HD Playback Stutter

Like we said before, you're running a Pentium D with no video hardware acceleration being done by the graphics card. The processor is weak and unable to handle most 1080p streams. That's the biggest culprit right there. If you got even a dirt cheap graphics card capable of hardware decoding, your problem would go away.
 
The 8800GTX is unable to offer hardware acceleration?

Nevermind, saw your post in regards to it earlier. I thought it was the CPU, time to find a new one!
 
How about this as a replacement CPU/Motherboard:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66Ghz 1333 MHz LGA775 L2 4MB
GIGABYTE Intel P45 LGA775 C2D FSB1600 DDR2 ATX SATA Raid
 
Are you trying to game too on this HTPC? If not, just drop the 8800GTX for something like the HD4350.

Rather than do a CPU/mobo upgrade, just drop the 8800GTX for something like the HD4850 whose performance equals, if not exceed, the 8800GTX but at the same time offers full HD acceleration of HD content with 7.1 LPCM audio out.

Oh and the description you provided for the Gigabyte mobo fits 3-4 different Gigabyte mobos. So please provide the actual motherboard model number.
 
GA-EP45-DQ6, sorry.

So you think I'd be better off just doing the video upgrade? I don't really think i'll be gaming all that much; the odd Flash game or perhaps Call of Duty neither of which are terribly taxing.
 
The Donut said:
GA-EP45-DQ6, sorry.

So you think I'd be better off just doing the video upgrade? I don't really think i'll be gaming all that much; the odd Flash game or perhaps Call of Duty neither of which are terribly taxing.
Click to expand...

You're better off with a GPU upgrade then. The COD series and flash games are not heavily taxing on the CPU as you mentioned.

Oh and the GA-EP45-DQ6 would ahve been a poor choice anyway from a price to performance standpoint. In fact, a C2D/C2Q setup nowadays is somewhat of a poor buy considering that AMD's Phenom II CPUs and the requisite motherboards are faster than many similarly priced Intel C2D/C2Q CPUs. In fact, one can easily create a cheaper Phenom II CPU/Mobo combo that would have been just as fast as your planned Intel setup but would be cheaper.
 
So, you say something like this?

ASUS Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit DDR3 PCI-E

It's $150. Cheap. But I want to be sure it will do it's intended task. With the HDMI output, will that output my audio too so i can do away with the optical cable to the receiver?
 
The Donut said:
So, you say something like this?

ASUS Radeon HD 4850 1GB 256-bit DDR3 PCI-E

It's $150. Cheap. But I want to be sure it will do it's intended task. With the HDMI output, will that output my audio too so i can do away with the optical cable to the receiver?
Click to expand...

Yes the HDMI output supports audio so you can do away with the optical cable to the receiver.
 
I'm assuming the on board audio will still be responsible to passing the audio through?

I'm looking at this one: EAH4850/HTDI/1G and it doesn't have HDMI, just dual DVI? Even though in the specs it says "HDMI Output: Yes"
 
The Donut said:
I'm assuming the on board audio will still be responsible to passing the audio through?

I'm looking at this one: EAH4850/HTDI/1G and it doesn't have HDMI, just dual DVI?
Click to expand...

The HD4800 series have an onboard audio chip which handles passing the audio through.

Most HD4800 series cards comes with a DVI to HDMI adapter, which the one you're looking at does have.
 
Danny Bui said:
The HD4800 series have an onboard audio chip which handles passing the audio through.

Most HD4800 series cards comes with a DVI to HDMI adapter, which the one you're looking at does have.
Click to expand...

But the audio wouldn't go through DVI, would it? Sorry, i'm clueless about this aspect :)
 
That 9500 won't be as fast gaming-wise, but it would work to get you hardware decoding.

If I were to recommend something, it would be this..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127396
It has the latest hardware decoding support, 16 stream processors for fast/smooth transitions in MediaBrowser when using transparency and coverflow, 128bit memory interface, 512MB video memory for smooth L5.1 video decoding with high reference frames, direct HDMI support without an adapter, passive cooling for silence, etc.
 
w1retap said:
That 9500 won't be as fast gaming-wise, but it would work to get you hardware decoding.

If I were to recommend something, it would be this..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127396
It has the latest hardware decoding support, 16 stream processors for fast/smooth transitions in MediaBrowser when using transparency and coverflow, 128bit memory interface, 512MB video memory for smooth L5.1 video decoding with high reference frames, direct HDMI support without an adapter, passive cooling for silence, etc.
Click to expand...

Not too worried about gaming.

How about if I had to pick from one of these:

http://pccyber.com/?v=Category&SearchText=9400GT
 
Its your bitrate on the planet earth one that is killing it.

Bit rate : 11.5 Mbps
vs
Bit rate : 8 001 Kbps
 
Perfect - the 9400GT plays back all my HD content perfectly. I am however thus far unable to get audio out of the HDMI port.
 
Great news. =)

To get audio out the HDMI port, you have to use the internal SPDIF connector (little tiny 2 prong cable) that hooks to your SPDIF port on the motherboard or sound card. You then set the sound settings in windows to use digital SPDIF audio and it should carry that over HDMI.
 
I'll take a look at that this afternoon.

Any idea that now CoreAVC decodes my DirectShow, all my MKV/HD videos look washed out? I tried turning a bunch of the processing options off, with no luck.
 
Processing options? When you're using CoreAVC w/ CUDA for DirectShow, it gives you exactly what your encode material is. The picture quality should match how it was encoded. Either you have a shitty encode (don't know if you did it yourself or just downloaded some), or your TV is calibrated wrong.
 
Well that's the thing; I changed DirectShow back to Windows and used Haali to decode; it ran slow because of the lack of acceleration but it didn't look washed out. I switched it back and all the videos looked washed out again.

I'll investigate it and see if there is something i'm doing wrong as that's the most likely option :p
 
You can always go into the nvidia control panel under the video color correction dialog and tweak it.
 
Fixed.

NVIDIA Control Panel -> Adjust Video -> Advanced -> Dynamic Range from Limited to Full.

Even with the "use dynamic contrast" box unchecked, when changing from Limited to Full makes a difference on the video playback side by side.
Weird.
 
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