2010-05-29, 16:57
Hey everyone,
So, I have 2 media centers in my home, both xbmc-based. Running Windows 7 home premium. I recently did the "How low can you go?" xbmc live test on an old pc lying around, and stuck a Geforce 8400 in it. I was shocked to find that not only did this old Pentium 4 rig play 1080p just fine, it was playing better than my Core 2 duo, Nvidia 8600/ATi 3450 rigs. There was no tearing at all on this xbmc live box. After running some checks on my offical 9.11 windows boxes, I found that the cpu was running at 80% even with haali. Nothing was being offloaded to the GPU at all.
Cut to now, I've learned of the issues surrounding ati cards and put a Geforce 210 in the old ati rig. I've thrown on the latest nightly build (30655) too. Enabled DVXA2 and all that jazz. Works so much better! Only a little bit of tearing. The P4 xbmc live rig still works better though.
Now, for the GeForce 8600 rig, I threw on the nightly and enabled DVXA2 but found that it still has a lot of tearing. I was surprised by this because it seems to be capable of hardware acceleration. Can I expect the platform to mature into these cards, or should I consider an upgrade away from these?
Thanks!
So, I have 2 media centers in my home, both xbmc-based. Running Windows 7 home premium. I recently did the "How low can you go?" xbmc live test on an old pc lying around, and stuck a Geforce 8400 in it. I was shocked to find that not only did this old Pentium 4 rig play 1080p just fine, it was playing better than my Core 2 duo, Nvidia 8600/ATi 3450 rigs. There was no tearing at all on this xbmc live box. After running some checks on my offical 9.11 windows boxes, I found that the cpu was running at 80% even with haali. Nothing was being offloaded to the GPU at all.
Cut to now, I've learned of the issues surrounding ati cards and put a Geforce 210 in the old ati rig. I've thrown on the latest nightly build (30655) too. Enabled DVXA2 and all that jazz. Works so much better! Only a little bit of tearing. The P4 xbmc live rig still works better though.
Now, for the GeForce 8600 rig, I threw on the nightly and enabled DVXA2 but found that it still has a lot of tearing. I was surprised by this because it seems to be capable of hardware acceleration. Can I expect the platform to mature into these cards, or should I consider an upgrade away from these?
Thanks!
