GeForce 8200 - 8 Channel LPCM Output Fully Supported!! - Page 43

Originally Posted by CFC

What's the proper procedure to flash the BIOS on the biostar TF8200?
Will it require DOS?

Thanks,
CFC

Originally Posted by ajamils

I'm confused...... you couldn't get surround sound (5.1) out of the mobo and still you are highly recommending the board or am I reading something wrong ????

Originally Posted by Bahn Yuki

8200 has HA, and it's a geforce board, so it has decent gaming performance.

BTW I updated to the newer BIOS and I've noticed there's a bit more features in BIOS and Hybrid SLI works better. BTW Mass Effect PC is a HUGE leap over the 360 version. I'll do some tests in a couple of weeks, I'm enjoying the ECS board too much.

Originally Posted by cybrsage

I did get 5.1 sound out of VMC and Arcsoft TMT, which is what I use to play all my media. I just showed that procedure needed to get it. The HDMI chip can easily do the 5.1 (and 7.1 if the media has a 7.1 soundtrack).

It was just odd that I had to set the HDMI Audio to 2 channel in order to get the VMC and TMT to take exclusive control over the sound.

I am going to go back and edit my other post to say I was using a 5.1 soundtrack for testing.

Originally Posted by cybrsage

OK, here is what I tested and my results:

All settings use PLIIx on my AVR, 6.1 speaker setup.

EDIT: I used a 5.1 soundtrack for testing and both a Blue Ray disc and a HD-DVD disc.

Sound
nVidia HDMI audio control settings:
7.1 - no rear sound out of back 3 speakers except during test sounds
7.1 with rear two channels turned off - no rear sound out of back 3 speakers except during test sounds
5.1 - no rear sound out of back 3 speakers, back 2 get test sounds
2 - 2 speaker sound as expected

VMC
In order to get good sound out of TV and Movies and I had to set nVidia HDMI Audio to 2 channel sound and VMC to 5.1 channel sound. Any other settings caused me to NOT get sound out of rear 3 speakers.

Arcsoft TMT
In order to get good sound out of HD-DVD and Blue Ray and I had to set nVidia HDMI Audio to 2 channel sound and TMT to 5.1 channel sound. If I set TMT to 7.1, I only got sound out of the front 3 and the center rear. All other settings gave me only the front 3 speakers.

Originally Posted by ajamils

Has anybody been able to run ECS GF8200A perfectly (without suttering or audio issues) ? If so, what bios and driver version did you use ?

Originally Posted by Oildalemonkey

I finally have everything working on the ECS board with TMT using my 'old' Athlon X2 5600+ and the frame buffer set to 256 in the bios. Physical Blu-ray discs (VC1 and MPEG4) seem to play fine, but playing BD and HD DVD files from the server still seem to be problematic (stutter), so I'm still testing that portion...

Vista 32-bit; ECS Bios version 08/04/17; nForce 18.11 driver (and whatever version HDMI driver that installs with it); GeForce 175.16 drivers; AnyDVD HD and CoreAVC are also installed.

It might not make a difference, but I also have an 8500GT installed and Hybrid SLI Boost enabled.

Originally Posted by Oildalemonkey

I am still testing some little things but was dealt a setback when my DLP bulb went out on me yesterday. Here is my status with the ECS GF8200A:

Originally Posted by ajamils

Has anybody been able to run ECS GF8200A perfectly (without suttering or audio issues) ? If so, what bios and driver version did you use ?

Originally Posted by AbMagFab

Pretty sure TMT doesn't have the capability to take exclusive control. If you set Windows to 2-channel, then all you get is 2-channel from TMT. Not as sure about VMC, but pretty confident it's the same.

Originally Posted by cghebert

Thanks for all the reports. I am really happy with the Biostar board as well.

With regards to your audio setup, I wonder if the reason that you don't get sound from the rears when you have 5.1 selected and PLIIx enabled is because you are already getting full channel sound. Thus, the receiver is not able to apply PLIIx. That is the situation I am getting, my receiver won't even enable PLIIx because it is already getting 7.1 channel sound.

I'm not familiar with your receiver, but you might want to compare the results you get with PLIIx vs results when you have the receiver to output the channels exactly as they are input. Also, can you check the inputs to your receiver? Because if you have PLIIx enabled, and the receiver gets 2 channel sound, then it should easily put out 5.1, but it is matrixing that 5.1 from 2 channel, versus getting the full bandwitdh on each channel.

I could be off base with this stuff, but hopefully some others will chime in and either agree or say I am way off base.

Glad the BIOS upgrade went well for you.

Originally Posted by jeff_c

I too have everything working with no stuttering issues. Here is my set up.

GF8200A
-2008.5.27 BIOS (VGA temp got noticeably hotter after the update - 76C)
X2 5200
3GB DDR2 667
Vista Ultimate 32
NVIDIA Drivers:
HDMI Audio 1.0.0.16
HDMI Video 175.16
Playback S/W: TMT (PowerDVD still won't do 1080)

It took some serious tinkering to get the drivers to work properly. After every reboot, my audio driver would disable itself. Well, I wiped my drive and reinstalled Vista last night. I then went into the control panel and updated the driver by telling it to search specific locations (i.e. the folder I downloaded that had the driver) instead of running the setup.exe that came with the driver. This solved my reboot issues. I can now restart as much as I want to and still have sound!

Since I reloaded windows, I went ahead and created an account with FULL administrator privileges too, that way I don't see the annoying UAC pop ups, but everything runs like it should.

Originally Posted by cybrsage

All I know is I have the nVidia panel set to 2 channel, VMC set to 5.1 and TMT set to 5.1 and I get 6 LCPM lights on my Denon. I then use PLIIx and get sound out of all 7 of my speakers.

I will double check tonight to make sure I am not blowing smoke about the settings.

Originally Posted by AbMagFab

PLIIx would matrix 2 channels to 7 also.

If you have Windows set to 2-channels, then you should only be sending 2 channels to the AVR. If you have Windows set to 5.1 (Control Panel/Sound), then the nVidia applet might not make any difference.

Unless you see the incoming channels on the Denon change, then you're likely just fixed at whatever Windows is configured for.

Try your current settings, and play an MP3 with Windows Media Player or something, and see if it drops to 2-channels on the Denon. My guess is it will stay at whatever you have Windows set to.

Originally Posted by ajamils

So you are still not able to get 1080p ?? Is it on Blu-rays ? Having tried playing any mkv files (720 or 1080p) ?

Originally Posted by mtsag

Hi everyone,

I was considering getting a PS3 for Bluray playback, but recently I've started thinking about building a HTPC instead, 'cause it just seems like a lot more fun!

So, here's my question: Will basing a HTPC on a GeForce 8200 mobo allow me to output the new HD sound formats (Dolby Digital+, Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA) over HDMI? And I mean in full resolution and bit depth, not downsampled or dithered to 48/16.

What combination of hardware/software would be required to achieve this?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by mtsag

Hi everyone,

I was considering getting a PS3 for Bluray playback, but recently I've started thinking about building a HTPC instead, 'cause it just seems like a lot more fun!

So, here's my question: Will basing a HTPC on a GeForce 8200 mobo allow me to output the new HD sound formats (Dolby Digital+, Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-MA) over HDMI? And I mean in full resolution and bit depth, not downsampled or dithered to 48/16.

What combination of hardware/software would be required to achieve this?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by renethx

abit A-N78HD has firewire. S/PDIF is an internal header only. But this is not a problem (if you mean coaxial S/PDIF), see this post.

Originally Posted by cybrsage

OK, here is what I tested and my results:

All settings use PLIIx on my AVR, 6.1 speaker setup.

EDIT: I used a 5.1 soundtrack for testing and both a Blue Ray disc and a HD-DVD disc.

Sound
nVidia HDMI audio control settings:
7.1 - no rear sound out of back 3 speakers except during test sounds
7.1 with rear two channels turned off - no rear sound out of back 3 speakers except during test sounds
5.1 - no rear sound out of back 3 speakers, back 2 get test sounds
2 - 2 speaker sound as expected

Originally Posted by jeff_c

First off, here is what I am using:

1.0.0.16 HDMI Audio Driver
PowerDVD 7 (at 720p)
Batman Begins HDDVD - 5.1 TrueHD

---------------------
I did a little bit of testing this way. I only have a 5.1 set up, so I had 5.1 selected in the driver. Problem is, the rear speakers in 5.1 aren't actually "rear" speakers. They are listed as "Side Speakers".

7.1 (All speakers on) - Sound from all 6 speakers. All 6 "signal" lights are lit on my AVR.
7.1 ("Side Pair" off) - Sound from all 6 speakers, with my rears being noticeably louder than the previous 7.1 setting. All signal lights are lit up on my AVR.
5.1 (All speakers selected) - No sound from the rears. All signal lights are lit up on my AVR.
Stereo - Comes as a stereo PCM signal and PLIIx is applied.

So, for those of you that have 5.1 disabled in your sound configuration, this might be why. 5.1 was mislabeled, and since 7.1 you can select not to have the side pair, you can get 5.1 in a round about way.

I think that this "neutering" by removing 5.1 was on purpose since it doesn't work properly. However, when I had the newest driver x.25, I did NOT have 7.1 as an option, only stereo. Of course, I was having serious problems with all my drivers at that time. I have since reinstalled Vista and am having great luck with the drivers right now, so I might try upgrading the driver. But seeing as how everything is working right now, I may not.

Originally Posted by jeff_c

I too have everything working with no stuttering issues. Here is my set up.

GF8200A
-2008.5.27 BIOS (VGA temp got noticeably hotter after the update - 76C)
X2 5200
3GB DDR2 667
Vista Ultimate 32
NVIDIA Drivers:
HDMI Audio 1.0.0.16
HDMI Video 175.16
Playback S/W: TMT (PowerDVD still won't do 1080)

It took some serious tinkering to get the drivers to work properly. After every reboot, my audio driver would disable itself. Well, I wiped my drive and reinstalled Vista last night. I then went into the control panel and updated the driver by telling it to search specific locations (i.e. the folder I downloaded that had the driver) instead of running the setup.exe that came with the driver. This solved my reboot issues. I can now restart as much as I want to and still have sound!

Since I reloaded windows, I went ahead and created an account with FULL administrator privileges too, that way I don't see the annoying UAC pop ups, but everything runs like it should.