100% CPU with HD2600XT HD playback

mokijoki · Sep 9, 2007, 05:05 PM

I recently purchased a Sapphire HD 2600 XT card (256MB DDR3) to replace my old Nvidia 7300GS card. My main reason was the hardware acceleration for HD content via UVD. I'm very sorry to say that I can't seem to get the UVD going... I started out with Vista 64 bit. I just swapped out the graphics card, uninstalled the old Nvidia drivers (including PurevideoHD) and after a reboot installed the lastest Catalyst drivers (7.8). When I playback HD content (mainly 720p movies) my CPU usage goes up to 95% - 100%. It doesn't matter what movie I play (WMVHD, AVI, .TS) or how it's encoded (X.264, H.264, VC-1) and whatever player I use (PowerDVD 7.3 Ultra, WMP calssic, WMP11, VLC) CPU usage goes up like crazy during playback. I read some reports of problems with 64 bit version of Vista, so desperate as I was I even went back to the 32 bit version of Vista... Clean install... Again latest Catalyst drivers 7.8 including the CCC, but same results :-( I even tried installing the Avivo package which only seems to be for the X1000 series, but this also didn't help.

I'm desperatly in need of some help how to get this UVD going. 3d performance of the card is fine, but I'mmainly interrested in the HD playback. Sofar my old 7300GS with PurevidioHD takes up less CPU (65%-96%) then my new HD2600XT.. This can't be right. Help me !

AMD64 3200+
1 GB DDR400
320 Sata + 160 Sata
HD 2600XT 256 DDR3
Philips 42" HD LCD TV only connected

mokijoki · Sep 9, 2007, 05:09 PM

I've been playing around some more and found out I cannot enable hardware acceleration in neither PowerDVD 7.3 ultra or Nero 8. As stated before I'm running Vista x86. Could this be a problem with DirectX10 maybe ?

**ChaosMinionX** · Sep 9, 2007, 05:41 PM

Do you have Avivo codecs installed?

Kizo · Sep 9, 2007, 05:56 PM

I tried the same when I first purchased my card. I simply cannot enable hardware acceleration.
Then I read somewhere that you only get UVD acceleration if you have HDDVD/Bluray drive, which I don't have. But I couldn't find a definite confirmation anywhere.
BTW, I'm running Vista x86, and I have the Avivo codecs installed, as well as PowerDVD 7.3

**ChaosMinionX** · Sep 9, 2007, 07:57 PM

Weird, with my 2900 I have full hardware acceleration with powerdvd.

mokijoki · Sep 10, 2007, 12:46 AM

It shouldn't matter if you play the movie from your harddisk or a HD-DVD or BlueRay drive. If the movie is H.264 or VC-1 the GPU should take care of the decoding. With my good old 7300GS and PurevideoHD installed I used to get hardware acceleration. Now with my new HD 2600 XT I get nothing (both cards PCI-Express btw).

There are no seperate AvivoHD drivers... Should be all within the latest Catalyst drivers and DX10. The Avivo drivers found on ATI's website are for the previous X1000 series cards...

I installed Nero 8 Ultra yesterday and tried the hardware acceleration part in there also. Same results, when not playing any content I can mark the 'use hardware acceleration' box, only to find it unchecked and greyed out when playing HD content. I'm really starting to think it's the DirectX10... Checked with DXDIAG and the DirectDraw, Direct3D and AGPtexture acceleration are enabled... Maybe it's disabled in the registry somewhere ?

Kizo · Sep 10, 2007, 02:47 AM

I did read also that some of Hd 2600XT cards were sold with a broken UVD, but I doubt Sapphire would be selling them. So maybe we are doing something wrong here, or maybe the acceleration doesn't work in Vista. But this is just speculation, we can't know for sure.

mokijoki · Sep 10, 2007, 03:53 AM

I read that too.. These were early models and I believe they only sold them in 3rd world countries for a heavily reduced price. I don't think Sapphire would sell these either...

Should work under Vista (even more then under XP) as the cards are new. Might be we have to wait for new Catalyst drivers (some 7.9 beta's have already leaked, but are only for the AGP version (??)).

Kizo · Sep 10, 2007, 10:13 AM

No they are an official beta, they improve ET: Quake Wars performance.
They are for all HD 2x00 series, for XP and Vista, but 32-bit only.
You can find them here:

Quote:

AMD Customer Care

under "737-29459: ATI Radeon HD 2xxx series: Hotfix for Quake Wars Enemy Territories Demo to improve performance"

mokijoki · Sep 11, 2007, 01:40 AM

Well, for now I solved it softwarewise by installing CoreAVC decoder and the Haali video renderer and changing their merrit level to 'preffered'. At least I can watch my 720p movies again without chops. Still hoping for a permenent solution... Maybe with the new Catalyst drivers...

LemonFreshBoy · Nov 6, 2007, 02:21 PM

I had this exact problem too with my MSI HD2600XT 512MB Silent edition card, but managed to resolve it in PowerDVD 7.3 after installing patch 3104a.1 from Cyberlink's website.

Here's a direct link to the patch: Updates - CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra - Hi-Def Disc Playback

For more general patches available for PowerDVD, try Updates - CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra

After installation, CPU usage has dropped from a constant 100%, to ~20-30% whilst playing HD-DVDs. It also seemed to resolve other PowerDVD stability issues on my AMD 4200+ X2 32bit Vista Ultimate setup.

Hope this helps!

Ben

Kizo · Nov 7, 2007, 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LemonFreshBoy

I had this exact problem too with my MSI HD2600XT 512MB Silent edition card, but managed to resolve it in PowerDVD 7.3 after installing patch 3104a.1 from Cyberlink's website.

Here's a direct link to the patch: Updates - CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra - Hi-Def Disc Playback

For more general patches available for PowerDVD, try Updates - CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra

After installation, CPU usage has dropped from a constant 100%, to ~20-30% whilst playing HD-DVDs. It also seemed to resolve other PowerDVD stability issues on my AMD 4200+ X2 32bit Vista Ultimate setup.

Hope this helps!

Ben

Not only it helps, it SOLVES my problem.

Thank you VERY much for taking the time to register and share this information with us.
I very much appreciate that.

Thanks again.

LemonFreshBoy · Nov 7, 2007, 01:21 PM

You're most welcome!

I'm glad it helped: I know full well how annoying these issues can be!

Ben

hellbraker2222 · Dec 20, 2007, 10:58 AM

Unfortunately for me,im not into HD, at least for now.im having the same issue but in a different form.For me, there is always 100% CPU all the time(from the time i insert into the PCIe slot),im using CCC 7.11 in Vista.When i remove it,every thing is fine.There is no hardware acceleration(even Sandra shows it).My card is 2600XT 512 DDR3.
Any ideas?

kizwan · May 6, 2008, 03:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mokijoki

It shouldn't matter if you play the movie from your harddisk or a HD-DVD or BlueRay drive. If the movie is H.264 or VC-1 the GPU should take care of the decoding. With my good old 7300GS and PurevideoHD installed I used to get hardware acceleration. Now with my new HD 2600 XT I get nothing (both cards PCI-Express btw).

There are no seperate AvivoHD drivers... Should be all within the latest Catalyst drivers and DX10. The Avivo drivers found on ATI's website are for the previous X1000 series cards...

I installed Nero 8 Ultra yesterday and tried the hardware acceleration part in there also. Same results, when not playing any content I can mark the 'use hardware acceleration' box, only to find it unchecked and greyed out when playing HD content. I'm really starting to think it's the DirectX10... Checked with DXDIAG and the DirectDraw, Direct3D and AGPtexture acceleration are enabled... Maybe it's disabled in the registry somewhere ?

Sorry, I reply this only after half-way reading this thread. I have ASUS EAH2600XT (ATI HD 2600 XT) 256MB DDR4. I also get same situation, where Hardware Acceleration checkbox unchecked & disabled after playing HD video. But the HD video played fine.

I did try playing HD video, such as NCIS, Bleach & One Piece. I only get 10-30% cpu load and 3-5% GPU activity. I use on-board sound card (realtek - intel motherboard), so it also contribute to my cpu load value. (I read somewhere that on-board sound card use host processor.)

This is information I get from Nero ShowTime 4 (Nero 8) when playing One Piece video (HD):-
Audio attribute :
Audio format : AAC
Sampling quantization : 32
Number of audio channels : 2

Video attribute :
Video compression mode : AVC Level 4.1
Source picture resolution : 1280x720
Interlacing mode: progressive.

Subpicture attribute :not available

Filter list:
Default DirectSound Device
Video Mixing Renderer 9
Nero Sound Processor
Nero Subtitle
Nero Audio Decoder 2
Nero DVD Decoder
Nero MP4 Splitter
Nero File Source (Async.)

Bleach video (HD):-
Audio attribute :
Audio format : MP3
Sampling quantization : 16
Number of audio channels : 2

Video attribute :
Video compression mode : AVC Level 5.1
Source picture resolution : 856x480
Interlacing mode: progressive.

Subpicture attribute :not available

Filter list:
Default DirectSound Device
Video Mixing Renderer 9
Nero Sound Processor
Nero Subtitle
Nero Audio Decoder 2
Nero DVD Decoder
Nero MP4 Splitter
Nero File Source (Async.)