When i built my htcp i was not concerned with speed but rather silence. However, I just got a new samsung DLP and I can not run FFDshow to upscale to 720p. My specs are:
Sempron 2600+ for s756 at 1.6Ghz
MSI NF3 motherboard
Passive Nvidia 5200 with 64bit memory bandwidth
No matter what settings in FFDshow I cannot run at 720p. My CPU load is around 90-95%. I tried an overclock to 1.9Ghz and this did not help so I suspect it is my video card. I need a new video card that can handle 720p but I want it to be passive. Any suguestions?
Help, my video card can't handle FFDshow
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
yeah, i have already searched around on AVS forum and found that the 5200 is not fast enough. That forum is so big it is intimidating. I tried lots of different settings on FFDshow but i am still new at it. I got the cpu usage down to around 85% with some really basic settings and still had no luck. I would rather not have to buy another cpu. I can always overclock it to 2Ghz pretty easy. Maybe i should search around AVS some more.
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Ash Lawler
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Mon Aug 01, 2005 12:58 pm
- Location: Milton Keynes
Instead of asking FFDshow to do the rescaling to 720p resolutions (which it will generally do using massively-CPU-eating algorithms similar to those used for still images in photoshop), leave the 'resize & aspect' feature deactivated, and set your desktop resolution to 720p.
Now when you 'fullscreen' the video, the resizing will be done by the graphics card instead (and it's probably quite capable, I can get my fossilised geforce256 to play video at 1280x720) and you should be able to play almost anything.. from personal experience even 6-channel H.264 video with soft subtitles is perfectly workable on a 2600+.
The quality of the graphics-card based resizing may not be as high as that possible with FFDshow, but if your content is compressed video it won't make much of a difference.
Now when you 'fullscreen' the video, the resizing will be done by the graphics card instead (and it's probably quite capable, I can get my fossilised geforce256 to play video at 1280x720) and you should be able to play almost anything.. from personal experience even 6-channel H.264 video with soft subtitles is perfectly workable on a 2600+.
The quality of the graphics-card based resizing may not be as high as that possible with FFDshow, but if your content is compressed video it won't make much of a difference.
at the most cheapest, get a 6600, with purevideo it's more than up to the task of basic gaming and htpcing. i bought one for $120 canadian/$100 us.
it can be a passive model with vivo (like asus en6600 silencer) or you can quickly bolt a $25 zalman vf700-alcu onto it.
this price is only $30 or so more than what crappy 9200/9250/5200s sell for and the difference in performance is more than worth it.
next step up for $150-200 are 9800 pros or 6600GT.
you didn't mention what slot this was? i don't think there are agp 6600, only 6600gt which are incompatible with the vf700.
it can be a passive model with vivo (like asus en6600 silencer) or you can quickly bolt a $25 zalman vf700-alcu onto it.
this price is only $30 or so more than what crappy 9200/9250/5200s sell for and the difference in performance is more than worth it.
next step up for $150-200 are 9800 pros or 6600GT.
you didn't mention what slot this was? i don't think there are agp 6600, only 6600gt which are incompatible with the vf700.
I'm running AGP. I didn't think PCIe would take over this fast! I've got a 9800 AGP in my gaming rig too! Just got that motherboard 9 months ago. Oops. I think you are right about the 6600. I looked around and found that the Gigabyte passive 6600 would probably suit me just fine. I didn't see the asus passive one. I have been having problems now with tearing using my fx5200 even without FFDshow. I switched to overlay and it works fine. It sucks that i am starting to get a golden eye. I could go PCIe if i really wanted to but then i would want to go 939 and then i would need a A64. I'm thinking Passive 6600 and maybe a new faster sempron so i don't have to worry about speed. I saw one that ran at 2.2Ghz (Sempron64 3400+ I think) for $150. Thats a $300 upgrade and I really hope it can handle FFDshow cause i just bought this 5200 and sempron 2600+ 6 months ago. Looks like my folks are getting another upgrade!