[T800]

Would the E350-M1 work faster/better with or without a GT430 installed rather using the on board graphics?

[bluray]

Would the E350-M1 work faster/better with or without a GT430 installed rather using the on board graphics?

For UI, it don't make any different.....but for playback, it'll playback smoother with GT430......I installed GT430 since I built my E350M1....

[Malosar]

I never had any playback issues with 1080p MKV or Bluray, nor with HD Audio. It can't do 3D or 10bit though. UI was a big difference going from E350 to my now A6-3650. Night and Day.

So completely opposite to Bluray's response sorry.

[igot6strings]

I only needed to add a video card(cheap radeon HD 6450) to make Netflix HD work(silverlight doesn't support the 6310). Everything else was flawless.

[T800]

I'm building another HTPC with some parts I have left over and just wondering if I should throw in the card as it's sat there. If theres no real difference in user experience I won't bother.

[bluray]

I never had any playback issues with 1080p MKV or Bluray, nor with HD Audio. It can't do 3D or 10bit though. UI was a big difference going from E350 to my now A6-3650. Night and Day.

So completely opposite to Bluray's response sorry.

Have you try to playback Thor blu-ray disc with DTS-HD 7.1 or Transformers: Dark Of The Moon blu-ray disc with TrueHD 7.1 directly on BD-ROM using XBMC? Most of my viewing are full ISO and blu-ray disc.......

[DJ_Izumi]

Have you try to playback Thor blu-ray disc with DTS-HD 7.1 or Transformers: Dark Of The Moon blu-ray disc with TrueHD 7.1 directly on BD-ROM using XBMC? Most of my viewing are full ISO and blu-ray disc.......

I've noticed that a lot of people on this forum have some interesting superstitions as to what constitutes a 'stress test' of an HTPC.

DTS-HD, Dolby TrueHD really arn't that computationally demanding in relative terms. The content's of the audio as well make no notable difference in computational demand either. TrueHD 7.1 from Transformers or True HD 7.1 from Sleepless In Seattle will yeild the same difficulty for the CPU.

This also goes for the visuals. Video is standardized. h.264 is standardized to specific levels and profiles to ensure that decoding hardware that meets those requirements can play anything. The Blu-Ray spec doesn't allow for h.264 higher than high profile at level 4.1. This specifically sets the maximum ammounts of various samples, macroblocks, resolution and everything else. It's a hard limit, there are no Blu-Rays that go out of these specs. The encoder is set to it's limits and it doesn't exceed those limits when encoding. This ensures that every Blu-Ray player will playback every Blu-Ray. (To do otherwise tends to envoke a lot of bad PR and possibly class action law suits) Even 3D Blu-Ray uses an encoded stream that is specifically engineered to be backwards compatible with every 2D Blu-Ray player.

Similarly, the decoding of [email protected] for a the GPU in the E-350 is a trivial task, no matter what the content of that video is. Go look at the GPU usage when decoding video through DXVA in Windows, it's not close to burying the needle.

Sure, the image encoded can influence how demanding something is. A black screen with white text is far less demanding than a scene with a lot of motion, a lot less is changing afterall. Still, these things you think that 'stress test' the GPU arn't really doing it at all. It's just something you think because you don't understand the technology behind video encoding. Frankly, sometimes what looks like a simple thing to the human eye is tops out the compression. You want to know what tends to actually max out my CPU when I'm testing CPU decoding on a system that is juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust below the need to playback anything? The Walt Disney company bumper that they put before their movies. Where the camera pans back from the castle, and complicated particle effect fireworks, strongly contrasting the main blue color. THAT is where I normally drop the most frames when benching.

But hey this is more to my field. Cameras, video editing, broadcast systems, distrobution, it's the industry I'm involved in.

[bluray]

@DJ-

It's very simple question, and here it is again "Have you try to playback Thor blu-ray disc with DTS-HD 7.1 or Transformers: Dark Of The Moon blu-ray disc with TrueHD 7.1 directly on BD-ROM using XBMC?"

Pay attention to the words in RED......it don't have to be Thor or Transformer, but it is the two movies I used to test bitstreaming DTS-HD/TrueHD using XBMC since last July version......

If you can playback fluently with your E350 HTPC as stated above, great for you.......

[Malosar]

@DJ-

It's very simple question, and here it is again "Have you try to playback Thor blu-ray disc with DTS-HD 7.1 or Transformers: Dark Of The Moon blu-ray disc with TrueHD 7.1 directly on BD-ROM using XBMC?"

Pay attention to the words in RED......it don't have to be Thor or Transformer, but it is the two movies I used to test bitstreaming DTS-HD/TrueHD using XBMC since last July version......

If you can playback fluently with your E350 HTPC as stated above, great for you.......

I have Transformers Dark Side with a 7.1 receiver (love it because it's one of the only 7.1 titles I have out of many BR's and a great showcase for audio. One of the other 7.1 BR's I have is Sound of Music LOL). I play Blurays through TMT5 and not a single problem throughout the movie on my E350. I didn't know you could play through XBMC, is that via AnyDVD-HD for realtime decryption? Wouldn't that tax the weak CPU thus causing problems?

I haven't tried ISO as I don't rip my BluRays (I might once I build or expand my WHS as that would be a lot of data). Biggest x264 I've streamed to my E350 over the network was a high bitrate 20Gb MKV w/DTS-MA.

[bluray]

@DJ-

It's very simple question, and here it is again "Have you try to playback Thor blu-ray disc with DTS-HD 7.1 or Transformers: Dark Of The Moon blu-ray disc with TrueHD 7.1 directly on BD-ROM using XBMC?"

Pay attention to the words in RED......it don't have to be Thor or Transformer, but it is the two movies I used to test bitstreaming DTS-HD/TrueHD using XBMC since last July version......

If you can playback fluently with your E350 HTPC as stated above, great for you.......

I have Transformers Dark Side with a 7.1 receiver (love it because it's one of the only 7.1 titles I have out of many BR's and a great showcase for audio. One of the other 7.1 BR's I have is Sound of Music LOL). I play Blurays through TMT5 and not a single problem throughout the movie on my E350. I didn't know you could play through XBMC, is that via AnyDVD-HD for realtime decryption? Wouldn't that tax the weak CPU thus causing problems?

I haven't tried ISO as I don't rip my BluRays (I might once I build or expand my WHS as that would be a lot of data). Biggest x264 I've streamed to my E350 over the network was a high bitrate 20Gb MKV w/DTS-MA.

That is the reply I'm looking for, and thank you for your honest reply.

Yes, I can playback Transformer with E350/TMT5 directly on BD-ROM fluently too. Since this is XBMC, I'm always reference it to XBMC. When I tried to playback blu-ray disc directly on BD-ROM or ISO with E350/XBMC, it was stuttering. I used XBMC Windows patches and AnyDVD HD to playback blu-ray disc directly on BD-ROM. When using AnyDVD HD to decrypt encrypted blu-ray in the background, it allow me to playback blu-ray disc with XBMC Play Disc option and XBMC Windows patches allow me to bitstream DTS-HD/TrueHD to AVR for decoding using XBMC........

When people reply to comment by other, they need to pay attention to detail......

[Malosar]

So are you saying that adding in the GT430 discrete removed the stuttering when decrypting realtime with AnyDVD HD through XBMC? I would have thought it would be the CPU power (lackthereof) in the E350 causing problems in the realtime decrypt process.

[DJ_Izumi]

So are you saying that adding in the GT430 discrete removed the stuttering when decrypting realtime with AnyDVD HD through XBMC? I would have thought it would be the CPU power (lackthereof) in the E350 causing problems in the realtime decrypt process.

I don't get it either. HD 6310 or GT430, they're doing all the work on the video stream. So the CPU is left to work on audio decoding, subtitles, decryption and whatever else is going on in the background. What GPU you have is irrelevent if on the fly decryption is the argued bottleneck. I'm kinda confused as to what Blu-Ray's point is right now even.

[Malosar]

Unless the internal bandwidth of the CPU is being choked by the GPU+CPU usage and having the discrete frees up that bandwitch for purely CPU instructions. The Fusion APUs are known to be internally bandwidth starved.

[DJ_Izumi]

Unless the internal bandwidth of the CPU is being choked by the GPU+CPU usage and having the discrete frees up that bandwitch for purely CPU instructions. The Fusion APUs are known to be internally bandwidth starved.

I'm fairly certian that if GPU video decoding on the internal GPU slowed down the CPU processing of an E-350, we'd have seen some literature on that by now.

[bluray]

What GPU you have is irrelevent if on the fly decryption is the argued bottleneck. I'm kinda confused as to what Blu-Ray's point is right now even.

Let make it simple for you to understand my point-

1. AMD E350+HD6310 (iGPU)- stutter when playback blu-ray disc (1080P video/bitstreaming HD audio) directly on BD-ROm or ISO using W7+XBMC
2. AMDE350+Nvidia GT430 (discrete GPU)- no stutter when playback blu-ray disc (1080P video/bitstreaming HD audio) directly on BD-ROm or ISO using W7+XBMC

Playback rely heavily on GPU......after GT430 is installed, I can playback every blu-ray disc I threw at it fluently and streaming Netflix HD is fine too......

Let me ask you this again- Have you try to playback blu-ray disc (1080P video/biststreaming HD audio) directly on BD-ROM or ISO with E350+HD6310 using W7+XBMC? If you can playback fluently, good for you.......