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overclocking htpc for smooth x264 playback

K

kintantee

n00b
Joined
Jun 18, 2006
Messages
9
hello. My htpc runs all sorts of video smoothly EXCEPT for 1080p x264 files. They are slightly jittery.

Do I need more cpu speed or memory bandwidth to solve this?



Basically, I just need a little more power to smoothly decode this files on the fly. My CPU has more overclocking headroom than my memory apparently, so I need to decide if I should go for a big cpu overclock and put up a big memory divider, or just keep memory at 1:1 and overclock just a little. Or maybe I could mess with the memory timings. But honestly that's too many things if I'm going to rigorously test every option.

I'm watching video using the media center app on Windows XP MCE.

Here's the specs on the htpc

Opty 144 (200Mhz x 9 = 1.8Ghz)
DFI lanparty ut nf4 ultra-d
2GB (2x1GB) G.Skill f1-3200phu2-2gbns 2.5-3-3-6 running in dual-channel mode at 2T
XFX 7600gt passive
250GB WD
Windows XP MCE
Westinghouse 1080p LCD display
Logitech Z-5500 speakers

What do yall think?
 
Stock Opteron cooler? You could probably hit up some extra speed.

No clue on whether that'll solve your problems. An Opeteron 16x would probably solve your problem as well.
 
It's more dependent on your video card and a close second would be your CPU. I would recommend an ATI3850 which is excellent for an HTPC. If you ever look at any of the h.264, 1080p, and encoding enthusiast forums the consensus is that the best bang for your buck for video playback are ATI 3850-3870.
 
You know, I haven't thought about hardware decoding. I'm not sure if my gpu is even doing any work when I decode video because my cpu is up near 100% the whole time.

edit: I've got a 7600gt and the latest forceware drivers. Does that combo do hardware acceleration of 264 video?
 
kintantee said:
You know, I haven't thought about hardware decoding. I'm not sure if my gpu is even doing any work when I decode video because my cpu is up near 100% the whole time.

edit: I've got a 7600gt and the latest forceware drivers. Does that combo do hardware acceleration of 264 video?
Click to expand...

Yes what you are seeing is your cpu being bogged down having to do all the work for the 1080p vlc,h264, mp4 files. Video cards with the latest HD decoders/accelerators take the load off your CPU by having the GPU do the work. You will need at least a Nvidia 8600 and up card and good software to support it if you wanna stick with Nvidia brand. I used to own an 8800gts 320(an 8600 beats it for HD playback as it has better PureHD technology) that had trouble with certain vlc codec encoded blu ray movies but the latest gts fixed it for me.
 
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