 8600GTS with HDMI, which is working pretty much perfectly, including HDMI with audio. But I also see people complaining about the Nvidia cards, so I will only say that in my particular case, I've had as much good luck with Nvidia (tried an 8500GT and 8600GTS) as I've had bad luck with ATI (2400 pro and 2600 pro).

Another thing, in the global MSI website (http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=prodpage2&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=136), the other, regular DVI-D cards are listed as compatible wit HDMI with audio, although with the same requirement of an external S/PDIF source. And the adapter is suspiciously similar to ATI's, I wonder if it would work. This is not mentioned in the USA website, I wonder if the USA cards have the S/PDIF input.

roosterx

08-23-07, 12:58 PM

Yeah, you're right. I initially got the wrong registry entry, so I found another one and tried it out last night. It did work and got rid of the underscan on my MSI RX2600PRO, however my hardware acceleration stopped working properly. Or maybe that's not the right way to say it. Basically, with the MSI cards if you get true full-screen 1080p 1-to-1 pixel mapping working (whether using newer Catalyst drivers or the registry hack with the MSI drivers), then H264 and VC1 video will be horribly corrupted in a window in PDVD (not full-screen). It may work in full-screen in PDVD if you can manage to get to full-screen before Vista32 crashes. It's truly bizarre.

My Sapphire card shows up today, so I'm crossing my fingers for a better experience.

Maybe something to do with you running Vista? Or Has it to do with the ati not supporting HW acc on some types of codecs with resolutions above 1280x720 in the current versions of Ati drivers.

Don't exactly remember which it does not support, but it is mentioned under 'known bugs' in CCC 7.8.

Quite funny since i upgraded my whole htpc from a perfectly working agp system(x1650) to be able to view video in 1080p in its full glory.

I must say i'm dissapointed in Ati, and i am not so shure i will be getting an Ati card after this.

Rick Guynn

08-23-07, 02:05 PM

That mpeg2 ts sounds fine, as long as it's outside PDVD and it's hardware accelerated. Could you pls post a screenshot?

Thanks

What do you want to see in the screenshot? Monitor with CPU graph?

alluringreality

08-23-07, 02:17 PM

So does anyone else have DVE HD that they can test with to see if they get the same results?

When I get the 2600XT I ordered I'm planning on using http://www.w6rz.net/ because I already have standalone HD players and the $400 LG combo drive isn't yet available. I'm going to guess that you should get the same results with say the first pattern under "Some New Patterns" as you get with DVE HD.

arfster

08-23-07, 02:26 PM

What do you want to see in the screenshot? Monitor with CPU graph?

Nah, don't worry about that, just need the output itself. Just printscreen, copy to mspaint, save as png. Any scene with dark bits is good.

Here's the weird thing: I have the same card as you, so I installed 7.8 on my XP install, and backtracked to PDVD 2911. That's an identical setup, yet it still expands all video playback, in all video apps.

Oh, and hardware acceleration doesn't seem to matter - even in vmr9 software mode it seems to expand. At least Vista gives that option.....

ps what connector type and screen are you using?

eklee

08-23-07, 04:49 PM

Am I the only one using MCE 2005 as the main player here? Anyone using MCE 2005 getting smooth HD MPEG2 1080i TV playback with 2600PRO?

I have tried 4 decoders:

1. AVIVO, XP Decoder Utility says this one is not compatible with MCE2005, I tried it anyway and got stuttering/frame lost all over the place with 1080i MPEG2 content.
2. ffdshow MPEG2 decoder, SD content is fine, crash on any HD content.
3. NVIDIA PureVideo DVD Decoder, stuttering/frame lost with 1080i MPEG2 content.
4. PowerDVD 7.3 decoder, takes a long time initially to tune to a TV channel, sometimes got black screen when switching to a channel, some 1080i channels shows stuttering symptom too.

Using the latest bioshock hotfix drivers, 'Adaptive' deinterlacing mode and my CPU usage is still more than 80% when viewing 1080i channels.

td911

08-23-07, 07:24 PM

I'm ready to throw my card out!

MSI RX2600XT Diamond 512MB

Upgraded(yeah, right!) from an Nvidia 6600GT. All was well, could display on my LCD monitor(1680x1050) and my TV Samsung HLS-5087W(1920x1080). Just had problems with some h264 and EVO files. Note this was just with a DVI>DVI and a VGA/VGA cable.

Now with my brand new POS, I can not get my Samsung to display anything above 1280x720 with a DVI Dongle>VGA>VGA. So I bought a DVI>HDMI cable and now I can't get any picture on my Samsung. CCC is showing my TV as a MAX 1024x768 resolution.

I'm loathe to do a XP reload, and may just send the not-yet-ready for-lunchtime card back.

Any suggestions, commments, guffaws are welcome.

OK, did a VISTA dual-boot install. Installed CCC. It see both monitors and works fine on both using DVI>DVI and DVI>HDMI.

Looks like my XP registry is fubared, time for a clean install.

123456

08-23-07, 09:58 PM

Rick Guynn

08-23-07, 10:14 PM

Nah, don't worry about that, just need the output itself. Just printscreen, copy to mspaint, save as png. Any scene with dark bits is good.

Here's the weird thing: I have the same card as you, so I installed 7.8 on my XP install, and backtracked to PDVD 2911. That's an identical setup, yet it still expands all video playback, in all video apps.

Oh, and hardware acceleration doesn't seem to matter - even in vmr9 software mode it seems to expand. At least Vista gives that option.....

ps what connector type and screen are you using?

Using DVI to Dell 2005FPW. Here's a snap from an ep of 24 I still have on the HDD.

Joseph Clark

08-23-07, 10:25 PM

Mntneer

08-23-07, 11:00 PM

Joseph Clark

08-23-07, 11:19 PM

Joseph,

I initially had problems getting acceleration.
I have an AMD 3500+
512MB Ram
Windows MCE 2005

I uninstall the drivers. Cleaned out the registry, removing any and all references to the ATI drivers. Uninstalled PDVD. Install the Hot Fix drivers mentioned a few pages back. Rebooted. Installed the latest version of PDVD (this is what I think was causing my original problems. The PDVD build that I had gave me fits, once I upgraded, no problems). Rebooted. Get hardware acceleration on all video now.

It takes some patience, and multiple reboots, but it does work.

BTW. I've got an ASUS motherboard, but it's a Compaq PC, so the motherboard isn't listed on ASUS's offcial site.

Thanks. I really want to try a 2600XT, but the volume of people having problems getting clean video playback has me fidgety. I can work from a clean install, so that's not a problem, but I just don't want to have to deal with too many headaches.

I think I might give this a try. Worst case, I just hang on until the driver situation resolves itself more.

Which video card are you using?

eklee

08-24-07, 12:33 AM

RussKingUK

08-24-07, 02:42 AM

Well for me, it seems that the Sapphire 2400 Pro does work very well. I previously reported problems with screen corruption of HD-DVD's for about 10 seconds at a time, a few times throughout the course of a movie. It turns out that it was a PowerDVD update that was causing this. I uninstalled PowerDVD 7.3 (3041) and reverted back to a clean version of PowerDVD 7.3 (2911) and this fixed the corruption issue. I am now using the latest hotfix ati drivers (7.9) and so far, so good. Would just like to get x264 mkv's working properly (which I believe is probably a halli problem) and will now start experimenting with MPEG2 accelleration again.

That reminds me. What was the registry key to enable MPEG2 accelleration on a 2400? DXVA_NOHDDECODE = 0 perhaps? Would that still be the case for the 7.9 hotfix drivers?

Thanks,

Russ.

arfster

08-24-07, 05:35 AM

Is there anyone who is getting smooth, consistent, accelerated playback for MPEG2, VC-1 and MPEG4 with any of these 2400 or 2600 cards? If so, will you describe your hardware and software configuration.

Sure: 2600XT vista and xp32, various drivers, gigabyte ds3, e4300. Had some problems with the 2400pro because it's just a bit tight on power with 1080i, and with a 2400XT overheating in a passive case, and others with hd levels expansion, but acceleration actually working has never been an issue. Well, except with screwed reg settings with the 2400 :-)

The problems seem to be more with specifically those with AGP cards, and there does seem to be a lot of complaints with MSI. Also there were problems with corruption on Sapphire 2400s, probably down to failed passive heatsinks.

arfster

08-24-07, 07:47 AM

Using DVI to Dell 2005FPW. Here's a snap from an ep of 24 I still have on the HDD.

Thanks. Bad news: that's expanded :-( Check the black pixels anywhere, they're all 0/0/0. There's also plenty in the 0-16 range - on a calibrated HDTV you get pretty severe detail loss in the shadows as a result, which is only visible on my 0-255 PC monitor.

I wonder if PDVD is doing anything different with .evo files, or it's something strange with DVE.

tekno

08-24-07, 08:34 AM

Thanks. I really want to try a 2600XT, but the volume of people having problems getting clean video playback has me fidgety. I can work from a clean install, so that's not a problem, but I just don't want to have to deal with too many headaches.

I think I might give this a try. Worst case, I just hang on until the driver situation resolves itself more.

Could someone bring me up to speed? Is it safe to say the 2600XT has video playback issues? What is the picture quality like? Is this applicable to Vista and XP or only to one of those operating systems? Also, does it matter if you use 32 or 64 bit (a question about drivers?) Vista?

I don't know if the cpu would be a factor in those assessments but if it is, how would a Quad Core or faster Core 2 Duo cpu impact those issues? Is it mostly driver and OS-related? Or is the ATI hardware also a major factor?

RichB

08-24-07, 08:56 AM

I am considering another 2600 card. This time an XT instead of a Pro. I am concerned about idle power usage in my HTPC.

I have intake fans, but only my Seasonic Power supply for output.

I was hoping for some advice:

1. GDDR3 or GDDR4 - I do not think I need extra power and I read that the GDDR4 uses more power idling.

2. Silent Heat-Pipe, Regular Fan, or Dual Slot (HIS) - Dual slot is the best for cooling, but a heat pipe is the quietest and hottest (Probably). Right now the Sapphire 2600Pro is quiet enough for me.

3. 256MB or 512MB - I know that video playback should be fine with 256MB, but with Vista will the extra memory help?

Of course there is always a 8600GT but that is another story ;)

Thanks all,

Rich

Mntneer

08-24-07, 09:28 AM

Mntneer, do you have HDTV tuner in your PC? If so, I am guessing you should have no problem viewing 1080i HD channels?

Which deinterlacing method are you using in CCC and in PowerDVD? Also, what version # is your PowerDVD?

I don't have an HDTV tuner card in my Bedroom HTPC, but I do have one (MyHD 120) in my basement HTPC.

I have the 2911 build of PowerDVD, and I think that's the real key to achieving success. I don't think the problems lie in the ATI drivers as much they do the software using those drivers.

I'll have to double check my deinterlacing method.

Sarvatt

08-24-07, 10:54 AM

Sorry about the delay arfster, have not had any free time to mess with it until now. Here's some samples you asked for a few pages back showing how I don't notice color expansion differences between SD and HD. If there's some other example that would show the problem better let know and I will try to reproduce it.

1280x720 h264 coreavc MPC EVR
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/6659/gurrenlagann1280x1024evwh5.png

1024x576 divx ffdshow MPC EVR
http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/2665/gurrenlagann1024x576evrfj2.png

Different movie-

960x540 h264 coreavc EVR
http://img471.imageshack.us/img471/585/darkerthanblackh264960xvx5.png

1280x720 h264 coreavc EVR

oops, guess that last one didn't save right, I'll edit it in later tonight. I realize they are all expanded, but as long as it is consistant I am satisfied with the colors :) Is it possible something using a straight media foundation protected path such as WMP11 or powerdvd (playing hd-dvd or bluray from disk) handles the expansion differently? anyone noticed a SD special feature having a different color range than the main feature for instance?

Peter La Fleur

08-24-07, 04:12 PM

I'm a long time lurker, first time poster. My thanks especially to arfster and Sarvatt for their work.

For those of you that think everyone's systems are experiencing issues, I have some good news. I have the Gigabyte 2600 Pro PCI-e Fanless (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125074), and it works great on decoding/deinterlacing mpeg2. I haven't tried VC-1 or h.264, but I'm not as worried about that, since that's all done on the UVD. My cpu is an Athlon 64 3200+ running at the stock 2.0GHz running Vista32. I'm using the 7.8 AMD drivers with arfster's registry tweaks from his custom made 7.7 drivers. I'm using Media Center for mpeg2 playback and I've set Media Center to use the AVIVO mpeg2 decoder. De-interlacing is set to Vector Adaptive and 3:2 pulldown is enabled. I have not made any other changes to get mpeg2 to work.

On a Dell 17" LCD at a resolution of 1280x1024, I've been able to watch the 22.5 Mbps 1920x1080 "Park Run" .ts file from http://www.w6rz.net, and my CPU averaged 65% usage, and my GPU averaged 60% usage. Temps were from 44 to 54 degrees Celsius. This clip is very demanding, and I would expect OTA HDTV would be less demanding.

The "park run" clip is probably the highest bitrate mpeg2 clip I've been able to find, and it plays flawlessly - no stuttering, artifacts, etc. Other test clips have the CPU at about 60% and the GPU at about 40%. The AVIVO mpeg2 decoder works beautifully. It would appear that the mpeg2 files are being decoded in hardware, and the deinterlacing is being handled by the CPU. When using Bob or Weave deinterlacing, CPU usage drops to about 30%.

I think a lot of users (including me) new to mpeg2, ATI drivers, and HTPCs in general are having a tough time figuring this stuff out, so I put together a few things I've learned:

De-interlacing: The only way to tell what de-interlacing the video card is actually doing is by observing what you see on the screen. If you see a lot of lines and blurriness, it's probably using the less advanced bob/weave methods. If you set CCC to VA and it looks awesome, then VA is probably working. Doing A/B comparisons of the Hilary Duff clip from http://www.dvbportal.de/projects/hdtvpump/index.html is a great way to see how good your deinterlacing is.

Using the AVIVO mpeg2 in Vista MC: Two tools from http://www.jtow.net/users/triess/ will let you use AVIVO inside Vista Media Center. Run the "Video Decoder Checkup Utility" (deccheck.exe) first and set the ATI mpeg2 decoder (atidvcr.dll) as the preferred decoder (ignore the red X's). Then run "Vista MediaCenter MPEG2 decoder selection" (vmcd.exe) and set the default to the ATI mpeg2 decoder. In post #1513, kiffies states that he can't FF or RWD clips with the AVIVO decoder, so hopefully that is fixed in the future. I plan on using DVRMS toolbox to remove commercials before I watch TV anyways, but this is still a potential issue for some users.

RivaTuner: Download and install RivaTuner to monitor your CPU and GPU loads. The Hardware Acceleration monitor/graph does NOT show if your card is using hardware to decode mpeg2. I think it only monitors 3D acceleration.

EVR + DXVA2 in Vista: Vista uses EVR, which uses DXVA2 to display video (at least in Media Center and WMP 11.) It does NOT use Directshow 9 (it uses DS10), and I found no tools akin to DXVA Checker, GraphEdit, dxdiag.exe, etc that would display available mpeg2 modes. Also, I don't think ffdshow would work either, but I haven't tried it). I'm taking it on faith that Media Center and WMP 11 are using the AVIVO mpeg2 decoder, and the picture is excellent. I tried viewing the "park run" clip mentioned above in Media Player Classic, and I got 100% CPU usage and 8% GPU usage, indicating no hardware acceleration. I suspect the same would be true for VLC.

The Lingerie Bowl test clip: This clip has some major stuttering problems, which may throw you for a loop when testing, since the stuttering is in the file, not in the playback. I'd recommend not using this clip at all for testing.
Edit: Sarvatt uses this clip as a stress test to see how corrupted streams are handled, so if that's what you want to do, then use it.

I hope this helps someone, and if I'm wrong about anything, please let me know and I'll edit my post.

Edit: Also, I'd highly recommend the HDHomerun from SiliconDust for an OTA HDTV tuner. It has dual ATSC tuners, and connects to your computer using ethernet, which is great if you have two HTPCs - the tuner isn't tied to one particular computer.

Rick Guynn

08-24-07, 04:59 PM

Thanks. Bad news: that's expanded :-( Check the black pixels anywhere, they're all 0/0/0. There's also plenty in the 0-16 range - on a calibrated HDTV you get pretty severe detail loss in the shadows as a result, which is only visible on my 0-255 PC monitor.

I wonder if PDVD is doing anything different with .evo files, or it's something strange with DVE.

I took it into Paint.net and looked at it. I see what you mean now. I still don't understand the DVE HD results though. That background is definitely lighter than the -4% bar. Too bad they disabled the screenshot function for HD, I could pull that out and look at it as well.

-Rick

Sarvatt

08-24-07, 05:16 PM

Great post Peter! And about the lingerie bowl test clip, I use it more as a codec stress test to see how it handles corrupted streams to see if they show corruption and play in sync or drop corruption and stutter. It was just something I happened to notice the odd behavior changed with in the 7.9 drivers, glitching in the stream didn't spike the GPU to 100% and mess up deinterlacing anymore. I suggest using something like ffdshow for audio that will let you get detailed information on all the codecs in use during playback via the tray icon to spy on VMC and WMP11. Another way you can tell if DXVA is engaged is to have the CCC overclocking page open and watch the GPU clock frequency when you start playback if you have a card that automatically adjusts speeds. When DXVA is on it switches to full power no matter what the GPU load is versus staying at a low speed. Mine runs at 110mhz pretty much full time when not using DXVA. Your CPU and GPU %'s are pretty much spot on with my HD 2400 Pro and a64 at 2.8ghz

The only thing I would be wary about is forcing some of the higher deinterlacing modes in CCC removes the lower options from being available to directshow. Forcing VA on mine for instance removes bob as an available option, but bob/weave are the only modes available to directshow for HD material so if I'm using the cyberlink codec it has major problems. Auto works the best for me personally, picks VA all the time in VMR9 and EVR looks equally as good so I'm assuming its working there too :)

autoboy70

08-24-07, 07:04 PM

Well, after playing with 2 cards, a 2400pro and a 2600pro, I am back to my 7300LE and loving it. Uninstalled the ATI drivers, popped the card in, rebooted, installed the card, rebooted, and started playing all my HD, SD, and h264 just fine. It is like that first drink of water after forgetting to bring your water bottle during a 100 mile ride. It is like getting laid for the first time in months after breaking up with your girlfriend of 4 years. Simply amazing ... Everything works as advertised. No fleshtone color problems, no color expansion problems, no jidder, judder, or tearing. Just a beautiful picture that works. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I'll keep checking in once in awhile, i've still got the itch for VA deinterlacing but at least I won't miss the next episode of Heroes.

Sereny

08-24-07, 07:35 PM

I also returned my AGP HD2400 card today. Like autoboy70, I'll check in here from time to time, to try ati again once all important driver issues related to HD have been taken care off and directshow playback works flawlessly (including vobsub.. and yeah I'm prepared to wait now a year or two).

Thanks to arfster, sarvatt and co for your investigative work and help.

topcaser

08-25-07, 12:19 AM

Where can i find this lingerie bowl test clip? Have you got a link?

Mntneer

08-25-07, 01:48 AM

Where did people find their AGP versions of the HD2xxx cards? I can't find them anywhere, and i'm thinking about replacing the old 9700Pro I've got in a work machine with an AGP HD2600XT card.

eklee

08-25-07, 02:30 AM

For those of you that think everyone's systems are experiencing issues, I have some good news. I have the Gigabyte 2600 Pro PCI-e Fanless (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125074), and it works great on decoding/deinterlacing mpeg2. I haven't tried VC-1 or h.264, but I'm not as worried about that, since that's all done on the UVD. My cpu is an Athlon 64 3200+ running at the stock 2.0GHz running Vista32. I'm using the 7.8 AMD drivers with arfster's registry tweaks from his custom made 7.7 drivers. I'm using Media Center for mpeg2 playback and I've set Media Center to use the AVIVO mpeg2 decoder. De-interlacing is set to Vector Adaptive and 3:2 pulldown is enabled. I have not made any other changes to get mpeg2 to work.

Peter, may I know what other filters do you have installed on your Vista MCE? As far as I know, AVIVO does not come with an audio filter. Which audio filter are you using. Also, do you need additional filters/software to be able to play TS in Windows Media Player? Currently, I only have AVIVO installed and TS is not associated with any player. Thanks.

alluringreality

08-25-07, 02:54 AM

Image Source - "1 and 2 pixel wide pulses ("needle" pulse) with -4, 4, 8, 92, 96 and 104 IRE bars on 0 and 100 IRE background 1920x1080" at http://www.w6rz.net/
Playback - MSI 2600XT, Zoom Player, VMR9 Windowless, and Cyberlink Video Decoder

No Acceleration - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/no-accel.png

Hardware Acceleration from Bioshock Drivers - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/hardware-accel.png (might have been using Theater setting)

Hardware Acceleration from 7.7 modified Zip - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/hardware-accel-7.7.png

COMMENTS:
In the expansion photo 16 goes to 8 and 7 goes to 0 with the Bioshock drivers. So when Rick Guynn says "-4% bar is clearly not the same as the background, which is video black", that same thing shows up here with the bioshock drivers. The 7.7 drivers cut-off more below-black signal.

If I turn off hardware accel, the 7.7 drivers generally look about the same as my 8600GTS. The bioshock drivers can show similar numbers in paint to 7.7, but 16 is a whole other shade on my TV and the drivers are more a mess of calibrations. The bioshock drivers seem to mess with SD shades. WMV9 in Zoom Player is a different image than WMP with SD using the Bioshock drivers.

Correct SD image - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/SD-ATI.png

Bioshock driver WMP SD image - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/SD-WMP.png

EDIT: Most likely I was using the theater setting when 16 went to 8

arfster

08-25-07, 09:20 AM

Thanks for that. Those patterns are exactly the sort of comparisons we need for this sort of thing. That also explains the difference Rick saw.

I wonder what it all means - are ATI trying to fix things? Or are they just piling yet more bugs upon the current bugs? I think we all know the answer....

Peter La Fleur

08-25-07, 09:20 AM

Where can i find this lingerie bowl test clip? Have you got a link?

The link is in an earlier post in this thread.

Peter La Fleur

08-25-07, 09:28 AM

Peter, may I know what other filters do you have installed on your Vista MCE? As far as I know, AVIVO does not come with an audio filter. Which audio filter are you using. Also, do you need additional filters/software to be able to play TS in Windows Media Player? Currently, I only have AVIVO installed and TS is not associated with any player. Thanks.

I'm using the AVIVO mpeg2 decoder for video. I'm using the default Vista Media Center audio filter. I'm using either MC or WMP11 for playback.

You need to convert the .ts file to mpeg2 in order to play it in MC or WMP11. I suggest TSConverter from http://www.dvbportal.de/. Make sure to download and register the HDTVDump AND HDTVPump filters from dvbportal.de before installing TSConverter. You may need to run the install/dll/ax registrations under administrator to get it to work. Yes, all of this is a pain in the ass to do in order to watch .ts files, but the conversion is quick and you should only have to do it for testing.

arfster

08-25-07, 09:37 AM

Haali will allow you to watch .ts files without any conversion needed, at least in WMP11 (MCE I have no idea).

Rick Guynn

08-25-07, 10:56 AM

Image Source - "1 and 2 pixel wide pulses ("needle" pulse) with -4, 4, 8, 92, 96 and 104 IRE bars on 0 and 100 IRE background 1920x1080" at http://www.w6rz.net/
Playback - MSI 2600XT, Zoom Player, VMR9 Windowless, and Cyberlink Video Decoder

No Acceleration - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/no-accel.png

Hardware Acceleration from Bioshock Drivers - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/hardware-accel.png

Hardware Acceleration from 7.7 modified Zip - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/hardware-accel-7.7.png

COMMENTS:
In the expansion photo 16 goes to 8 and 7 goes to 0 with the Bioshock drivers. So when Rick Guynn says "-4% bar is clearly not the same as the background, which is video black", that same thing shows up here with the bioshock drivers. The 7.7 drivers cut-off more below-black signal.

If I turn off hardware accel, the 7.7 drivers generally look about the same as my 8600GTS. The bioshock drivers can show similar numbers in paint to 7.7, but 16 is a whole other shade on my TV and the drivers are more a mess of calibrations. The bioshock drivers seem to mess with SD shades. WMV9 in Zoom Player is a different image than WMP with SD using the Bioshock drivers.

Correct SD image - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/SD-ATI.png

Bioshock driver WMP SD image - http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z109/alluringreality/SD-WMP.png

So to make sure I understand this correctly - in the case of what I am observing with DVE HD, I am getting expansion, but it is not 16=>0 expansion?

arfster

08-25-07, 12:40 PM

Tested bioshock hotfix in Vista, expansion is the same as previous drivers for me. 16-235 becomes 0-255. Using the ramp test pattern (http://www.w6rz.net/ramp.zip), and vmr9 software mode (ie no expansion):

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/1/untitledtv6.png (http://imageshack.us)

Note how it goes from total black at one extreme to 16 at the first set of dots, 235 at second set, then 255 pure white at the other extreme.

Here's with acceleration, and thus expansion:

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/3974/expandedsi3.png (http://imageshack.us)

What was 16 before has become zero, and all detail in the 16-30 range (or something like that) has become <16. Thus, on a properly calibrated HDTV you have a complete obliteration of all shadow detail.

This only happens with HD material (>719 vertical lines), and only with EVR, or VMR9 hardware mode (not vmr9 software mode).

grusome

08-25-07, 12:53 PM

Where did people find their AGP versions of the HD2xxx cards? I can't find them anywhere, and i'm thinking about replacing the old 9700Pro I've got in a work machine with an AGP HD2600XT card.

Circut City and Best Buy both are now selling AGP versions of the HD2xxx cards. Not as cheap as buying them online from places like newegg.com , but, still not too terrible. (especially if you have to have it right now!)
grusome

alluringreality

08-25-07, 03:58 PM

Tested bioshock hotfix in Vista, expansion is the same as previous drivers for me.

It took a while to figure out what I did, but I must have switched to the theater setting the image with 16->8. I don't know what other problems this might cause, but do the following for a trial:

1 Open Catalyst Control Center - Vista Bioshock Hotfix
2 Go to Avivo Video
3 Basic Color
4 Set Brightness to 16
5 Set Contrast to 86

In the picture color pulling technique you were doing, this gives a close match for Accelerated vs Unaccelerated colors in the HD test patterns, only 5 ends up being a 4 on the ramp but otherwise it's a match on what I checked. Using these settings I also get a match in Zoom Player on the SD test I was using. If I use the SD test in WMP though it doesn't match, which I'm guessing is because WMP is accelerating the SD image.

EDIT: The 5 being displayed as a 4 was on the Bioshock drivers, if the revised 7.7 is used it correctly displays the 5 as a 5. At this time I seem to get all correct levels when using the 7.7 drivers and this CCC Avivo setting change. With the 7.8 or Bioshock drivers I have the SD issue from post #1638.

alluringreality

08-25-07, 04:11 PM

Mach5

08-25-07, 06:31 PM

Hi, I just got hd2600xt and would like to know is it a way to turn on full screen video (auto detection) to 2nd monitor (TV). It has that feature in XP but not in Vista. Is it even possible?? I know nvidia remove that feature in Vista.

I have tried various setting and nothing works. Sorry for such basic question - I am new to this.

Thanks.

td911

08-25-07, 09:44 PM

Well I give up.

My MSI 2600XT just will not recognize my Samsung HLS-5087, through either DVI>VGA or DVI>HDMI. It was locked at 1024x768, when it even recognized the set. Even with a clean XP install, it still would not work using the Bioshock hotfix drivers. Even the acceleration was flaky on my desktop. Seemed to only function in PowerDVD when it wanted to.

So back it goes. My first and last ATI card. NVIDIA just has much better drivers and you don't have to jump through hoops to make stuff work.

Booted up a clean install and all is well.

Bye, bye ATI.

eklee

08-26-07, 01:33 AM

I haven't tried VC-1 or h.264, but I'm not as worried about that, since that's all done on the UVD.

Peter, I am interested in hearing your results for testing VC-1 and h.264 contents. I was finally able to get 1080i MPEG2 accelerated in the hardware, but I can't get VC-1 contents to use HA.

My VC-1 test clip is 'Elephant's Dream' 1080p @11mbps. CPU usage is 100% throughout the clip. I am using the default WMV9 codec that comes with WMP11.

wozio

08-26-07, 02:26 AM

What was 16 before has become zero, and all detail in the 16-30 range (or something like that) has become <16. Thus, on a properly calibrated HDTV you have a complete obliteration of all shadow detail.

If you have display calibrated to 0-255 levels you will not have any detail lost. In fact it will be better this way, since you will have uniform display of both video and rest of displayed picture (user interface, pictures).

This only happens with HD material (>719 vertical lines), and only with EVR, or VMR9 hardware mode (not vmr9 software mode).

And this is main problem. It should be the same for every displayed video, no matter of its size.

Best thinh would be to have switch in ccc or registry to control color expansion.

BTW what does it mean, VMR9 in hardware mode? VMR9 is always in hardware mode, decoder can be in software or hardware mode. Maybe you mean RGB versus YUV input?

dexx

08-26-07, 03:26 AM

djungel-Jim

08-26-07, 04:34 AM

Can anyone with a 2400xt (saphire) with working hw acceleration please explain to me how you got it to work? What version of catalyst, powerdvd etc? The tweaked 7.7 catalyst drivers doesn't work for my 2400xt :(

rosie2515

08-26-07, 09:34 AM

Hi, I´m running XP pro with a 2600XT Sapphire card - which MPEG2 codec will give the best result? I´m planning to use VLC as my player and it doesn´t need a MPEG2 codec to be installed (guess that decoding technology is build into the player) but I´m also using DVBViewer for DVB-T TV and that needs a MPEG2 codec.

arfster

08-26-07, 09:51 AM

If you have display calibrated to 0-255 levels you will not have any detail lost. In fact it will be better this way, since you will have uniform display of both video and rest of displayed picture (user interface, pictures).

Afraid not, since my HDTV clips below 8 (like a lot do). I don't use MCE or the rest so that's not a factor. It's also no use when the TV is calibrated to 16-235 for all other equipment .... as it should be, since that's the standard.

BTW what does it mean, VMR9 in hardware mode?

Just with hardware acceleration. EVR doesn't seem to be bothered, it expands whether acceleration or not.

dexx

08-26-07, 11:24 AM

I'm having trouble with a 2600pro. Its VGA output works fine into a CRT monitor. Its DVI is fine into an LCD PC screen. But its DVI output when fed into the HDMI port on my projector shows nothing. Similarly the HDMI input of an LCD TV shows nothing. Is there any fix for this?

Update: if i use a 2 metre cable it works fine. But a 10 metre cable doesnt. Looks like the DVI output signal strength is inadequate.

nikosk

08-26-07, 11:29 AM

Hi @ all,

Sorry if this is already answered, but this thread is getting huge and really can't read all of the posts... although I've been following it from the beginning....

While I used the Catalyst 7.7 drivers with 2600Pro with Vista and , the info on my projector menu was indicating that it was receiving RGB signal, which was fine, since under this mode the projector allowed to adjust the input levels (normal/extended).

After the upgrade to Catalyst 7.8 the card outputs Component signal, and therefore no adjustment is possible anymore (the projector hides this option).

How do I configure the drivers so as the card to output again RGB?

I'm using Vista Home Premium, DVH-HDMI connection to the Epson TW600 projector, Catalyst 7.8...

Thanks in Advance!

Nikos

alluringreality

08-26-07, 12:42 PM

The answer might be to go back to the older drivers. I was wondering why my TV on 7.7 seems to have about the same calibration as my Nvidia, but on the newer drivers has a different calibration. So nikosk, I find it interesting but in my limited use of the ATI I haven't ran across anything that might affect that.

arfster

08-26-07, 12:46 PM

As far as I remember, all the 2xxx drivers have this problem - when I first got a 2400pro it was with the 7.6, and it was there straight away.

Sarvatt

08-26-07, 06:22 PM

Peter, I am interested in hearing your results for testing VC-1 and h.264 contents. I was finally able to get 1080i MPEG2 accelerated in the hardware, but I can't get VC-1 contents to use HA.

My VC-1 test clip is 'Elephant's Dream' 1080p @11mbps. CPU usage is 100% throughout the clip. I am using the default WMV9 codec that comes with WMP11.

That's because the MS WMV9 DMO only supports up to ModeVC1_C, been posted here many times in the past..

DXVA2_ModeVC1_A (DXVA2_ModeVC1_PostProc)
DXVA2_ModeVC1_B (DXVA2_ModeVC1_MoComp)
DXVA2_ModeVC1_C (DXVA2_ModeVC1_IDCT)
DXVA2_ModeVC1_D (DXVA2_ModeVC1_VLD)

our cards only enumerate VC1_D and not the lower levels so it wont use it. only option I know of right now is to use PowerDVD for playback of an actual HD-DVD or Bluray to access it. I have asked for enumeration of the lower acceleration levels because of this problem in my ticket to ATI detailing all the DXVA problems, seems like the person I'm talking to there actually understands whats up so maybe it'll get fixed in the next year :lol:

BIGGRIMTIM

08-26-07, 07:10 PM

Looking for a little help. I have a Saphire HD2600XT Power DVD XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive. Everything seems to work ok except regular dvd playback. There is a black bar at the right side of the screen. It goes away if I use 7.8 but then my HD-DVD playback no longer fills the screen. I am using the tweaked 7.7 right now. I have also tried the registry hacks with 7.8 with no success.

Thanks in advance.

arfster

08-26-07, 07:15 PM

It goes away if I use 7.8 but then my HD-DVD playback no longer fills the screen.....

Post 1537 in this thread fixes that. I've got the same card as you btw.

We really, really, really need a FAQ for these cards :-)

BIGGRIMTIM

08-26-07, 08:53 PM

I tried that with 7.8 with no luck. I am using Vista 32bit, are the registry entries the same in vista? They seem to be.

arfster

08-26-07, 09:00 PM

I tried that with 7.8 with no luck. I am using Vista 32bit, are the registry entries the same in vista? They seem to be.

Yup - I'm using Vista too, and it worked fine. They should be a reg-string btw.

BIGGRIMTIM

08-26-07, 09:11 PM

OK, thanks I'll try it again. This with 7.8 not the Bioshock drivers right?

arfster

08-26-07, 09:15 PM

OK, thanks I'll try it again. This with 7.8 not the Bioshock drivers right?

Both - ATI seem to have shifted to the new keys permanently since 7.8.

BIGGRIMTIM

08-26-07, 10:03 PM

Finally got it! I had to set it to "0" to get it to work, If that is a problem please let me know. So far so good.

Thanks a million.

millerbrad

08-26-07, 10:41 PM

Thanks, alluringreality! Was watching the Eagles vs Steelers game tonight, and the color expansion was making the Philly players look like big, white blobs. Much better after tweaking the CCC color settings.

akmofo

08-27-07, 12:37 AM

In vein with the arfster's suggestion of a FAQ.. it might be worth posting Alluringrealities guide to the first page of this thread (if that is a possibility) along with the links to arfster's drivers, the bios utilities etc. Perhaps the summarize a lot of the key findings in this 56 page thread.

wozio

08-27-07, 02:09 AM

Afraid not, since my HDTV clips below 8 (like a lot do). I don't use MCE or the rest so that's not a factor. It's also no use when the TV is calibrated to 16-235 for all other equipment .... as it should be, since that's the standard.

You mean that your hdtv receive full 0-255 but cuts programatically everything below 8?? That would be weird. As far as I know displays receive all 0-255 data but are calibrated to 0-255 in pc world or to 16-235/240 in video world. Of course in real world most of them is not calibrated at all, should not clip anyway...

That is why best thing to have would be switch in registry and in ccc to expand or not. And of course it should affect both sd and hd. My display is calibrated for full range it receives and I want to have video levels expanded.

Sarvatt

08-27-07, 04:58 AM

You mean that your hdtv receive full 0-255 but cuts programatically everything below 8?? That would be weird. As far as I know displays receive all 0-255 data but are calibrated to 0-255 in pc world or to 16-235/240 in video world. Of course in real world most of them is not calibrated at all, should not clip anyway...

That is why best thing to have would be switch in registry and in ccc to expand or not. And of course it should affect both sd and hd. My display is calibrated for full range it receives and I want to have video levels expanded.

Yeah I don't really have a problem with my TV calibrated for 0-255 and all material expanding like I currently get with 7.8 and 7.9 drivers over VGA.. It is dead easy to have ffdshow and coreavc handle it right and in coreavc 1.5.0.0 it's automatic even. I'm used to having to do it for PC monitors anyway :D my cable box (SA3250) using the HDMI input is calibrated for 0-255 which makes the SD channels look washed out if its not in an upscaling mode but the HD channels don't look right when I calibrate it for 16-240 vs 0-255 so I guess it's doing the same thing.. Switching inputs on the same broadcast HD source material looks the same between the HTPC, internal ATSC tuner, and cable box. I have no idea what the deal is but however it handles it now is not an issue to me and I'm going to remain blissfully ignorant before I find something else to tear my hair out over :D

Has anyone that it bothers tried the different CSC registry entries I listed a few pages back? There was a BT601CSC that might make it work the way you want it in particular.

wozio

08-27-07, 05:50 AM

No, I went back to 7.6 which behavies correctly for me.

Linalool

08-27-07, 07:35 AM

Hi here are my specs.

Intel Quad Core Q6600 @ 2.4ghz
ATI 2400XT
Windows XP
Latest powerdvd

Have I just sorted out my underscan problems in Powerdvd thanks to this thread.

I want to disable AVIVO because some of my HDDVDs are crashing and I want to rule out my graphics card. But I can't. "Enable Hardware Acceleration" is unchecked when I go into powerdvd's configuration while I am not playing a HDDVD. When I play a HDDVD "Enable Hardware Acceleration" is checked and greyed out. I have tried searching on how to disable this in the registry but can't find anything.

RichB

08-27-07, 08:49 AM

When is 7.9 due out.?

If the Video levels are not corrected, I am moving to an 8600GT!:mad:

- Rich

one_2go

08-27-07, 09:20 AM

Does anyone know how to defeat the ATI audio installation? I've tried disabling the two audio devices that install, but whenever I install a video driver it messes up the motherboard Realtek analog audio. If I had received the HDMI adapter like it showed in the Newegg picture I could probably just use that so that I wouldn't have to turn on the amplifiers to get basic sound, but it wasn't in the box.

Did you ever get this solved? My mobo has the RealTek ALC889a chip which does full HD Audio decoding and I don't want the ATI sound driver because it can only pass SPDIF which I already have coming out of the PC and I am not interested until we can get the advanced HD Audio Bitstreams over HDMI.

However I have battled with getting DD & DTS sound out of the SPDIF connector from applications like MPC, VLC & even PDVD. I only get 2 channel PCM streams. Then I tried TheaterTek with the audio plugins and all of a sudden I get the full multi channel audio experience. I am wondering if my problem is the stupid ATI sound driver. How do you remove this sucker and keep it from installing?

I have connections on the back plane for full 6 channel analogue out of the new HD Audio formats but only with the RealTek audio manager.

Any chance to let me know about your progress.

alluringreality

08-27-07, 11:09 AM

If the Video levels are not corrected, I am moving to an 8600GT!:mad:

On 7.7 I get almost the exact same video levels as I get with my Nvidia card. The newest 7.8 and 7.9 drivers might have switched to a computer video level or something, because they absolutely don't come close to matching anything else I have plugged into my TV. If you think the 8 series Nvidia is without issues think again, the Vista drivers are missing a lot of features and XP users are always complaining about HD accel.

I am wondering if my problem is the stupid ATI sound driver. How do you remove this sucker and keep it from installing?

I gave up on it. All the obivious things don't work because it seems to be a part of the video driver install. For testing purposes you could remove the ATI drivers and you should get the Realtek analog back. You might have to reinstall the Realtek drivers, I don't remember. Personally I work from a disk image, so it's not hard for me to get a pre-video driver install. Sure you won't get pretty video without using the ATI drivers, but you should be able to tell if you're still only getting 2 channel PCM streams over SPDIF. If you can get SPDIF to work and are using PowerDVD for HD playback, I haven't seen anything that says SPDIF is unable to pass what PowerDVD is outputting. I already have standalones, so getting HD audio is one reason I'm still sitting on the fence about moving from my Toshiba and Sony Players.

arfster

08-27-07, 11:26 AM

You mean that your hdtv receive full 0-255 but cuts programatically everything below 8?? That would be weird. As far as I know displays receive all 0-255 data but are calibrated to 0-255 in pc world or to 16-235/240 in video world.

Yup - it clips below 8. Quite a lot of HDTVs do this actually, since video standard implies there will be nothing visible below 16, and in practice nothing usable below about 12 or so (since a lot of video content doesn't hard clip, and continues a little below black16 to give the processor more to work with). Obviously no computer screens will do this, but that's a separate matter entirely.

arfster

08-27-07, 11:34 AM

On 7.7 I get almost the exact same video levels as I get with my Nvidia card.

That's after your CCC 16-86 change right? That's a great solution if all your content is HDTV - simply applying a contraction to reverse the HD expansion. However, for SD, which isn't expanded in the first place, it's doing the reverse: 16-235 becomes something like 32-219.

For others (like me!) a better solution might be to use PDVD's internal colour controls for the same process, and use that only for HD playback - as modern PDVD is always EVR, this HD will always be expanded, and then contracted back by PDVD. For SD use some other player. Of course, if you have to do SD and HD in the same app (eg for DVB), then the answer would be to use CCC presets and manually flick between them with hotkeys. Alternatively if your HDTV supports it, two display calibrations and flick between them with the remote.

In other words, a complete pita.....

ps as far as I can see btw, there is no difference in levels behaviour through 7.6/7.7/7.8/bioshock7.9. They all expand HD with VMR9 hardware accelerated or EVR, and never expand SD.

arfster

08-27-07, 11:48 AM

Has anyone that it bothers tried the different CSC registry entries I listed a few pages back? There was a BT601CSC that might make it work the way you want it in particular.

Yeah, I gave that a go without any luck, along with dxva_extendedcolor or whatever it's called. I wonder if it might be possible to hack the drivers themselves so that 601 is always called.

It seems likely that this is the root of the problem though - bt709 routines kick in >720 lines and expand for some reason, whereas SD uses bt601 and behaves properly.

Edit: see post on next page, UseBT601CSC appears to affect SD only

alluringreality

08-27-07, 11:59 AM

That's after your CCC 16-86 change right? That's a great solution if all your content is HDTV - simply applying a contraction to reverse the HD expansion. However, for SD, which isn't expanded in the first place, it's doing the reverse: 16-235 becomes something like 32-219.

As far as I can see btw, there is no difference in levels behaviour through 7.6/7.7/7.8/bioshock7.9. They all expand HD with VMR9 hardware accelerated or EVR, and never expand SD.

Yes I was speaking after Avivo Video change. What you described is not the behavior I'm seeing. I did check SD levels with a video from a DVD calibration disk and they were unaffected by the change. Avivo video on 7.7 only affects HD accel in all my trials. So by changing the Avivo Video settings in 7.7 all video has been brought into line. It checks by eye and all the print screens I tried matched number for number with the unaccelerated outputs.

In 7.8 and Bioshock, the Avivo Video works differently in my trials. In those drivers Avivo video affects HD accel and also SD EVR. By adjusting the Avivo Video settings it works a little more closely with what you were describing. With the change HD accel is brought into line, but it messes up SD EVR. Basically everything works at 16-235, except for SD EVR which has had it's levels improperly squished like you said if 7.8 or Bioshock is used and Avivo Video is adjusted.

arfster

08-27-07, 12:05 PM

Yes I was speaking after Avivo Video change. What you described is not the behavior I'm seeing. I did check SD levels with a video from a DVD calibration disk and they were unaffected by the change. Avivo video on 7.7 only affects HD accel in all my trials. So by changing the Avivo Video settings in 7.7 all video has been brought into line.

ROFL - that's insane. Clearly CCC colour changes should affect all video. So basically you've used the side-effects of one stupid bug to fix another stupid bug :rolleyes:

Thanks for the explanation, will test later. Should be easy to make another set of tweaked drivers to incorporate your fix too.

eklee

08-27-07, 12:08 PM

Did you ever get this solved? My mobo has the RealTek ALC889a chip which does full HD Audio decoding and I don't want the ATI sound driver because it can only pass SPDIF which I already have coming out of the PC and I am not interested until we can get the advanced HD Audio Bitstreams over HDMI.

Which driver set are you using? I recalled that Catalyst 7.8 (XP) driver set does not include the HDMI audio drivers. Although the Bioshock hotfix includes the audio drivers, it can be unselected before the drivers got installed.

alluringreality

08-27-07, 12:24 PM

I've only used 7.7, 7.8, and Bioshock on Vista, but I don't remember seeing anything that looked like an audio driver if I choose the install option other than express install.

one_2go

08-27-07, 12:40 PM

Which driver set are you using? I recalled that Catalyst 7.8 (XP) driver set does not include the HDMI audio drivers. Although the Bioshock hotfix includes the audio drivers, it can be unselected before the drivers got installed.
I have only used the 7.7 version. I read too many complaints about ATI breaking things again and going back to 7.7 that I never tried 7.8.

This is a weird thing the sound out of the card. I diabled the ATI HD Audio driver but that may have been already too late. I will spen some time this evening to get this sorted.

On another note. I have set my 2600Pro for 1920x1080 resolution and 24Hz. My Sony plays back 1080p/24p but when in this resolution plus theater mode the slider for Underscan & Overscan it greyed out and as you would expect full Overscan. Any registry entries that will correct this?

arfster

08-27-07, 01:14 PM

Yes I was speaking after Avivo Video change. What you described is not the behavior I'm seeing. I did check SD levels with a video from a DVD calibration disk and they were unaffected by the change. Avivo video on 7.7 only affects HD accel in all my trials.

Just tested, using 7.7/Vista32/2600XT. Those avivo video sliders affect SD as well as HD - you can do it during live playback and watch the picture change :-( Only case where it doesn't is vmr9 unaccelerated:

Tested with the DVD version of DVE, and it results in 16-235 becoming 28-216:

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/7333/untitledxs6.th.png (http://img65.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitledxs6.png)

eklee

08-27-07, 01:29 PM

This is a weird thing the sound out of the card. I diabled the ATI HD Audio driver but that may have been already too late. I will spen some time this evening to get this sorted.

Don't know if this will help you. I once installed the ATI HDMI audio drivers AFTER I installed the Realtek AC'97 audio drivers. Naturally, I now had 2 audio devices in my system, and the audio goes straight to my TV via HDMI. But I wanted the audio to go through the Realtek SPDIF output to my receiver.

All I did was open the 'Sounds and Audio Devices' applet in Control Panel, set the default sound playback device to Realtek, then goto Device Manager and disabled the ATI HDMI audio device.

millerbrad

08-27-07, 01:56 PM

Just tested, using 7.7/Vista32/2600XT. Those avivo video sliders affect SD as well as HD - you can do it during live playback and watch the picture change :-( Only case where it doesn't is vmr9 unaccelerated:

Tested with the DVD version of DVE, and it results in 16-235 becoming 28-216:

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/7333/untitledxs6.th.png (http://img65.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitledxs6.png)

Sigh... Last night after I made those changes, the football game looked better in HD. But, at 11:00 when I switched over to the news in SD, the picture was not pretty. Even my wife had to say, "This picture looks terrible!"

Such a shame that ATI makes a video card that, in theory, is perfect for HTPC; yet they seem to totally flush its performance down the crapper with poor drivers.

arfster

08-27-07, 02:15 PM

Looks like a solution here: using 7.9biofix+Vista32+2600XT, setting reg_sz UseBT601CSC to 1 under umd\dxva results in SD being expanded in the same way as HD.

You can then either do nothing, leaving both SD/HD outputting 0-255, or use alluringreality's CCC 16/86 brightness trick above to bring them back to 16-235. Not ideal to have to do all this, but at first glance it seems to work. Don't have time to test now though, will do later.

arfster

08-27-07, 02:31 PM

....and works with 7.7 also.

Even better: this works with VMR9 unaccelerated also. These don't get expanded by the drivers in the first place, and by happy coincidence the CCC video controls don't affect them either, thus a net no change.

wozio

08-27-07, 03:02 PM

How does it affect color conversion? I've made comparision some time ago

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=988268#post988268

and then drivers used different equations for yuv->rgb conversion for sd and hd (input video, or surface, size >=720 kicked other equations). Now I checked with 7.6 drivers and it looks like equations are the same.

one_2go

08-27-07, 04:09 PM

Don't know if this will help you. I once installed the ATI HDMI audio drivers AFTER I installed the Realtek AC'97 audio drivers. Naturally, I now had 2 audio devices in my system, and the audio goes straight to my TV via HDMI. But I wanted the audio to go through the Realtek SPDIF output to my receiver.

All I did was open the 'Sounds and Audio Devices' applet in Control Panel, set the default sound playback device to Realtek, then goto Device Manager and disabled the ATI HDMI audio device.
Well that is what I have 2 MS UAA entries and 2 HD Audio devices, but I alreaady tried that disabling the ATI HD audio device and setting the RealTek as default. It looks like I have to do a reinstall of the audio drivers. Bummer is the next time I am upgrading the display drivers I will probaly also get the trashy audio drivers. Fiddling is a bitch with these ATI drivers, but of course I am also eyeballing the NVidea 8500 GT from MSI, no audio mess there.

Noy until the state of the art display cards can send HD Audio bitstreams over HDMI am I interested in sound over a HDMI connector.

djungel-Jim

08-27-07, 04:30 PM

What are the registry changes I have to do to the latest vista catalyst drivers to get hardware acceleration functioning on my 2400xt? Simply installing the drivers doesn't seem to give me anything.. I'm thinking of selling my xt and change it to a pro since people seem to have better luck with those cards!

Does anyone have a sample video file that works with hardware acceleration?

ekanisu

08-27-07, 04:41 PM

Update: if i use a 2 metre cable it works fine. But a 10 metre cable doesnt. Looks like the DVI output signal strength is inadequate.

There are products that fixes the DVI signal so that you can use long cables, I use a Gefen "DVI Super Booster" that fixed the problem I had but it is rather expensive ($250) but there are probably other cheaper products available.

here is a link to the Gefen DVI Super Booster:
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=3008

alluringreality

08-27-07, 05:21 PM

I used WMP, ZP, ZP Beta, PowerDVD EVR trial, and MPC. In all the behavior was as explained in #1680. The only program I expect to use that I haven't tried yet is FusionHDTV. If that works I'm good to go. I'll try a clean install from True Image and see if I again run into the issues reported and what I get with the registry change. Here's my only troubleshooting thoughts:

1 I also set CCC to use a centered display and set the overscan slider to 0%.

2 Are you using a clean driver install? One thing I noticed is that if I uninstall a driver and use the guru3d sweeper, I don't have to change Avivo settings because it's the same as the previous install. I figure those are in the typical obivious places like the registry and installed folders, so I'll guess if you've been messing with the card for a while that you're up on what stays if you're not using a clean install.

Sarvatt

08-27-07, 05:26 PM

arfster

08-27-07, 10:33 PM

How does it affect color conversion?

I did screenshots of a DVD, then the same frame after being expanded (by usebt601csc=1) and recontracted via CCC brightness16 & contrast86. The two screenshots look identical, and checking exact pixels they nearly are. Most have the exact same RGB values, with only a handful of the brighter pixels being minutely different - and I mean minutely, only +-1 red or green (never both). The double conversion is essentially lossless, as you can zoom in 8x to where you can see individual pixels without any visible difference.

OK, with that hurdle passed, I guess I make some tweaked 7.9s :-) This was the biggest failure of the ATI cards imo, and it's now gone, so time to buy another and move it into the HTPC permanently. Even better is I can simultaneously set the PC monitor on the VGA output to 0-255, and the HDTV on DVI to 16-235, without having to change anything - drag a video across screens and it switches levels. Very nice.

arfster

08-27-07, 10:37 PM

This actually might explain my results, I have been adding that string in there (and the UVDMpeg2 one) since I saw it in 7.8 betas just incase it might actually do something but never spent time testing it. Glad to hear it works for sure though!

Rofl - nice accidental reghack there. Some of the others are pretty intriguingly named, but it's a right pita to figure out what does what exactly.

Sarvatt

08-27-07, 10:52 PM

Wonder what the heck else I have going on now actually, I tend to just add them and test if they do anything and not delete them because they're in the middle of the list when I reopen regedit if I dont see any changes :) Sounds like 2600 series is fixed up good though, just the 2400 series mpeg2 and deinterlacing problems left as major bugs that I can think of and those I have a feeling may be fixed with other registry keys as I haven't touched the deinterlacing ones! They have confirmed all the info I sent them but said they needed more time to implement fixes, we may actually have good drivers for RV610 this year I hope :D Maybe someone should pass along these registry tweaks to an ATI tweak tool forum such as ati tool or ati tray tools so they can add them to make life easier on people not comfortable with regedit. I am still a little wary about modifying the inf as it invalidates the driver signature and I have read some vague info about needing them to be signed for media foundation protected media paths without downsampling such as during HD-DVD playback.

MikeSM

08-27-07, 10:55 PM

arfster

08-27-07, 11:19 PM

I am still a little wary about modifying the inf as it invalidates the driver signature and I have read some vague info about needing them to be signed for media foundation protected media paths without downsampling such as during HD-DVD playback.

That's not a bad point, although it doesn't seem to be affecting my HDDVD/Bluray playback.

Anyone know an easy way to auto-detect the correct registry path for current card and apply a few settings tweaks? Would be a lot simpler than an entire new driver package.

sweatdog

08-28-07, 12:26 AM

Sarvatt

08-28-07, 12:29 AM

That's not a bad point, although it doesn't seem to be affecting my HDDVD/Bluray playback.

Anyone know an easy way to auto-detect the correct registry path for current card and apply a few settings tweaks? Would be a lot simpler than an entire new driver package.

I think it's just me being paranoid :D The driver signature should still be there, its the WHQL signature that gets invalidated no? The whole DRM mess is a headache and I never could find conclusive info on it :lol: It did work the same for me using a edited inf for the 7.6 hotfix drivers as with a stock inf and the registry changes too. There's gotta be a way though, somehow all the driver tweak tools manage it ok!

Sarvatt

08-28-07, 12:38 AM

I have seen a couple of posts with people having trouble with 1080i, but only in Vista. I am having bad jutter with OTA CBS 1080i recorded with MCE2005. Currently using Sapphire 2400pro with mce2005. Resolution set to 1280x720 feeding a HD1000 projector. The OTA ABC 720P is smooth. Also playing HDDVD on PowerDVD Ultra smoothly. HW accel is grayed out and AMD X2 4600 cpu is at 54%. Regular DVD the HW Accel is on and cpu is only at 2%.

Used to play the recordings smootly with the old ATI 9600pro before MB crash.

I am about to give up and change over to a 8500gt. Football is almost unwatchable with the studder/judder/jitter.

Current driver 7.8 unmodified.

Decoder used is purevideo, also tried the cyberlink and ATI decoder with the same result.

Is this correctable or should I switch over to the 8500?

Try a simpler deinterlacing mode, preferably one without backwards reference samples such as plain bob to see if it judders. Try enabling v-sync. Add the dxva_nohddecode=0 tweak on the first page of this thread to enable HD resolution mpeg2 acceleration for other codecs besides ATI mpeg decoder to work. You didn't mention what codecs your HD-DVD's were using where acceleration was greyed out, so it could be alot of things there.

alluringreality

08-28-07, 01:07 AM

The following 3 or 4 steps should give you a way to quickly calibrate your display for typical 16-235 video black-levels in VISTA. If you would instead like to use overlay for playback and calibrate for 0-255 video levels, the following will not address that. This doesn't seem to work in XP, and for brevity I will address a minimum number of issues.

STEP 1 – REGISTRY CHANGE
You can use the modified drivers from #1709 onward, or take the risk yourself and manually make the related change in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{V ideo Card GUID}\0000\UMD\DXVA\ adding the string value UseBT601CSC set to 1 (also \0001\UMD\DXVA). It should be noted that on my computer these registry changes are unaffected by uninstalling the video driver or using a driver cleaner. That means a number of the settings seem to carry over from one video driver install to another.

STEP 2 – CHANGE AVIVO VIDEO SETTINGS
Go into ATI's Catalyst Control Panel and choose the advanced option. In the white graphics settings area go to “Avivo Video” and click on it. That should open some more options, so you can choose “basic color”. Set brightness to 16 and set Contrast to 86. Go to "advanced color" and untick both options. Again, these settings will likely carry from one driver install to the next.

STEP 3 – SET BLACK-LEVEL AT THE DISPLAY
Download the following file http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attac...7&d=1112308747 so you can use the black calibrator. However you open the image should be fine. If your video playback software allows images, for instance Windows Media Player does, then open the image that way like how you would have the player set if you were watching video.

Now that you have the image open, go into your TV or display's settings and find the black-level adjustment. On my TV black-level is called brightness. Turn the black level up and you should see the pattern is made of a number of vertical bars that are different shades. The one marked 16 is intended as black. As you lower the black-level you'll see the lower number bars disappear into the background. The textbook way to set black-level is to adjust the setting until 16 just fades into the background and you can still see 17 if you look really close. I typically include a little bit of below-black, because not all broadcast video is well standardized, so what I do is set my TV so I can still see 16 and at least a couple bars below it.

STEP 4 – SET WHITE-LEVEL AT THE DISPLAY
LCD, Plasma, and projection microdisplays are digital displays (which is all I'll address) and are not as important to calibrate white-level like if you were using a CRT. Unless you have a gray card, I think this setting is somewhat subjective. So if you're using a digital display and you already like what near-white video looks like, then you can skip this step. To do this properly though, you would need some way to set your white level at this point.

On my TV white level is called picture, but it's commonly called contrast. The most practical means I've come across is to find a video scene with a lot of white, maybe something mostly snow, and set your display to a level where it seems to show details in the image. Generally that's going to be a setting lower than the manufacturer default, for instance my TV shipped at 100 but was set at 68 by an ISF tech. Generally if contrast is set too high you might get a bit of color in your whites or the image might be fatiguing to watch in a dark room, and if it's set too low then bright areas aren't going to give the impression of being white. Once you've chosen a setting you think is a good balance, you'll need to quickly again go through step 3 to make sure that it didn't change your black-level too much.

General user notes:
For this to work, Catalyst Control Panel has to be loaded into memory. You will want to leave startCCC in your computer's startup for that reason. If Catalyst Control Panel fails, which I had happen when I was testing the newest Bioshock drivers, video might revert to the expanded levels that has been discussed in this thread. If you want to make sure that Catalyst Control Panel is working correctly, http://www.w6rz.net/needlepulse.zip (Windows Media Player 11 plays the file) should show 6 flashing vertical bars. Like in step 3, you might have to turn up black-level or turn down white level to see all the bars in the pattern.

sweatdog

08-28-07, 01:22 AM

Try a simpler deinterlacing mode, preferably one without backwards reference samples such as plain bob to see if it judders. Try enabling v-sync. Add the dxva_nohddecode=0 tweak on the first page of this thread to enable HD resolution mpeg2 acceleration for other codecs besides ATI mpeg decoder to work. You didn't mention what codecs your HD-DVD's were using where acceleration was greyed out, so it could be alot of things there.

I assume the PWDVD Ultra uses the Cyberlink decoder that comes with it. I am not sure if MCE2005 uses the purevideo settings or the CCC settings. I have tried any and all combinations of deInterlacing. Purevideo is set as automatic and best available in VMR9. CCC is usually in automatic with pulldown detection detected. I will try the DXVA change as you mentioned. Still the problem is only on 1080i sources.
:(

eklee

08-28-07, 01:48 AM

I have seen a couple of posts with people having trouble with 1080i, but only in Vista. I am having bad jutter with OTA CBS 1080i recorded with MCE2005. Currently using Sapphire 2400pro with mce2005. Resolution set to 1280x720 feeding a HD1000 projector. The OTA ABC 720P is smooth. Also playing HDDVD on PowerDVD Ultra smoothly. HW accel is grayed out and AMD X2 4600 cpu is at 54%. Regular DVD the HW Accel is on and cpu is only at 2%.

Used to play the recordings smootly with the old ATI 9600pro before MB crash.

I am about to give up and change over to a 8500gt. Football is almost unwatchable with the studder/judder/jitter.

Current driver 7.8 unmodified.

Decoder used is purevideo, also tried the cyberlink and ATI decoder with the same result.

Is this correctable or should I switch over to the 8500?

I used to have this same problem as you, only I have a 2600PRO. Then I installed bioshock hotfix drivers on a clean MCE2005, with Purevideo DVD decoder. Somehow this combo works for me, and CPU usage when viewing 1080i content is now around 30% (it was close to 100% before).

I do believe you need to add some registry tweaks for 2400Pro though, for MPEG2 acceleration.

wozio

08-28-07, 01:54 AM

I did screenshots of a DVD, then the same frame after being expanded (by usebt601csc=1) and recontracted via CCC brightness16 & contrast86. The two screenshots look identical, and checking exact pixels they nearly are. Most have the exact same RGB values, with only a handful of the brighter pixels being minutely different - and I mean minutely, only +-1 red or green (never both). The double conversion is essentially lossless, as you can zoom in 8x to where you can see individual pixels without any visible difference.

Yes, I checked this registry entry on 7.8 but on X1650 on XP and I am very satisfied to see that it works for me also :D

And I also see that color conversion equations are the same for both sd and hd. It was different some time ago, hard to say if better. Now drivers clearly use bt601 for every source.

arfster

08-28-07, 08:49 AM

Here's a version of the latest Vista driver update (aka biofix "7.9"), with the usual HTPC necessities. The major difference is that we figured how to fix the levels expansion bug (thanks to Sarvatt for suggestion) - it now expands SD the same as HD, see point 3 below for details on how to bring both back to 16-235 if you want.

http://rapidshare.com/files/51751553/79_vista32_tweaked.zip.html

As before, it's probably best to go into CCC/avivo video/advanced color and untick both. Possibly this does nothing, but you never know.

The changes made are mostly the same as the previous tweaked 7.7s at....
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11325038&postcount=1388

These are the differences:

1) VForceMaxResSize replaces sortoverridevidsize or whatever it was called. This fixes the bug where PDVD HDDVD/Bluray output doesn't fill its own window with hi-res screens. As before, this should be OK for up to 1920*1080, and those with 2500*1600 should set it to 4500000 (4.5 million) instead. If you still have the bug, set it to zero.

2) DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2, DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1, DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264 no longer exist to be deleted, as they were in 7.7. Sarvatt's key list seems to suggest they now have other names: VForce24FPS1080MPEG2, VForce24FPS1080VC1 and VForce24FPS1080H264, but these don't exist by default. If European 1080p25/i50 fails to accelerate for 2400 cards, these may need to be created and set to zero (or 1).

3) Colour expansion inconsistencies fixed: By default HD is levels expanded, but SD not, making consistent calibration impossible. Setting UseBT601CSC to 1 results in SD also being expanded. This leaves you with everything output at 0-255 (aka PC levels). If you want 16-235 (video levels) then go into CCC/avivo video/basic colour and set "use applications setting" off, brightness to 16, contrast 86.

For those for whom this is gibberish: it's probably best to leave it on PC levels, unless you output to a HDTV, in which case other sources (DVD, cable box etc) will be sending it video levels and thus so should your PC. Either way, remember to calibrate, this is good:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=35567&d=1112308747

Very crudely put: if you're outputting 16-235 then 17 should be just visible but no more, 16 should be absolute black, 235 should be absolute white, 234 minutely less bright (some prefer white as 240-245, especially with ultra bright plasmas). If you choose 0-255 then absolute black is 0, white is 255.

Users of 2400s might have some other problems, please post if you know what 7.9biofix needs for them. Still dxva_nohddecode 0 maybe? Still deinterlacing mode selection problems?

Would be nice if someone could make a XP version of this (or Vista64, even easier), or better figures out how to detect the unique reg-path and do these registry updates in a little file rather than an entire driver package (will help if anyone wants to do this).

Edit: major known bugs for the 2600 are with VA deinterlacing+cyberlink mpeg2+EVR. If you force VA deinterlacing in CCC, as my default install does, the cyberlink mpeg2 decoder goes into judderfest mode when used with EVR (which includes WMP11, Vista MCE and PDVD itself). The AVIVO decoder works fine with EVR or VMR9, so use that with any third party app. VMR9+Cyberlink is fine also. H264 1080i is unaffected.

If you select auto in CCC it just bobs for any format 1080i *slaps ATI*.

I've left it on auto for the 2400 cards, since deinterlacing mode selection in vista was always a bit wobbly with past releases. VA deinterlacing used to be able to be forced in XP though - possible help here it seems, as it least in Vista the AVIVO decoders use a lot less GPU% in decoding mpeg2 (used to be around 50% decoding alone, before deinterlacing).

arfster

08-28-07, 09:37 AM

Oops, maybe a mistake: the vforce screensize thing for PDVD doesn't quite refer to pixels, there is an overhead. Formula seems to be screenwidth squared * 0.75, so for 1920-wide monitors (both 1920*1080 and 1920*1200) it appears to need 1920*1920*0.75=2764800 to touch the screen sides.

Post if this is wrong pls, maybe different for other setups.

Mntneer

08-28-07, 09:41 AM

Isn't HD a 0 IRE and SD a 7.5 IRE?

arfster

08-28-07, 10:06 AM

Isn't HD a 0 IRE and SD a 7.5 IRE?

Captain, Sir! A can of worms!

Don't open it, son!

It was only supposed to be a quick guide for beginners :-) Those who know the term IRE will probably just manually set registry stuff themselves.

davidoff1204

08-28-07, 10:16 AM

I had a 1650XT that i changed for a Sapphire 2600 pro. When i connect it to my Mitsubishi HC3100 i don't get any signal with a dvi/hdmi cable who worked perfectly before i changed my graphic card. When I use a hdmi/hdmi cable with the dongle everything rules. Anyone has a solution, because I would prefer using my dvi/hdmi cable ?

topcaser

08-28-07, 10:37 AM

I have got following problem by using a 2600XT: I have got at each DVI port a monitor and use these in extended mode. All works well with this scenario. Nevertheless, as soon i open DVBViewer i can watch to the video. If i move the viewer window to the extended monitor (the clone) the picture of the video freezes but not the sound. If i move the window back to the first desktop video runs again smoothely.

The same is with other viewers and the same is when i am using different renderers.

If i switch to another mode as to extended mode, e.g. clone or strechted mode, i can see the video running on both monitors. But these are not the modes i want have.

Can you try this in your environment and give me some feedback? Is it a CCC issue??

arfster

08-28-07, 10:45 AM

Can you try this in your environment and give me some feedback? Is it a CCC issue??

Windows doesn't do hardware acceleration properly on secondary monitors. In some scenarios it works, but it'll break deinterlacing or some other thing. Generally I just switch the primary ("swap display mapping").

topcaser

08-28-07, 10:48 AM

Generally I just switch the primary ("swap display mapping").
Dont understand this. Do you mean you switch to the primary monitor only?

Edit: Tried to disable DXVA and you are right: Not the video runs also on the other monitor. But: Witout sync:-( it is very jerkey...

Edit2:
Just found this by searching around:
Auch die Wiedergabe eines Videos auf einem zweiten Monitor dürfte nun keinerlei Probleme mehr bereiten
Means translated: Also the playback of videos on a second monitor would be not a problem at all now.

It is a very old source talking about CCC5.6. Nevertheless, it seems that problems were already solved, isnt it?

eat

08-28-07, 11:07 AM

Hi All,

Just joined this forum due to this thread.
I've bought the HD2400pro to replace my X1600Xt card for 2 reasons.
1) the HD acc.
2) passive cooling
Installation was no issues.
Changed the rez to 1920x1080 and fired up MCE2005.
*bang* my TV displays "No Signal", when I kill MCE2005 and just uses the normal XP gui, 1920x1080 works fine. But once I start the MCE part, the screen goes black on me.

Any pointers?

Right not I use 1280*720 which works, but it's not 1:1 and looks like crap.

arfster

08-28-07, 11:17 AM

It is a very old source talking about CCC5.6. Nevertheless, it seems that problems were already solved, isnt it?

Fraid not, still buggy. I think it's a windows thing.

BTW, what I meant above was to go into CCC display manager, right-click one display, and select swap display mapping. The resolutions remain the same, but the primary (the one with the start menu) switches across to the other screen. You can then happily play accelerated video there.

maxleung

08-28-07, 11:33 AM

arfster, has anyone confirmed the black level "fix" for XP yet? Thanks!

arfster

08-28-07, 11:40 AM

arfster, has anyone confirmed the black level "fix" for XP yet? Thanks!

Not to my knowledge, but it's easy to test: just create a reg string in rooot 0000 called UseBT601CSC, set it to 1, (reboot?), and check to see if anything SD is getting expanded.

alluringreality

08-28-07, 12:01 PM

My guess is still that some setting was causing the other results that were inconsistent with what I was seeing. From a clean install, if Avivo Video is changed then only SD EVR (not a part of XP) was ever incorrect for me on 3 different installs. If you want to just change Avivo Video to brightness 16 and contrast 86 there's a chance that you'll get consistent levels in XP. All you really need for a basic check is a calibration DVD, http://www.w6rz.net/needlepulse.zip, and some way to turn acceleration on and off.

mbkatt

08-28-07, 12:44 PM

Thank you for the replies gentlemen. That most likely saved me several more ours of frustration.

Any of you know where else I can find the ATI DVI to HDMI adapter that supports audio passthrough? I found the dongle on ATI's website but unfortunately it is out of stock.

http://shop.ati.com/product.asp?sku=3526142

Did you order it? If so, did they ship it even though they said it was out of stock?

I just got a MSI RX2600XT-T2D512EZ Radeon HD 2600XT HD 512M DDR3 PCI-e from newegg.com and it did not come with the dongle. I need one.

alluringreality

08-28-07, 01:54 PM

Yep... same here. I think they might have stopped including them because I can't find anything that says it should have been included except for Newegg's site. Newegg offered to refund me $15. There's that link or http://www.visiontek.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=133 I had no idea what "This adapter will not enable HDMI through the DVI output of any Radeon™ HD 2000 series board; it will only work if your product was originally shipped with a DVI-HDMI adapter." meant so I wrote ATI. I haven't called ATI yet, but here's basically what they sent me.

"Please contact our Presales department with your request as we are
unable to assist you with this issue. They may be contacted at
1-877-284-7379 or 1-877-284-1564."

mbkatt

08-28-07, 03:07 PM

originalsnuffy

08-28-07, 03:11 PM

To repeat: The dongle does work with the 2400 and 2600. I bought one from ATI (somebody had a keyword that gives free shipping earlier in this thread). It works just fine on my lowly 2400. And yes, the dongle does support audio over hdmi (at least into 2 channels; maybe more---still waiting for my new receiver).

wozio

08-28-07, 04:27 PM

arfster, has anyone confirmed the black level "fix" for XP yet? Thanks!
For me it does work on XP/X1650/7.8 so I believe it will work also for 2x00

mbkatt

08-28-07, 04:29 PM

Sarvatt

08-28-07, 04:36 PM

2) DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2, DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1, DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264 no longer exist to be deleted, as they were in 7.7. Sarvatt's key list seems to suggest they now have other names: VForce24FPS1080MPEG2, VForce24FPS1080VC1 and VForce24FPS1080H264, but these don't exist by default. If European 1080p25/i50 fails to accelerate for 2400 cards, these may need to be created and set to zero (or 1).

1080i50 h264 accelerates fine without the key existing here on 2400 pro

Users of 2400s might have some other problems, please post if you know what 7.9biofix needs for them. Still dxva_nohddecode 0 maybe? Still deinterlacing mode selection problems?

still need dxva_nohddecode string in the registry (I dont put any value, same effect as making it 0) to enable HD mpeg2 acceleration with directshow codecs, but the ati mpeg decoder isnt effected either way. tried every key in the dll but none changed available deinterlacing resolutions for directshow :(

Would be nice if someone could make a XP version of this (or Vista64, even easier)

just remember they should be DWORD's on XP if anyone's adding them, when I tried it last DXVA_NOHDDECODE didn't work as a string and only as dword.

If you select auto in CCC it just bobs for any format 1080i *slaps ATI*.

I've left it on auto for the 2400 cards, since deinterlacing mode selection in vista was always a bit wobbly with past releases. VA deinterlacing used to be able to be forced in XP though - possible help here it seems, as it least in Vista the AVIVO decoders use a lot less GPU% in decoding mpeg2 (used to be around 50% decoding alone, before deinterlacing).

auto definitely is the best for 2400 for me on vista, forcing a higher level removes bob from the available options and bob/weave are the only ones that report support for HD resolution deinterlacing. everything weaves for HD resolution using the MS mpeg2 decoder or cyberlink h264 when you force higher :( ATI codec works fine though but some people have quality issues with it. auto works perfect for me picking VA always with the ATI mpeg decoder though!

has anyone with access to broadcast h264 tried the ATI mpeg decoder for it? curious how well it works in that regard and I think it should have a h264 fourcc to work with it. all the clips I have are x264 or AVC1 fourcc so the ati decoder doesn't work with it. also, you might want to try H264HDDeintBob = 0 or HDDeintVector = 1 arfster, maybe that'll allow VA on auto without forcing it.

JohnPain

08-28-07, 05:07 PM

Hi,

I just ordered a Powercolor HD2400Pro AGP (R61BG-ND3) yesterday and it arrived today :)

It should run in my HTPC, a 2,53 P4 with a Shuttle AV49P Mainboard.
I want to exchange my old FX5200 with it.

Did a complete new install with a xp pro sp2. Last Driver to install was the display-driver. I didn`t manage it to geht the latest ATI-driver installed, it ever says my card is not supported.

Only driver it liked to install was the one supplied on CD (7.7 I suppose).

But......

Windows won`t start correctly, after bootscreen there is no picture on both displays (dvi and vga).....

systems seems to be in some freeze, i tested if it is only a display issue by trying to administrate from another pc using VNC.

So I really need some tips how to get the driver installed and the card running to do further things.....

Thanks,
JohnPain

Sarvatt

08-28-07, 05:15 PM

Try these JohnPain?

http://visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/DOWNLOAD/Cat_7.9/

Also be careful with VNC, the way it hooks into the video driver has completely killed DXVA for me in the past on a 6600gt. I switched to just settling for RDP for the HTPC because of it :D

mbkatt

08-28-07, 05:25 PM

Ok, so I ordered one from ATI using the code for 5% off and free shipping... It'll be $6.65 for the adapter. However, I'll just have to wiat for ATI to get some in.

I did notice that thier Canada store has them in stock, so hopefully I will not be waiting too long.

I cancelled my order with ATI, because I called newegg customer service and they're shipping me a free one. They carry it under the Powercolor name. here's the item number: N82E16814999004
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814999004

It should be here in 3 days.

Once again newegg comes through.

JohnPain

08-28-07, 06:13 PM

Try these JohnPain?
http://visiontek.com/teksupport/drivers/DOWNLOAD/Cat_7.9/

Hmm, thanks. These just installed fine after deleting old ones and removing the card from device manager.

But, same problem as before. When it is time for the windows desktop to display the fan on the card goes wild at first, then both displays get no more picture and turn to standby, shortly afte, the fan on the card gets slow.

I now will go to sleep, maybe I have another idea tomorrow....

Greetings,
JohnPain

Sarvatt

08-28-07, 07:54 PM

are you sure you plugged the power into the card?

JohnPain

08-29-07, 04:21 AM

are you sure you plugged the power into the card?

Jep, plugged extra power from power supply at the socket at the end of the card. Will try a different one today. Damn Card....

JohnPain

btw, i found one jumper right at the end of the card where are the video-outs are.
For what is it? Changing position gave me pixel salad, but windows started....

Rick Guynn

08-29-07, 08:55 AM

Not to my knowledge, but it's easy to test: just create a reg string in rooot 0000 called UseBT601CSC, set it to 1, (reboot?), and check to see if anything SD is getting expanded.

Using XP, 2600XT, unmodified 7.8, VMR9 in ZoomPlayer.

Using the "AVIVO Color" controls has no effect for me on the video window either in ZoomPlayer or PowerDVD. I did find that by enabling the color controls in ZP, I could adjust the actual levels and 'tuned' them in by taking snapshots in DVE (SD, after using the above registry entry) and evaluating the values of 'video black' and 'video white'. I set those to 16 and 239.

Then I had to use the 'desktop' color controls to get the proper brightness and contrast settings, as those controls are inactive on my monitor in DVI mode. I did go back and verify that the desktop controls did not affect the values of black and white set previously.

Then I set up a profile for this 'video' setting, so I can use standard desktop setting during normal use.

I then went back and looked at the '24' clip I posted a snap from earlier, and it looks much different. I then checked PowerDVD again, with the same clip of 24 on the screen at the same time (side by side) and they look the same. I did not do this before, so I don't know how PowerDVD compared before.

I checked DVE HD behavior, and I am now convinced of something else - my colorspace was never expanded under PowerDVD. When I put that registry key "UseBT..." in, DVE SD was obviously expanded and clipping white and black, because that '-4%' was the same as the background no matter what I set brightness to on that desktop setting, and I took the snap in Paint.net and confirmed both as reading '0'.

So, as far as I can figure, the ZoomPlayer color controls accomplish the same thing as previously described for the 'AVIVO' color controls in the CCC. Also, the color controls available in PowerDVD during HD play also accomplish the same thing. This is the only thing that explains what I am seeing in PowerDVD when playing DVE HD. If necessary, I can take a screenshot with my camera and post it up.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, but i spent aquite a bit of time last night looking at this and though I'd share.

nikosk

08-29-07, 09:50 AM

I think I'm about to ask something stupid, but will do so, anyway.

Have seen mentioned repeatedly in this thread AVIVO decoders.
Other than the known ones (Cyberlinks, CoreAVC, ffdshow, Elecards, purevideo) are there decoders (H264, and/or mpeg2) that come from ATI natively for this card series?
I do not see anything installed on my system... (might be that I'm not searching in the right place????)

Thanks,

arfster

08-29-07, 11:01 AM

Using XP, 2600XT, unmodified 7.8, VMR9 in ZoomPlayer.
......<snip>
Anyway, sorry for the long post, but i spent aquite a bit of time last night looking at this and though I'd share.

Thanks - how confusing :-)

What do you get from this....
http://www.w6rz.net/ramp.zip

The bars next to the dots, what value are they?

alluringreality

08-29-07, 11:16 AM

It was always said that accelerated HD levels were expanded and not 16-235. Here is the quickest check I can think of for anyone to take and tell if your levels are expanded. This will not be perfect, but for a quick check I'll guess it should work. Open the black image from http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=35567&d=1112308747 in paint.net and the RBG values should match the numbers shown when you pull colors. Then run http://www.w6rz.net/ramp.zip in a video player so that it's accelerated by the video card and do a print screen on it. When you paste it into paint the bottom bars should show RGB values going from left to right of 5, 16, 27, 38, 49, 60, 71, 82, 93, 104, 115, 126, 137, 147, 158, 169, 180, 191, 202, 213, 224, 235, 246. I think the default expansion shows the the two left reading 0 and the two right probably 255. To do the same by eye without checking RGB values, just make sure that the 16 bars on the two images are the same shade and that you can tell 5 apart from 16 and 235 apart from 246. If you can find a standard definition pluge pattern video, the background black should be 16 and also match the other two.

One thing that has been repeated in this thread is to use Dword instead of String Values for XP.

RogueWarrior

08-29-07, 01:49 PM

ToughRowToHoe

08-29-07, 03:05 PM

Hi, I've appreciated all of the information in this thread. I am having a problem that doesn't seem to have cropped up here. I have a Sapphire 2400 Pro running over HDMI without the ATI adapter with 7.7 drivers. This is in Vista Home Premium. I am trying to get my onboard Realtek audio to work since I can't send audio via HDMI without the ATI adapter and I want to use the SPDIF output to my receiver anyhow. This doesn't work:

Don't know if this will help you. I once installed the ATI HDMI audio drivers AFTER I installed the Realtek AC'97 audio drivers. Naturally, I now had 2 audio devices in my system, and the audio goes straight to my TV via HDMI. But I wanted the audio to go through the Realtek SPDIF output to my receiver.

All I did was open the 'Sounds and Audio Devices' applet in Control Panel, set the default sound playback device to Realtek, then goto Device Manager and disabled the ATI HDMI audio device.

There is no ATI HDMI audio device in the Device Manager. From reading this thread, I understand that in Vista the MS driver is used. I have tried disabling it with no success. The Realtek audio is selected as default in the "Sounds and Audio" applet. I assume that I'm missing something fairly elementary. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

nikosk

08-29-07, 03:15 PM

Hello I have a HIS 2600Pro, and when I watch video in Vista MCE - movies and the such, even TV - all red areas are saturated and pixelize. I am on Cat 7.7 (afraid o go to 7.8 or 7.9 because of comments in the thread).

Any ideas? Do I need a setting?

Thanks

You mean something like that: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=11089175&postcount=455

If yes, you need Registry teaks as listed within this thread... Search it for "posterization" and you'll find the solution.

arfster

08-29-07, 03:18 PM

One thing that has been repeated in this thread is to use Dword instead of String Values for XP.

Might be helpful if some XP user with registry-fiddling experience posted what types the various hidden keys are dxva_detailenhance/trdenoise/vforceworsit/usebt601csc and co).

I've no idea since I don't use XP - are all these that exist in Vista's umd/dxva dwords under XP? (excepting the reg_binary ones).

Nils_lars

08-29-07, 03:37 PM

Hi, I've appreciated all of the information in this thread. I am having a problem that doesn't seem to have cropped up here. I have a Sapphire 2400 Pro running over HDMI without the ATI adapter with 7.7 drivers. This is in Vista Home Premium. I am trying to get my onboard Realtek audio to work since I can't send audio via HDMI without the ATI adapter and I want to use the SPDIF output to my receiver anyhow. This doesn't work:

There is no ATI HDMI audio device in the Device Manager. From reading this thread, I understand that in Vista the MS driver is used. I have tried disabling it with no success. The Realtek audio is selected as default in the "Sounds and Audio" applet. I assume that I'm missing something fairly elementary. Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

I am having a similar problem and I am running XP I installed the only audio drivers I could find on ATIs site which are listed as being for the 2900.

I havent recieved my ATI dongle yet but I figured installing the drivers would at least get the HDMI audio to show in Device manager but it still only shows my Creative sound card and that works but the volume is terribly low and only plays out of one speaker.

I have a 2600pro AGP and running XP , does anyone know if I am using the correct audio drivers or are there better ones.

Also should I be seeing HDMI show in Device manager even without the Dongle or is it a XP problem?

tiberian9

08-29-07, 04:01 PM

Hi all. I am having problems with my 2600pro under XP. I have it connected to a 1080p tv and was quite happily using 7.7 catalyst drivers. Then I foolishly updated to 7.8.
My standard pc desktop still fills the whole screen and is reported by the tv as being 1920x1080. But when I fire up a dvd or hddvd in powerdvd or mediaportal the video no longer appears as it should. I now have a black border on all sides. I tried reinstalling 7.7, 7.8 and even the bioshock hotfix and I still have the same problem. I tried adding VForceMaxResSize in the registry still no joy. Each uninstall included tidying up the registry and removing ati directories.

This is my first ever ati card and the user experience is not good.I feel like throwing my toys out of the pram. Has anyone got any ideas?

thanks.:(

stanger89

08-29-07, 04:05 PM

arfster

08-29-07, 04:21 PM

OK, so for the lazy among us, can somebody give us a runndown/summary of the current state of 2x00 performance, under XP (and Vista)? I get the impression that under Vista it's kind of POS out of the box, but you can kinda hack it into working really well, but XP seems far more unclear.

There's not much difference between the two OS's now I think. Generally speaking, the drivers are quite garbage, but we've figured out how to tweak away almost all of the bugs. I think all of the tweaks work in XP, but someone needs to do a driver package for that.

There also seem to be a lot of incompatibility problems, possibly with certain motherboards, leading to stability issues and failed acceleration. If this happens you just rma the card though.

Those are the negatives, but the positives are the ultra low CPU use, excellent scaling, deblocking and deinterlacing.

Nils_lars

08-29-07, 06:16 PM

Hmm anybody able to answer my audio type questions above?

vega22

08-29-07, 06:43 PM

There's not much difference between the two OS's now I think. Generally speaking, the drivers are quite garbage, but we've figured out how to tweak away almost all of the bugs. I think all of the tweaks work in XP, but someone needs to do a driver package for that.

There also seem to be a lot of incompatibility problems, possibly with certain motherboards, leading to stability issues and failed acceleration. If this happens you just rma the card though.

Those are the negatives, but the positives are the ultra low CPU use, excellent scaling, deblocking and deinterlacing.

Arfster, I have one 8800GTS in XP and I want to improve the PQ in my HTPC. I watch much satellite Tv and 8800GTS always has deinterlaced worse than my previous 6600, although general PQ is better in the 8800, of course. I am tired to read reviews 2600xt vs. 8600gts with so many unequal results and nonreliable. In ones the Ati handles better the noise, in others is the cleanest Nvidia. In (almost) all the two they handle equal the deinterlace, and I´m sure this is impossible. I must try to make work one 2600xt in my xp with the thousands of tricks, or must go to the safe thing (Nvidia) with the risk to continue having poor deinterlace?
What you think? I believe that you are the best one in this forum to respond this question. Thank you very much…

Rick Guynn

08-29-07, 08:27 PM

Thanks - how confusing :-)

What do you get from this....
http://www.w6rz.net/ramp.zip

The bars next to the dots, what value are they?

For the bars next to the dots I get 16 and 239, if I check the BTB and WTW (next bars over), I get 5 and 249. Here's a snap from ZP. Also, I am attaching a new snap of that 24 pic I posted before with the new settings.

Rick Guynn

08-29-07, 08:32 PM