Hd 2600 Agp

[Donnacha]

Originally Posted by mossym

you sure it's not heat? are you running any thermal monitoring program?

you may well have been right!! Did some testing last night and saw some interesting results:

- Using an MPEG 2 Encoded Blu ray the GPU was working up to 45%
- Using an MPEG 4 AVC encode (i.e. Spiderman) the GPU was at 25% (approx)
- The CPU was hovering around the 40 - 60% mark

What was interesting was the sound formats and their impact on the CPU:
- On Black Hawk Down, the LPCM track had the CPU hovering around the 50 - 60+% mark
- The DTS-HD soundtrack on Kingdom of Heaven had the CPU around the same 45-60% mark
- any "normal" 5.1 track didn't make much of an impact, so CPU was around the 40% mark with jumps to 50 / 60 ish depending on what was happening on screen!
- A Dolby True HD on Spiderman 3 track had the CPU between 80 - 95% with peaks near 100%, therefore causing the odd stutter. Switching to the Uncompressed PCM track dropped the CPU useage back down to the 50-60% mark! Unfortunately Spidey 1 & 2 only have a TrueHD option!!

All of this was tested with the case open so I could see the GPU temps were around the 43% mark, a lot cooler than when the case is closed, which is at least about 10C more! I didn't see the CPU temps, but would imagine that with a TrueHD track pushing the CPU it would be getting very hot, fast!!

Maybe this is why the PC keeps cutting out and rebooting. Now I can turn up the CPU fan to compensate (but just adds noise), which I've yet to try. Any other suggestions to keep things cool?

Is the GPU accelerating enough, i.e. could I push more from the CPU onto the GPU? Is there a way to do that?

Cheers

[EQUIVALENT]

Hmm, so is the sound card not doing the processing for you? I don't think the GPU can do anything more, hardware deinterlacing wouldn't be necessary on the spiderman titles I don't think.

Btw, according to Arfster on AVS forum, the 'GPU processing' refers to the activity of the shaders, and they are the ones which handle MPEG decoding, as your %s show. The AVC (many blu-ray) and VC-1 (some blu-ray,most hd-dvds) decoding is done somewhere else, so your only true measure of hwacc for these is indirect (CPU usage).

[Donnacha]

Not sure what the sound card is up to?? Thay has been misbehaving recently, when I tried to update the drivers!

I installed the omega drivers and followed the instructions. Sat through a 1hr 40 min DVD just fine. Then decided to try Spidey 3 again. Got about 10 mins in when the screen started to flicker green for about a second, but it looked really corrupted. Abit like this see attachment:

Is this a GPU problem. The site I got the pic from says this is a GPU artifact and results from an overheating card!!! Might explain why it performed fine when the case top was open?

Cheers

[EQUIVALENT]

Yes, it looks like a GPU problem from that, but I am loathe to say it deffo, as it's one of those 'automatic' assumptions, like 'it's yer PSU', which are often wrong. I can't help thinking the CPU usage is important here, as is the fact that other BR titles seem OK. Artefacts can be introduced by software too, and I know some people have had problems with versions of powerdvd after version 3319a (rclick>about>click on name). Other than checking the soundcard is doing the trueHD OK (maybe google the model), I don't know what else to suggest really, sorry.

[Donnacha]

Lo and behold!! Rolled back the Catalyst Drivers to 7.10 (official download from the Gecube website), reinstalled the soundcard drivers and kept Powerdvd at 3319a - and Spidey 3 worked!! Managed to watch the last 40 mins with no blips! The sound I selected was the PCM uncompressed that was downmixed to 2 channels over SPDIF. No artifacts!

So I popped in Spidey 1 with the TrueHD soundtrack for about 15mins and that played fine as well!!! Looks like I'm back in business and it may well have been a driver issue!

New problem now!! Got 28 Weeks Later on Bluray on rental, but it keeps telling me that its a Region B disc and won't play unless i put it in a Region B player - the player is set to Region B (I even switched off AnyDVD HD region setting). Any ideas?

cheers

[EQUIVALENT]

Hi Donnacha, good to hear, I thought it might be a driver/software issue!
I've heard of the region problem with some new discs - is your AnyDVDHD set to 'automatic' region detection, because this sometimes fails? It might work if you set your region in AnyDVDHD manually to 'B'.

[Donnacha]

Hi mate - I know its going a little off-topic for the thread but I set the region on both PDVD and AnyDVD HD to Region B and it still tells me that the region is wrong, please put into a region B machine etc!! I even disabled the region setting on AnyDVD HD, but same result.

I might try setting the region of the drive, which is at 0 according to AnyDVD HD.

Cheers for all you help!

[Donnacha]

FYI - Just ordered a Zerotherm GX820 cooler for the card to see if its any quieter! The guys at Quietpc.com said that if would fit the card, but have a 1 month return policy if it doesn't work out. Will let you know how I get on with it over the weekend!

[Donnacha]

Managed to install the fan yesterday. For those interested in a cooler, quieter fan, this one fits!! Its much quieter than then stock fan and a good number of degrees cooler. It has a separate fan control so you can adjust for further colling (and noise!).

...still having driver issues though! Can get 40-45mins through a film, then bang! At least the error reports are now consistent, syaing its a video device driver error.

Cheers

[phusg]

I'm now finally the proud owner of a passively cooled MSI 2600 Pro (which I paid 70 euro's for in case anyone asks).

I've just finished installing the Omega drivers and copying over the ati3duag.dll in safe mode as per the instructions in the thread linked to below. Unfortunately I'm still unable to monitor the temperature or overclock my card using Ati Tray Tools. What software are you guys using to do this? (or is this not even possible with the AGP cards?) I've checked for a new VGA BIOS using MSI Liveupdate, but I already have the latest on there...

Originally Posted by EQUIVALENT

POSSIBLE HARDWARE ACCELERATION SOLUTION (ESP. FOR OWNERS OF ATHLON XP PROCESSORS)

I don't know if this will help anyone here, but some guys on the AVS forums have made some interesting observations. In particular, those with non SSE processors (e.g. athlon xp's) can, by copying some powerdvd '.dll' files, achieve acceleration of the many blu-ray discs encoded with the AVC (h264) codec. Might the SSE issue explain why acc works for some but not others?

A useful guide:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...5#post12670195

[EQUIVALENT]

Hi phusg, where did you get it from? Is it single-slot in width?

Originally Posted by phusg

Unfortunately I'm still unable to monitor the temperature or overclock my card using Ati Tray Tools.

I haven't tried to do continuously monitor temps, but to overclock do you first need to 'unlock' the padlock icon in Catalyst Control Centre>ATI Overdrive? I'm not sure how well a passive will OC, though.

Rivatuner may give you more options, to get it to recognise the 2600:

Quote:
Add this PCI DeviceID to RivaTuner's hardware database. Open RivaTuner.cfg in any text editor, find [GPU_1002] section and replace

RV630 = 9588h-9589h

with

RV630 = 9587h-9589h

(babel-17 on AVS forums confirmed)

720p MKV (x264) ACCELERATION UPDATE

amidst the useless LOL'Z, some more helpful AVS folk have worked out the reason why some mkv's were not accelerated, apparently it is not ATI but cyberlink's decoder not supporting the many mkv's encoded with a 'layer 5'*. Even more usefully, DJBlu has made a tool to fix them:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post12790512

and a tweaked version, if the above does not work:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...7#post12797587


*Technical reason:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...3#post12691793

@donnacha - how are you getting on? The only general thing I can think recommended for HD PDVD crashes is disabling write combining(desktop>properties>settings>advanced>tro ubleshooting).

[phusg]

Originally Posted by EQUIVALENT

Hi phusg, where did you get it from? Is it single-slot in width?

It's this card, so I'd say it's not a traditional single slot, but it's not as huge as some dual slots I've seen. I can measure it up when I get home if you like. The place I got it from has raised the price to 90 euro now, but you can now order it from here for 65 euros! There is also a harder to get hold of 512MB version, which could be necessary for the soon to be released folding@home GPU client. Cheapest I can see that one is from Germany, see http://www.schottenland.de/preisverg.../proid_9215700.

Thanks for your OC tips. If that padlock is the same as disabling the ATI polling thingy in ATT then I've already tried that. Will have another go tonight though, the Omega drivers didn't include the CCC so haven't tried that route. My card was still extremely cool to the touch after 1/2 hour at full load, so I have hope!

One strange thing is that when I checked my SMARTGART settings after installation, the card was being run at AGP 1x, which I had difficulty in manually setting to 4x, anyone else have this problem? I'm currently running the card on an nForce1 board.

[EQUIVALENT]

Thanks for all that info, phusg, don't worry about measuring. I'm not too familiar with ATT, but try CCC, I think the overdrive can test the limits of your card, if you don't mind risking it!

re: nforce 1, I heard there were support problems with the earlier nforce boards, I hope you can avoid this. I've also heard a day ago someone said on another forum ATI will support the earlier nforce's in future drivers.

[Donnacha]

Originally Posted by EQUIVALENT

@donnacha - how are you getting on? The only general thing I can think recommended for HD PDVD crashes is disabling write combining(desktop>properties>settings>advanced>tro ubleshooting).

Hi there, still getting the odd crash. I haven't tried it all week , but re-installed the drivers last week and got through the last hour of "28 weeks later" no worries, but as usual Spidey 1 crashed the system. It may well be the sound card? I think you are right about the write combining as this is alao suggested by the windows error message - so I'll give that a go.

I see the 8.1. Catalyst Drivers are out, that some on the US forum claim fix AGP problems. Might try them this weekend!

[EQUIVALENT]

Originally Posted by Donnacha

It may well be the sound card?

Just reminded of something on the AVS - is your powerdvd OEM? I think only the retail can convert the 'more advanced' audio codecs to DD. It was suggested to use AC3 filter as an alternaive to process outside of PDVD, so either way, if AC3filter can do TrueHD it might be easier on your system?

I heard 8.1 has some fixes too, initial reports seem ok, I might try the 8.1hotfix (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/d...estionID=31625) and get the 8.1 Cat Control Centre separately.

hotfix chat:
http://www.driverheaven.net/windows-...river-out.html