[steelman1991]

Unfreaking believeable!!

I'm still fighting with this $1100 Acer laptop that has the 1GB ATI Mobility 5650 chipset. I *THOUGHT* I had the 10.10 CCC software installed..but..NOOOOOOOO.

Looks like Acer has decided to lockdown the drivers along with ATI to prevent me from doing so.

Here's the deal (and this really frosts my buns ):
You go to AMD's site and grab the 10.10 drivers. You run the install. Install runs fine but here's the crappy part. If you're not really paying attention you may not realize that the install goes a lot quicker than it should. Why? Because it's not really installing the latest drivers!!!! No warning message like "AMD/ATI along with Acer think you're all idiots so we're not letting you install better drivers". So I'm stuck at CCC 8.7!!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

So back to the store goes this otherwise great laptop in search of either an Nvidia powered lappy or another manufacturer that will allow me to update video drivers as I see fit.

The REAL crappy part of this whole affair is that I bought my 11 year-old daughter an Acer notebook for $399 last xmas that has the Radeon HD 3xxx chipset and I can install the latest-and-greatest ATI drivers for it. It runs XBMC and plays 720p MKV files with DXVA no problem.

Double GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Clipper - Dumb point perhaps, but you wanna check those drivers again? Is the 8.7 you refer to the driver or CCC Package Number (open the ATI CCC panel and go to Information Centre). This will give you access to the CCC Version and Driver Information.

Reason I ask is that if that is the CC Version, then ACER/you are 2 years behind and relate to a release date of July 2008? If driver version then you are almost if not quite at the same level as my desktop ATI 5450 (driver version is: 8.773-100907a-105140E-ATI). Might be worth a check, just to confirm that driver and CCC 10.10 in particular isn't installing properly.

Have you made any contact with ACER to find out their position on this?

[clipper99]

Steelman,

My mistake as I was giving the driver packaging version. When I install the Oct 22 latest drivers from ATI it only updates the CCC and not the actual display driver as one would expect. I will contact Acer but here is a cut-and-paste from the information area you mentioned:

Driver Packaging Version 8.713.3.3-100420a-099253C-Acer
Catalyst™ Version 10.10
Provider ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.1010
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0000
Direct3D Version 8.14.10.0735
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.9712
Catalyst™ Control Center Version 2010.0930.2237.38732

[steelman1991]

Clipper - keep us informed when, if you get anything back from ACER. Yeah looks like ACER have a proprietary driver - seems to happen more with Laptops, than desktops, but unusual that they take the step to completley block any updates.

I have a Samsung R70 and although they recommend using the manufacturers driver updates, they don't actually block installing drivers direct from the Nvidia site.

[clipper99]

Success!!!

First off, Acer tech support is an oxymoron right up there with government intelligence and jumbo shrimp! Absolutely no help.

Well, turns out the problem was a setting in the BIOS for "Switchable Graphics" which is enabled by default for Win 7 OS's with a core i5 (and i presume i3 as well). All I had to do was change it to "Discreet" graphics.

For whatever reason even though in Win 7 I had "High Power GPU" selected which enables the ATI Mobility, the ATI driver installation routines must have been confused and assumed I had the Intel GPU (Low Power GPU option). This was why the display driver would never install.

As soon as I set "discreet" in BIOS and booted back into Win 7 and the system only thought I have the Radeon chip, the driver installed just fine and XBMC uses DXVA. YAY!

[gav1577]

Success!!!

First off, Acer tech support is an oxymoron right up there with government intelligence and jumbo shrimp! Absolutely no help.

Well, turns out the problem was a setting in the BIOS for "Switchable Graphics" which is enabled by default for Win 7 OS's with a core i5 (and i presume i3 as well). All I had to do was change it to "Discreet" graphics.

For whatever reason even though in Win 7 I had "High Power GPU" selected which enables the ATI Mobility, the ATI driver installation routines must have been confused and assumed I had the Intel GPU (Low Power GPU option). This was why the display driver would never install.

As soon as I set "discreet" in BIOS and booted back into Win 7 and the system only thought I have the Radeon chip, the driver installed just fine and XBMC uses DXVA. YAY!

This should help if you want to update your drivers
ATI http://www.hardwareheaven.com/modtool.php
NVIDIA http://www.hardwareheaven.com/nvmodtool.php

[steelman1991]

Success!!!

First off, Acer tech support is an oxymoron right up there with government intelligence and jumbo shrimp! Absolutely no help.

Well, turns out the problem was a setting in the BIOS for "Switchable Graphics" which is enabled by default for Win 7 OS's with a core i5 (and i presume i3 as well). All I had to do was change it to "Discreet" graphics.

For whatever reason even though in Win 7 I had "High Power GPU" selected which enables the ATI Mobility, the ATI driver installation routines must have been confused and assumed I had the Intel GPU (Low Power GPU option). This was why the display driver would never install.

As soon as I set "discreet" in BIOS and booted back into Win 7 and the system only thought I have the Radeon chip, the driver installed just fine and XBMC uses DXVA. YAY!

Well pleased for you - take it your neighbour is about to buy you several beers on the back of this

[Bas_h78]

Hi Guys,

As I said I was looking for another problem.......

I played yesterday some movies with dxva (and without), now I have problems with the video's om my screen.

I have the video on my screen, everything shows well and when the camera moves it looks like my screen is devided in 3 parts horizontally where the timing is off (video sync) in the screen.

For example when there are jail bars in the screen and the camera moves then there are (most of the time) 2 lines in the screen from where it looks that the video is out of sync.

Stripes are jailbars, camera movement from top left to bottom right:
Top of screen | | | |
Middle of screen | | | |
Bottom of screen | | | |

When I turn dxva off it still does this a bit, but less than with dxva turned on.

With the drivers 10.9 I had these issues not (but no dxva)

Any ideas, maybe a setting in ccc (there are so many).

Searching further it looks like the problem is tearing of the screen......

Regards,

Bas

[steelman1991]

Try experimenting with vsync in both xbmc (System/System/Video Output/ Vertical Blank Sync) and CCC (3D settings, Wait for Vertical Refresh, Always On).

[clipper99]

So after finally getting the newest ATI drivers into this laptop we started getting strange flickering using DXVA in both XBMC and MPCHC. Greenish banding along the screen too in both external HDMI and on the lappy's LCD screen. It sure looks like either a defective Mobility chipset but I really suspect these is a reason ACER decided to make it difficult to update the drivers in the first place. We tried pretty much every combo of setting in CCC with no luck and we've come to the end of our patience in getting this to work.

After all this tweaking with it my neighbour is taking my advice...again ..and he's ordered a Samsung i5 with a Nvidia 330 chipset and fingers crossed we won't have similar issues!

I'm not an ATI hater, I own an ATI 4870 on one of my desktop computers but after all this hassle along with the subsequent reading and research it sure looks to me like there are more issues with ATI than Nvidia when it comes to DXVA problems.

I truly appreciate all the helpful suggestions and will continue to follow this thread. I hope you get you problem solved soon Bas!

Cheers all

[steelman1991]

Clipper - you have a very forgiving neighbour - just out of curiosity, did you see this thread http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=83743 and try one of the newer svn versions which included the possible resolution for intel boards.

This build http://sshcs.com/xbmc/ should have the newer revisions included.

[Bas_h78]

Try experimenting with vsync in both xbmc (System/System/Video Output/ Vertical Blank Sync) and CCC (3D settings, Wait for Vertical Refresh, Always On).

Tnx, did some experimenting yesterday evening. Turning the V-sync on in xbmc did the trick.

I am so happy now, still have some scraper issues, but I did not search for solutions yet (first the screen issues had to be solved).

Thank you everyone for the feedback and help!!!!!

[clipper99]

Clipper - you have a very forgiving neighbour - just out of curiosity, did you see this thread http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=83743 and try one of the newer svn versions which included the possible resolution for intel boards.

This build http://sshcs.com/xbmc/ should have the newer revisions included.

I did see that thread and it is very good news for the XBMC community in general! Seeing that his laptop is a 3-5 year investment and he'll be using it for gaming as well we just felt with the driver problems right out of the gate that it would be better to go with Nvidia. Hopefully XBMC will make nice with the 330 chipset.

Cheers