H.264 Choppy Playback

[imported_Avengence]

Same clips, same codec packs. With H.264 playback in MPC on my machine its 100% CPU usage, and on my parents its somewhere around 60%. On my machine it is choppy with some points where it stops to load. On my parents machine its smooth all the time, even playing it over the network. As far as drivers go... i have to install just the display driver from ATI because the control panel crashes when my machine loads up (dont know why.)

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Avengence
Same clips, same codec packs. With H.264 playback in MPC on my machine its 100% CPU usage, and on my parents its somewhere around 60%. On my machine it is choppy with some points where it stops to load. On my parents machine its smooth all the time, even playing it over the network. As far as drivers go... i have to install just the display driver from ATI because the control panel crashes when my machine loads up (dont know why.)

That sounds much more reasonable. I would guess the difference there is simply the faster CPU and/or SSE3 support (if you don't have a Venice/Winchester core 3000+), and possibly a different codec. If you're pegging your CPU and dropping frames, it's just not keeping up with the decoding.

The 720p video that's playing at ~8-15% CPU on their machine must be MPEG2-HD (or some other hardware-accelerated format).

 

[imported_Avengence]

I have the winchester core (90nm 3000+) So I dont have SSE3?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Avengence
I have the winchester core (90nm 3000+) So I dont have SSE3?

Sorry, it's only the Venice/San Diego core A64s that have SSE3. Winchesters/Newcastles/Clawhammers only do up to SSE2, which can make a difference with some codecs.

If you're looking at two S939 chips, you're comparing, what, a 1.8Ghz chip against a 2.2Ghz one? That's a 22% increase in clockspeed right there. And if you have a S754 3000+, you're looking at half the memory bandwidth (although I think the S754 3000+ chips run at 2.0Ghz).

If you want to try to narrow down what is causing the performance difference, you would need to give more information on exactly how both systems are setup. We would also need to know exactly which type of file you are trying to play (and, if possible, have the actual file available), and which codec is actually being used for playback on each machine.

 

[imported_Avengence]

Well I have the S939. Anyways, I have tryed playing the .mov files from apples's site. As far as codecs go, I am using quicktime alternative on both computers playing them in MPC.

 

[tw1164]

You may want to try "CoreAVC" as your decoder, its said to be one of the faster ones.

 

[imported_Avengence]

Wow... thank you tw1164, it helped a lot! Now I can finally view these videos Thank you. Guess next step is to upgrade. By the way, are the nvidia 7xxx cards going to support hardware decoding for H.264?

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Avengence
Wow... thank you tw1164, it helped a lot! Now I can finally view these videos Thank you. Guess next step is to upgrade. By the way, are the nvidia 7xxx cards going to support hardware decoding for H.264?

Yup, much thanks tw1164. I'm going to give that codec a shot myself. Never heard of it.

All of the 'non-broken' GeForce 6/7 series are going to have H.264 decode acceleration. They demonstrated H.264 decoding on a 6600GT (if I recall) at CES 2006. Not sure if the PureVideo decoder will need to be purchased or what.