ATI Radeon HD 2X00 (2400,2600,2900) series owners thread

[protovision]

EDIT: Some quick links and info: (I'm going to keep updating this over the next couple of days...)
SPECIAL THANKS to Arfster, exDeus, ToughRowToHoe, and others who have offered valuable info and answered hundreds of posts!

Arfster's summary post of Reg Tweaks:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=2121
as well from exDeus
http://exdeus.home.comcast.net/ati-hd2x00/

ExDeus' Reg Tweaks Script:
http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/

x.264/H.264 info:
- tetsuo55 found some info on x264(encoder)/MKV/20fps bug over at Doom9:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=132924
Arfster - "...The PDVD codec supports acceleration for all h264, except those that use extreme settings such as >4 ref frames (and some other stuff, someone a few pages back figured out exactly what). Unfortunately this includes most x264 encodes."
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post12473507
- DJBlu's x264 encoding tips: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...6#post12449406

----------------------------------------------------

Audio related:
ToughRowToHoe - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=3527
ToughRowToHoe - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0#post12449880

"...ATI Knowledge Base Answer: 737-28867
In order to enable HDMI support on the Radeon™ HD 2000 series board through the DVI connector, AMD has designed a unique DVI-HDMI adapter..."

- remember to set your audio output device in control panel/sounds and audio devices/audio, look for 'ATI' and 'HDMI' if thats what you want

----------------------------------------------------

General Info: (UNDER CONSTRUCTION! I'm going through the forum backwards...)

Drivers:
- install your manfacturer's drivers FIRST (included CD, etc), then get any ATI updates. Manfuacturer's drivers many include HDMI sound driver/AVIVO, which ATI drivers many not (at least, this is the case for my Asus 2600Pro)

Latest public drivers from ATI:
http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx



Radeon 2400's:
- Good for general HD disk playback (HD DVD, Blu-ray, 1080p, note: some disks are only 1080i, see below)
- Not great at 1080i (broadcasts/satellite/some HD disks), has problems deinterlacing

Radeon 2600's:
- Good for general HD disk playback (HD DVD, Blu-ray, 1080p)
- Can handle 1080i deinterlacing as well

AGP:
DPlettner - "...HA is not broken for all AGP owners. VC1 and AVC acceleration works great for me (both HD DVD and Blu-ray) on an old nForce2 AMD 3200+ AGP PC. However, for driver versions at 7.9 and above..."
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post12545542
some more info: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5#post12361175

Tips on AGP installation:
http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/#AGP

More tips/info regarding AGP:
added 02/08/08: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=3846
added 02/08/08: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...#post128447704



PowerDVD tips:
- some options/checkboxes under configuration only appear while playing HD; DTS downmixing, etc


-------------------------------------------------------------

Hi All,

I thought that now that the lower end cards are starting to show up, we should start a dedicated thread for performance, issues and solutions.

In keeping with the other owners threads, please refrain from price discussions, other than to say there is a sale on somewhere on these cards. Hopefully this thread will not be about where to buy, etc.

I currently have the Sapphire HD 2400 Pro, which I picked up in downtown Toronto @ Canada Computers. I did some quick tests during the weekend, and saw some very promising, but not perfect results.

In my setup, I'm currently running XP/MCE2005, and I'm outputting to a Westinghouse TX-47, via a DVI->HDMI cable. After solving my first problem (underscan @ 1920x1080), while trying some quick tests in WMP10, I would occasionally see some macroblocking and decompression artifacts, usually just before a large scene change, so I think it might be disk I/O issues.

p.

[RichB]

I also have a Sapphire 2400Pro and the results are pretty bad with PowerDVD 7.3 build 2911.

I have tried the card with XP and Vista. On both systems, I cannot play HD DVDs and BD's with Hardware Acceleration enabled. I get macro-blocking, screen corruption, green flashes, blank screens. I can run without hardware acceleration.
I got it to work for one resolution: 1920x1200 on my XP systems but it would not work at 1920x1080.

I can get it to run without hardware acceleration. Also, I had to uncheck the application controlled in the video setting to get consistent black levels.

It does look great without HW/Accel. Also, I have submitted support requests to PowerDVD and ATI.

- Rich

[Dodgexander]

Its the CCC drivers, they are completely random when it comes to resolutions/refrash rates.

[DJ79]

I also tried the Sapphire 2400Pro, but I'm sending it back. Unlike RichB's experience, PowerDVD 7.3 2911 worked fine, for the most part, both with and without accelleration. Once it chrashed for no reason, and once it gave me some funny message about not communicating with the display (HDCP, I suppose). Otherwise it worked fine; I even had a feeling it had less banding (I run a 7900GS to a 1366 x 768 plasma), but that would require more testing with color profiles, and I've already pulled the board out.

It's MCE and normal operation that I'm sending it back for: Every time I try to play a digital TV channel, or a digital recording, MCE 2005 crashes. So does Media Player on those recordings. I get sparklies when I play photos in MCE (over 50' DVI cable) -- I had an old Radeon 9250 board that did the same -- I guess the DVI transcievers are substandard. I pulled the card from the HTPC and put it in my desktop, and it had the same behavior with those digital recordings, but no sparklies. What's more, once in a while the screen blanks and after a few seconds I get one of those VPU recover messages -- something like the board doen't resopond to driver commands.

The issue with digital channels is probably software related, and I understand that I may have received a bad unit, and another one might work fine, but I've had some bad experiences with other Sapphire boards, and I'll wait until something else shows up, and put up with banding in HD-DVD some more.

[arfster]

Yup, I'm getting the driverstoppedresponding error messages in Vista, several times a day. Had the same thing with the 8500gt a bit, but it stopped after a few driver updates. Possibly it might be a PCIE voltage issue too.

A 50' dvi cable is an absolute monster though, that's well outside the standard. I'm severely unimpressed with the card, but I don't really think you can blame it for that one :-)

[RichB]

Originally Posted by Dodgexander

Its the CCC drivers, they are completely random when it comes to resolutions/refrash rates.

CCC drivers? I am not following you.

I also submitted a tech support request to Sapphire for good measure.

- Rich

[protovision]

Originally Posted by RichB

CCC drivers? I am not following you.

- Rich

he's referring to the 'Catalyst Control Center', the ATI driver's and app.

p.

[arfster]

Edit: updated. Probably worth getting the Vista hotfix mentioned further down in thread too. As of today (10/july), the only remaining problem in Vista is forced tv>pc colour expansion with videos that are >719 vertical lines. Anything lower is fine.


These are for Vista problems, but some work for XP also. The difference is that in XP they're dwords, and go into the root (0000) directory rather than umd/dxva. For either OS, if you uninstall the driver it deletes all these keys, and the reinstall will set them back to default.


1) For the 2400 only, mpeg2 HD hardware acceleration doesn't work, and neither does European 25/50fps 1080i50. Set these strings to zero:

HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_NOHDDECODE (add if it isn't there)
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1


The SORTOVERRIDE ones mentioned elsewhere are probably worth keeping - ATI have them in the 2400 installation but not the 2600, so there must be a performance reason. It's not a problem either, since mpeg2 acceleration works with them there as long as NOHDDECODE is at zero. However, it's possible 60fps 720p material might be unaccelerated as a result of the fpscap one, haven't checked.


2) Horrible forced denoising and sharpening, seemingly for XP/Vista and pretty much all Radeons. Add these keys to umd/dxva:

TrDenoise 0
DXVA_DetailEnhance 0

(note: not sure detailenhance makes any difference as of the latest hotfix drivers, there seems to be another key handling it).


3) WMV acceleration broken. Search for DXVA_WMV_NA, change to 0. Now a new option to allow acceleraiton appears under the control centre's video settings (maybe needs a reboot).

[rgathright]

Diamond now has the 2600 series on there website, but am confused. What is the differences between the 4 different models.

http://www.diamondmm.com/HD2600XT.php

[O2C]

Originally Posted by rgathright

Diamond now has the 2600 series on there website, but am confused. What is the differences between the 4 different models.

http://www.diamondmm.com/HD2600XT.php

The difference is in the type of memory used and the amount. Generally speaking, later revisions of the GDDR perform better. But for these cards in HTPC use, there's little practical difference. You'd see a greater difference in high end gaming cards requiring high speeds and bandwidth.

[arfster]

Since the 2400 (xt and pro) is crippled in video performance in their drivers a bit but the 2600 isn't, ATI themselves seem to be thinking the 2600 is more powerful.

However, from my tests this won't be needed under most circumstances, since the 2400pro's gpu copes with >50mbit fairly easily in any format, and 1080i maybe up to around 25mbit (you can see GPU usage in rivatuner). I still need to test different forms of deinterlacing though, and maybe memory bandwidth issues will bite - I've only tested up to around 45mbit 1080p, and 18mbit 1080i, both in h264 (the latter eats a lot more btw, up around 60%).

However, if you use one of those fancy 2500*1600 monitors that certainly would max out the gpu pretty fast, as upscaling really hurts.

[arfster]

By the way, there's a new beta vista driver on the ATI site. Still has the colour expansion problem, but now it only affects HD, and SD is fine (with 7.6 it affects hardware accelerated vmr9 modes, and all EVR modes).

[bialio]

Originally Posted by arfster

By the way, there's a new beta vista driver on the ATI site. Still has the colour expansion problem, but now it only affects HD, and SD is fine (with 7.6 it affects hardware accelerated vmr9 modes, and all EVR modes).

Is this driver available to the general public? If so where on ATI's website is it?

Thanks,
btl.

[RichB]

Originally Posted by arfster

However, if you use one of those fancy 2500*1600 monitors that certainly would max out the gpu pretty fast, as upscaling really hurts.

Strangely enough, I was able to run HW accel for VC1 and AVC with PowerDVD on my XP system at 1920x1200 but not at 1920x1080. This is counter intuitive. I wonder what effect scaling is having on this. It is counter intuitive.

- Rich

[protovision]

I had another chance to test out the card yesterday. I did a full reinstall of MCE2005/SP2 (due to earlier hw/bsod issues) and even took a chance and did the OS with the HD2400 installed. Installed MB drivers, then Sapphire driver disk, no probs. I haven't done any registry tweaks yet.

System:
C2D 2x1.86ghz, Asus P5B-VM, 2GB dual channel RAM, SATA drives, HD 2400 Pro.

Installed Haali media splitter, then PowerDVD. I have this all connected to my 47" LCD via a dvi to hdmi cable, I haven't tested the ati hdmi 'audio' dongle yet, but I did see the driver for it install, and I think I saw the option to redirect sound through it in PowerDVD. When I looked to see if acceleration was on, the option was greyed out/unavailable.

Tested a few clips I have:

The Prestige (blu ray / 1080p/AVC MPEG-4) - 0% cpu usage(!), perfect quality

TombRaider (blu ray / 1080p/MPEG-2) - 50% cpu, ok but not great quality (7/10), artifacts, weird scanlines

King Arthur (h.264 / 50hz / .ts) - 0% cpu, great quality, a bit soft.
(seems like S*yHD stuff plays very well)

More tests tonight, including some of the registry tweaks here and in the other 2400 thread, and hopefully I can test the ati hdmi sound dongle. Thanks to arfster and others for registry tweaks!

p.

[arfster]

Originally Posted by RichB

Strangely enough, I was able to run HW accel for VC1 and AVC with PowerDVD on my XP system at 1920x1200 but not at 1920x1080. This is counter intuitive. I wonder what effect scaling is having on this. It is counter intuitive.

It's pretty linear to the output resolution, not so much the act of scaling itself. Accelerating 1920*1200 wouldn't be a problem unless it was interlaced, and even then I think you'd still be OK. From memory, 1080i source material output at 1080p results in max 65% GPU in rivatuner - when it hits 100% you immediately get framedrop/jitter.

[taz291819]

I have the HD 2900XT myself, but since it doesn't have UMD, I have hardware acceleration turned off, and let the CPU do everything (E6600 overclocked). Works fine for me.

[arfster]

Latest testing update: with the new Vista betas. After applying all registry updates, everything is accelerated. Colour expansion no longer happens on SD, but does as soon as vertical resolution hits 720 lines, regardless of format, renderer or DXVA on/off.

It's exactly 720 too, at 718 lines it doesn't expand - you can do this in playback with ffdshow to demonstrate. Thus, a very silly bug, and surely an easy one to fix from ATI's side. Possibly they're using different internal colour spaces with HD resolutions (performance reasons?).

Getting there.....

[RichB]

Originally Posted by arfster

Latest testing update: with the new Vista betas. After applying all registry updates, everything is accelerated. Colour expansion no longer happens on SD, but does as soon as vertical resolution hits 720 lines, regardless of format, renderer or DXVA on/off.

It's exactly 720 too, at 718 lines it doesn't expand - you can do this in playback with ffdshow to demonstrate. Thus, a very silly bug, and surely an easy one to fix from ATI's side. Possibly they're using different internal colour spaces with HD resolutions (performance reasons?).

Getting there.....

I ran RivaTuner while playing PowerDVD AVC with HW Accel and the GPU is at 30% while I get green flashed, pauses and macro-blocking.

I submitted more information to ATI. Can you PM me with a place to download the Vista Beta drivers?

- Rich

[bialio]

me too! Beta drivers please!

[Dessie]

Originally Posted by arfster

Freaking stupid driver installation package. Some fixes for these problems:

1) For the 2400 only, mpeg2 HD hardware acceleration completely broken, and any format 1080 25/50hz acceleration broken. Delete these keys from your registry:

HKR, "UMD\DXVA",SORTOverrideFPSCaps, %REG_SZ%, "30"
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps, %REG_SZ%, "1024000"
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2, %REG_SZ%, "1"
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264, %REG_SZ%, "1"
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1, %REG_SZ%, "1"

The latter three are completely pointless, since the card can easily cope with any 1080 stuff you throw at it. The first might have a point in telling the card not to try the very toughest material, but you can always put them back later. However, note that if you deinterace high bitrate stuff to a 1080p output, and use VMR9 in Vista, the card maxxes out and will drop frames like crazy. Switch to EVR (PDVD/WMP) or use a lower output res and it'll be fine.


2) Horrible forced denoising and sharpening. Add these keys to the same section, under umd/dxva:

TrDenoise 0
DXVA_DetailEnhance 0

In Vista these are strings, in XP they're dwords.


3) WMV acceleration broken. Search for DXVA_WMV_NA, change to 0. Now a new option to allow acceleraiton appears under the control centre's video settings (maybe needs a reboot).

Thanks for your work on this issue. I have tried deleting the keys to get mpeg 2 HD hardware acceleration to work in XP but no joy.
Has anyone else got this to work in XP?

[arfster]

Vista beta drivers:

https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206...625a-49540.exe


By the way, if anyone's not getting mpeg2 acceleration even after the registry changes above, put this in umd/dxva:

DXVA_NOHDDECODE 0

In Vista it's a string, XP I dunno, might be a dword. Setting it to 1 disables mpeg2 dxva instantly for me, back to 0 and it works. For some strange reason the drivers default to 1 if the key isn't there (which it isn't normally).

Since this defaults to 1, so might some of the other dxva-disabling stuff mentioned in the previous reghack post. Rather than deleting the 3 dxva-no24fps keys, it may be better to just set them to 0.

[RichB]

Originally Posted by arfster

Vista beta drivers:

https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/674/9206...625a-49540.exe


By the way, if anyone's not getting mpeg2 acceleration even after the registry changes above, put this in umd/dxva:

DXVA_NOHDDECODE 0

In Vista it's a string, XP I dunno, might be a dword. Setting it to 1 disables mpeg2 dxva instantly for me, back to 0 and it works. For some strange reason the drivers default to 1 if the key isn't there (which it isn't normally).

I guess you have to have somekind of cookie. I get unauthorized access.

- Rich

[protovision]

Originally Posted by arfster

... Delete these keys from your registry:

HKR, "UMD\DXVA",SORTOverrideFPSCaps, %REG_SZ%, "30"
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",SORTOverrideVidSizeCaps, %REG_SZ%, "1024000"
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_Only24FPS1080MPEG2, %REG_SZ%, "1"
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_Only24FPS1080H264, %REG_SZ%, "1"
HKR, "UMD\DXVA",DXVA_Only24FPS1080VC1, %REG_SZ%, "1"

Is it possible to set the last 3 to '0' instead of deleting?

EDIT: NM, just saw your other message about setting it to '0'

p.

[arfster]

Originally Posted by RichB

I guess you have to have somekind of cookie. I get unauthorized access.

Oops:

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/K...estionID=28254

[RichB]

Originally Posted by arfster

Oops:

http://support.ati.com/ics/support/K...estionID=28254

It does not look like they are going to let us in. Here is what I get:

Your support portal session has expired due to inactivity and the requested action has not been completed. If you entered data in the previous screen and would like to save it, please follow these steps...

- Rich

[arfster]

Hehe, jeez. Try from further up the tree:

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

click radeon support PC on the left, find the 2400, look for the one called:

"737-28254: Radeon HD 2000 series: Slow performance in main menu in the game Lost Planet"


There's also one for XP users I see, seems to be the same generation as the above fix (4954x). Go to the 2400, look for the other lost planet related one.

[maxleung]

arfster, any word on a beta XP driver?

I've got nothing but problems now - I can't get h/w accel to work for VMR9 in XP anymore. And the funny thing is that it was working on Sunday. Then BAM! It doesn't work anymore and I get flashing green screen (and sometimes a BSOD) now when using Zoomplayer, MPC, or KMPlayer.

[RichB]

Originally Posted by arfster

Hehe, jeez. Try from further up the tree:

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

click radeon support PC on the left, find the 2400, look for the one called:

"737-28254: Radeon HD 2000 series: Slow performance in main menu in the game Lost Planet"

Thanks, I got it. I will try it later tonight.

- Rich

[mine]

Originally Posted by arfster

TrDenoise 0
DXVA_DetailEnhance 0


3) WMV acceleration broken. Search for DXVA_WMV_NA, change to 0. Now a new option to allow acceleraiton appears under the control centre's video settings (maybe needs a reboot).

Hi

Think ..Should be : TRDenoise (dword 0)

R

new XP Betas add some interesting things :
deinterlacing slider
underscan-overscan slider
improved PQ

best
m