I'm getting frustrated here and tempted to just send this 4830 back. I built a htpc out of spare parts trying to keep the costs down as much as possible, but it's not going as easy as it should.
Primary
ASUS A8n-sli premium
opteron 170
2x1GB DDR
Vista Ultimate
BFG 8800GTS 512
HTPC
ECS RS480-M
AMD 3700+
2x1GB DDR
Vista Ultimate
Saphire 4830
First problem I ran in to with the 4830 is that apparently there's a compatibility problem with hdmi audio and the older ATI x200 chipset that my motherboard has. So while I figured the ATI video card should work best with a motherboard using an ATI chipset, that wasn't the case. The cpu would max out at 100% bringing the system to an absolute crawl and after an annoying amount of research I found out that the only way to make the two work together is to disable HD Audio in device manager and give up on hdmi audio.
I found the easiest and by far most effective way for me to get HA working on my primary (nvidia) system is to just install Haali, AC3 and the standalone MPCVideoDec.ax codec. I can then use media center or wmp with no problem and get full HA on all of the .mkv's I have or come across.
Using the same method of codecs on the htpc I can only get about 1/4 of my movies to play with any HA and if the movie is 1080p without HA it's not feasible on that system. I bought the 4830 for that reason to replace a 7800GT. One of my movies, Saving Private Ryan, plays on the 4830 with HA but it has terrible artifacts and flashing spots. If I play the same movie in the full MPC-HC program it plays fine, but I don't want to use MPC. It plays fine on my primary system with just the codec and wmp or mce.
I suspect the standalone MPCVideoDec.ax codec doesn't play as well with ATI cards as it does Nvidia, but it works so well with my 8800gts and is so easy to use that I hate to have to switch over to something more complicated, not to mention the hours of research it takes every time you switch methods.
Anyone have any insight in to this problem? I would have just moved the 8800 over to the htpc and got something else for my primary, but there's not much sense in upgrading right now especially with what i've got. I guess I could just swap the 2 cards between systems, but the 8800gts is a big card in my small htpc case.
Primary
ASUS A8n-sli premium
opteron 170
2x1GB DDR
Vista Ultimate
BFG 8800GTS 512
HTPC
ECS RS480-M
AMD 3700+
2x1GB DDR
Vista Ultimate
Saphire 4830
First problem I ran in to with the 4830 is that apparently there's a compatibility problem with hdmi audio and the older ATI x200 chipset that my motherboard has. So while I figured the ATI video card should work best with a motherboard using an ATI chipset, that wasn't the case. The cpu would max out at 100% bringing the system to an absolute crawl and after an annoying amount of research I found out that the only way to make the two work together is to disable HD Audio in device manager and give up on hdmi audio.
I found the easiest and by far most effective way for me to get HA working on my primary (nvidia) system is to just install Haali, AC3 and the standalone MPCVideoDec.ax codec. I can then use media center or wmp with no problem and get full HA on all of the .mkv's I have or come across.
Using the same method of codecs on the htpc I can only get about 1/4 of my movies to play with any HA and if the movie is 1080p without HA it's not feasible on that system. I bought the 4830 for that reason to replace a 7800GT. One of my movies, Saving Private Ryan, plays on the 4830 with HA but it has terrible artifacts and flashing spots. If I play the same movie in the full MPC-HC program it plays fine, but I don't want to use MPC. It plays fine on my primary system with just the codec and wmp or mce.
I suspect the standalone MPCVideoDec.ax codec doesn't play as well with ATI cards as it does Nvidia, but it works so well with my 8800gts and is so easy to use that I hate to have to switch over to something more complicated, not to mention the hours of research it takes every time you switch methods.
Anyone have any insight in to this problem? I would have just moved the 8800 over to the htpc and got something else for my primary, but there's not much sense in upgrading right now especially with what i've got. I guess I could just swap the 2 cards between systems, but the 8800gts is a big card in my small htpc case.