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mr-scarface
2nd June 2009, 04:45
So my laptop is connected to my TV via hdmi for watching movies. It's a dual core laptop but it isn't the fastest. CPU usage hovers around 60-70% during 1080p mkv playback (using coreavc). When I connect my laptop to the TV, I usually have it set to "clone" (in the nvidia control panel). This means that the laptop's display is cloned onto the TV. So this means if i'm playing a movie, it will display it both on the laptop screen, and on the tv screen. The cpu/gpu is essentially rendering the video twice right?

Should I set the display mode to "single"? Would this help performance as now it's only rendering on the tv screen? or is this not how it works? The reason I'm asking is because last night I was watching Sin City 1080p mkv and while the cpu usage was at 60% most of the time, it suddenly spiked to 100%. This is because it overheats and throttles down 1 of the 2 cores. The movie was obviously unwatchable when the cpu is at 100%.


PS: 720p releases usually take less cpu cycles on my machine (20-40%). Never had a problem with those. But I just can't imagine how a 2 hour span of 60-70% cpu usage can cause such a big problem. I've even applied a bios update which addressed an overheating issue in the past.

turbojet
2nd June 2009, 10:45
Try both ways and see. I'm pretty sure it's a draw once output twice technique. It may affect performance a little bit but I don't know if you'll notice it or not.

As for the overheating problem you may want to look at trying to lower the FSB by 10mhz or so, such a small change can make quite a difference in temps in a laptop without any notifiable performance loss.

kutjong
3rd June 2009, 13:43
I always have my display mode in single mode if I watch movies. If I use clone mode, there is always tearing in video, also in youtube videos.

As for cpu usage, I don't know. It is very easy to test though.

Ghitulescu
9th June 2009, 09:13
So this means if i'm playing a movie, it will display it both on the laptop screen, and on the tv screen. The cpu/gpu is essentially rendering the video twice right?

No, the output of the rendering engine is duplicate to specialised chips (which may be part of the GPU in the new designs) that format the video for the periferics. Of course, every GraKa is different.