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zemosabe · 2010-09-17, 07:04

I just built a new system in order to run XBMC through windows. I was running XBMC Live on a Revo 1600 with very few problems. I thought it would be great to run WMC, HULU, BOXEE and XBMC through the same box so built a new system. I am running an I3 w/ 4 gigs ram (running dharma beta2) fed by a DNS 323 w/ 2 tb 5200 rpm drives over 100 mbps ethernet, viewing on a sony 40z5100. My larger 1080P files are almost unwatchable. What is my best hardware option to help rectify this situation?

I am running out of space and am working to re-purpose an old PC into a media server. Spending money on drives is preferable to anything else, hence possible software tweaks would be great.

Should I just get a dedicated graphics card? If so, please suggest one. (need low profile).

Is the NAS my bottleneck? Would gigabit ethernet help? SSD?

Video stutters and also randomly pauses from time to time. I have tried DxA2 on and off and don't see much difference.

I have gotten this far by searching but am a bit stuck.

Thanks

Z

Gumble · 2010-09-17, 12:57

zemosabe Wrote:I just built a new system in order to run XBMC through windows. I was running XBMC Live on a Revo 1600 with very few problems.

What exact model do you have?
IGP: GMA > sucks, no hd video acceleration
IGP: ION (Nvidia Geforce 9400 graphics chip) > Try to enable VDPAU, 1080p should run smoothly!

zemosabe Wrote:Video stutters and also randomly pauses from time to time. I have tried DxA2 on and off and don't see much difference.

I guess you mean DXVA2 - this is afaik ATI's video library. I don't think that there are any Revos with ATI/AMD chips.

compcentral · 2010-09-17, 13:19

you definitely need gigabit ethernet. that should make a pretty noticeable difference.

prae5 · 2010-09-17, 13:30

You do not need gigabit ethernet, you can quite happily stream hd content over 100mbit ethernet. I would have thought you should have ben able to do 1080p decode with your cpu alone.

What kind of files / bitrates are the files that cause you problems? DO you have a debug log of you playing them? Do you have the same problem if you play a problematic file locally?

I know a lot of the lower end nas's struggle with sustained high bitrate throughput, so that might be worth looking at. Still all speculation without a lot more detail.

compcentral · (This post was last modified: 2010-09-17, 14:47 by compcentral.)

All I know is that my setup struggled the same as his using 100 Mbps and runs smooth as butter with the only change being upgrading the network to gigabit. This was only a problem on high bitrate 1080p content.

Also, those 5400 rpm drives could be limiting read speeds. I'm using a dedicated server with 6 1TB 7200rpm drives in a RAID 5 arrangement. Also, on a side note, I have a much less powerful CPU with onboard nVidia Graphics.

rudeboyx · 2010-09-17, 14:51

i use 10/100 ethernet and can stream 1080p media to any of my devices without any problems. you do NOT need 100/1000 to achieve this. my guess is your read speeds of you NAS is causing the problem. is it set up as RAID? 0,1,5 etc. if you were to upgrade your NAS to one with a 100/1000 ethernet then chances are it will have better read speeds also, which could be mistaken for thinking your gigabit ethernet was fixing the issue.

bcboncs · 2010-09-17, 15:28

I had to use DSPlayer (xbmc forum search) to properly display/hear the 1080p files. I am also on Win7 but I am using x64 Ultimate. I'm not sure if this is the same case for you or not though.

I hope this helps.

compcentral · 2010-09-17, 15:32

I don't use a NAS, I have a full-blown server that has always used RAID 5 for movie storage.

Now that I think about it, I did start using DXVA around the same time that I updated to 1000 Mbps... so maybe that was what actually fixed my stuttering.

I just updated my signature with my specs for reference... Everything seems to be working very nice at the moment using the Dharma Beta 2 release.

poofyhairguy · 2010-09-17, 18:07

A Core i3 should be able to eat a x264 file alive without GPU decoding.

But then an Revo box worked great in the same situation...Hmm...

Well, I know the i3 GPU is useless. And that is the biggest difference between the i3 and the Revo (despite CPU power) is the Revo's much better GPU. Maybe this all can be solved by a cheap 210GT.....

zemosabe · 2010-09-18, 18:18

Thanks for the responses everyone. The files I was trying to play were at most 20mbps mkv's. I tried playing from the desktop and that didn't solve the problem. It appears that the vcpu was working independent of whether dxva2 was on or off although with it on it was hitting 100% +. VLC was actually much worse with these files. I am just going to pick up a graphics card and hope that solves my problems. Any suggestions?

poofyhairguy · 2010-09-18, 19:10

NVIDIA!!!!

Specifically, a gt210 or better.

compcentral · 2010-09-18, 19:51

the nvidia 210/220GT should work fine as suggested. You can get one with an 1GB of RAM and a hdmi port with a 1/2 height adapter (if needed) for about $60-70.

Actually, here a 220GT on newegg for $50 after rebate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6814121347

zemosabe · 2010-09-19, 01:35

Thanks again for the responses. I ended up getting impatient and running over to Microcenter to see what they had on the shelves. Ended up with an MSI Radeon HD 5450 1GB card for $50 AR:
http://www.microcenter.com/single_produc...id=0335972
Playback is now perfect over the network with dcpu @ 1-2%, acpu @ 0% and vcpu @ 0-6%. It drops a couple frames when starting a video but hasn't dropped any in the past half hour. There is so much conflicting information on this forum about nvidia vs. ATI but the consensus seemed to be that ATI was better for Windows. Either way I am happy with the results I got with this card.

Hopefully I can seal this thing up for a while and start working on my server.

Thanks again

Z