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Something up with my new 6450? Or do I just need a better card?

post #1 of 17
9/19/11 at 6:26am
Thread Starter 
Bought a fanless Diamond Radeon 6450 HD 1GB card this weekend. Needed a new card to replace the HD 4250 IGP on my 880 motherboard. Primarily need to run my 1080p rips smoothly. I had to bump down to 720p to run using the IGP, and after reading several reviews and forum posts, decided on the 6450. Brought it home, setup, installed the 11.8 Catalyst, and tested.

- Watched Netflix HD streaming. Stuttered during action throughout. Removed HD, and ran smooth.
- Watched 2 1080p rips, with both stuttering.

My setup:
- Windows 7 64-bit
- Corsair 400W PS
- AMD Black 955 (not-OC'd)
- Blu-Drive
- Asus M4A88T MB
- 4 GB ram* (2 1GB sticks, and 1 2GB...odd thing is, I had to remove the 2GB stick after installing card. Got BSOD when card and stick were installed. Ideas?)
- 2 HDs

Nothing major. The PS works fine.

- If I upgrade to a fast vid card with a fan, is my PS fine? ...or will I need to upgrade that?
- Is there something else that might be causing the poor performance from the 6450 card?
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post #2 of 17
9/19/11 at 6:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bleedingtree View Post
Bought a fanless Diamond Radeon 6450 HD 1GB card this weekend. Needed a new card to replace the HD 4250 IGP on my 880 motherboard. Primarily need to run my 1080p rips smoothly. I had to bump down to 720p to run using the IGP, and after reading several reviews and forum posts, decided on the 6450. Brought it home, setup, installed the 11.8 Catalyst, and tested.

- Watched Netflix HD streaming. Stuttered during action throughout. Removed HD, and ran smooth.
- Watched 2 1080p rips, with both stuttering.

My setup:
- Corsair 400W PS
- AMD Black 955 (not-OC'd)
- Blu-Drive
- Asus M4A88T MB
- 4 GB ram* (2 1GB sticks, and 1 2GB...odd thing is, I had to remove the 2GB stick after installing card. Got BSOD when card and stick were installed. Ideas?)
- 2 HDs

Nothing major. The PS works fine.

- If I upgrade to a fast vid card with a fan, is my PS fine? ...or will I need to upgrade that?
- Is there something else that might be causing the poor performance from the 6450 card?
1)The 4250 should run 1080p smoothly, you had your codecs misconfiguration....I run a 4250 in my HTCP and everything plays smoothly.
2)The BSOD might be cause by one of the types of memory being incompatible, also make sure different memory is on different channels. Each channel is marked by a color on the motherboard.

I would suggest you return the video card and try to get the 4250 working, if all you need is 1080p then for h.264 and blu-rays the IGP is more then enough. I cannot comment on Netflix, I do not know if the use DXVA. Also your processor is more then powerful enough to decode 1080p if DXVA is not used so I am guessing something else is causing the stuttering all together. Maybe get a 4GB kit of ram that is guaranteed compatible with your motherboard and one that is homogeneous, not mixing sizes or brands. Look on the mobo manufacturers page for tested ram modules.
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post #3 of 17
9/19/11 at 7:01am
Thread Starter 
yea - 1080p rips is the primary use for the HTPC. The 4250 played Blu-Ray discs perfectly fine. Just not rips. Will consider doing the RAM swap. Good idea.
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post #4 of 17
9/19/11 at 7:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bleedingtree View Post
yea - 1080p rips is the primary use for the HTPC. The 4250 played Blu-Ray discs perfectly fine. Just not rips. Will consider doing the RAM swap. Good idea.
Were the rips you got from "friends", are they mostly h.264 mkv files, if so what player did you use and how was it configured?
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post #5 of 17
9/19/11 at 7:54am
Thread Starter 
Yes...from "friends". VLC player stuttered badly. The WMC default also stuttered, but not AS bad. I have the Shark codec pack installed and all the "enhancements" from ATI catalyst turned off.

Maybe I just need the proper settings for that?
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post #6 of 17
9/19/11 at 8:01am
use mpc hc.
configure it like this
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1357375

turn on enforce smooth video playback in the drivers.
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post #7 of 17
9/19/11 at 8:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MlNDBOMB View Post
use mpc hc.
configure it like this
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1357375

turn on enforce smooth video playback in the drivers.
These settings are for LAV and do not use DXVA so no he should not use those.


1)Uninstall SHARK...you do not need them
2)Install the latest build of MPC-HC
3)Follow this guide, play a file and check to see if DXVA is enabled.
http://forums.techarena.in/guides-tutorials/1192826.htm
There are multiple guides that show how to configure DXVA, but many of them have extra crap that causes the guide to be convoluted, if it doesn't work read through a couple and see what the differences are. You can just google "dxva mpc-hc guide" and a bunch of stuff will pop up.



Once configured you can check if DXVA is working by looking at the CPU utilization and enabling more info from MPC-HC and it will show you if it is using DXVA.



Look in the bottom right corner of the screenshot.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/m...C_HC_S3G-1.jpg




BTW DXVA is just one route, I am not positive that is where all your problems are but it's easy enough to setup and go from there.
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post #8 of 17
9/19/11 at 8:35am
My on board 4250 runs 1080P mkv smooth.........I use MPC-HC and a codec pack all in one....... Codec 8.4b it has Core AVC2.0, Divx 6.8.5.15 codec, Xvid, CoreAVC Audio, AC3 filter...........all in one pack.........I have run this and it 8.3 previous version for 2 years with no problems.

Good Luck
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post #9 of 17
9/19/11 at 8:37am
he has a 3.2 ghz quad core.
he doesn't exactly need dxva.
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post #10 of 17
9/19/11 at 8:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MlNDBOMB View Post
he has a 3.2 ghz quad core.
he doesn't exactly need dxva.
clearly something is wrong, it's either his system(low ram in win7) or something else like the codec configuration. Since he can play blurays no problem it point to a codec problem. The idea is to see if he can get movies to play smoothly.

Please explain to me how does setting up LAV which on an ATI card will be more processor intensive then just not touching the configuration alone will benefit him?


You need to read more and post less IMHO.
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post #11 of 17
9/19/11 at 9:04am
my theory is that the problem stems from using a single threaded h264 decoder.
If he uses lav video, he utilizes all 4 of his cores.
If he chooses to use yadif, that again is multithreaded, so he has a multithreaded deinterlacer as well for any interlaced videos he has.
Then he uses madvr, which leverages the shaders on his 6450 for better picture quality, and possibly can solve the problem if the current issue is with his renderer.
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post #12 of 17
9/19/11 at 9:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by MlNDBOMB View Post
my theory is that the problem stems from using a single threaded h264 decoder.
If he uses lav video, he utilizes all 4 of his cores.
If he chooses to use yadif, that again is multithreaded, so he has a multithreaded deinterlacer as well for any interlaced videos he has.
Then he uses madvr, which leverages the shaders on his 6450 for better picture quality, and possibly can solve the problem if the current issue is with his renderer.
1)He can check that very easily, by opening the taskmanager while running a file and instead of going through the whole setup of LAV
2)From what I know SHARK uses ffdshow and those are multithreaded by default.
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post #13 of 17
9/19/11 at 11:11am
Thread Starter 
Whoa - fast posts Thanks guys. I know the system should be able to handle it. I'll strip the codecs and install MPC-HC.

So the 4250 IGP should actually be able to handle ALL 1080p stuff? Rips and discs? I shouldn't need a card at all?
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post #14 of 17
9/19/11 at 11:30am
idk if its worth returning, with the return shipping cost and or restocking fees of such a low price item.

You do get some decent benefits with the new card. Few more audio formats can be bitstreamed over hdmi, you get 3d video, and a better 3d gaming experience, better hardware deinterlacing, more shaders for better upscaling. That sorta thing.

Yea, but you could use your 4250, or you could use your 6450, or you could even use your amd cpu. so you have a lot of options.
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post #15 of 17
9/19/11 at 11:32am
Thread Starter 
Cool. Was $55 local here at Microcenter (awesome place), so return wouldn't be an issue. I'll hang onto it, though. Would be a good backup in case of a fail, and for the benefits you mentioned. Thanks
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post #16 of 17
9/20/11 at 7:52am
Thread Starter 
Now if I install the MPC, how will that effect the Media Center player. Will it use MPC as the player within MC?
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post #17 of 17
9/20/11 at 7:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bleedingtree View Post

Now if I install the MPC, how will that effect the Media Center player. Will it use MPC as the player within MC?

I don't think so, MPC-HC is a separate player. If you want to use it within media center maybe there is a way, I am not sure.
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