[mythtv-users] Asus M4N78 PRO GeForce 8300 and 1080p

Kevin Ross kevin at familyross.net
Sat Mar 27 20:00:51 UTC 2010


Jongi wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am building a secondary FE for my bedroom. However I will be going 
> with a 720p 32" LCD. I have some 1080p content on my master BE/FE 
> which is connected to a 50" Plasma. The motherboard I have on the 
> secondary FE is  Asus M4N78 PRO GeForce 8300 Motherboard. If the 
> M3N78-VM is anything to go by that board should handle 720p without 
> issue using vdpau. However the M3N78-VM I have used to struggle at 
> times with 1080p content (I ended up getting a 9500GT).
>
> Is there a way to have the onboard "process" the video as 720p? Will 
> that add to the load and make things worse?
>
> Regards
> Jongi

I have two motherboards with GeForce 8200.  They work perfectly fine for 
all of the content I throw at them.  Their only limitation is they can't 
do the Advanced 2x deinterlacing.

Since these motherboards use AMD CPU's, most AMD CPU's slow down the 
memory controller at the same time they slow down the CPU during idle 
time.  Since VDPAU doesn't exercise the CPU at all, it stays idle, 
causing the memory controller to stay at a slower speed, starving the 
GPU.  This will cause stuttering of 1080p videos.

If this is indeed the problem you are having, then you have two choices:

1. Set the minimum CPU speed to about 1.8 GHz (or turn off CPU frequency 
scaling altogether) using the cpufreq-utils package, or
2. Upgrade to a CPU that doesn't do this (Athlon II or any Phenom).

I did option 1 on one of my FE's and option 2 on the other.

Hope this helps!
-- Kevin



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