Critique my new HTPC before I order it

[morph166955]

So in all my wisdom when I built my dual x5355 encoder, I forgot that my current media center is no where near powerful enough to play 720p content when it gets to action scenes let alone 1080p. So now that I've started my new job I'm building a new one. Please let me know what you think of the specs. I'm including some newegg links so you can look it up if you want or for people wanting to replicate the system later.


Thermaltake Mozart Sx VC7001SNS Silver
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811133029

Intel Core2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache)
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115002

Intel D975XBX ATX Motherboard (specifically the BOXD975XBX2KR)
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813121059
-1066/800 MHz FSB
-Intel 975X/ICH7R North/South Bridge
-Max Memory Support 8GB 240-pin DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) (Only using 2GB, see below)
-PCI Express x16 - 3 (1 electrical x16 or x8, 1 electrical x8, 1 electrical x4)
-8-channel (7.1) audio subsystem with five analog audio outputs and two S/PDIF digital audio outputs (coaxial and optical) using the Sigmatel 9274D audio codec (Considered the Intel HD Audio Platform)
-Onboard Gigabit Ethernet w/82573(E/L) controler
-All the usual SATA/IDE/etc.

Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
w/ CAS=5 & @ 1.8V
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820148071

ASUS EN8600GTS/HTDP/256M GeForce 8600GTS 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP DX10 Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814121069

Sony/NEC/Optiarc AD-7170S-0B DVD Burner
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827152079


Some of my reasonings for things and/or my requirements of this system:

-I believe it is fully capable of H.264 1080p playback no questions asked with room to spare. This is an obvious requirement for me

-I would like the system to be Intel VIIV compatible which as far as I can tell it is. Sorry to all the AMD guys out there, but I'm an Intel guy, always have and probably always will be.

-I went with that specific video card for several reasons. 1) its DX10 compliant, 2) Its half the cost of the comparable ATI/AMD cards that are DX10 compliant, 3) It is only one card thick (not 2 like some are with their heat syncs/fans), 4) I have always used Asus video cards w/ NVidia chipsets and they have thus far proved themselves to me, 5) it is HDCP compliant so if that ever comes into play for me (which I'm sure it will) I'll be ready

-If you have another idea for a video card that I may have not considered, please let me know! This is by far the thing that is most up in the air decision wize!

-I want this system to last me a few years, not become something that I end up building a new one of in 18 months cause it is too slow and/or not compatible

I am very open to suggestions if you think that a choice of mine was bad. I am also very much wanting to hear if you think I made a good choice about something and why you believe that cause that will also help me out. By no means is anything here locked in stone.

Thanks in advance for everyones input!

[Inventive Software]

Good choice on the graphics card, but don't expect it to play games at your monitor's native resolution if it's more than 1280x1024. As you're after multimedia playback, I think it's a good choice, but games are a no go at high res.

The motherboard: I'd personally go for something 965 or P35 based, as the 975 came before the C2D, and there's no guarantee it'll perform well. You can probably find similar features for an HTPC on a P35 mobo, and it'll last you longer than the 975-based one (1333Mhz FSB for newer CPUs for example). Good feature set on it though! :D

[Nematocyst]

I don't know squat about what you need to achieve your goals. But I still have a couple of minor ideas.

-I would like the system to be Intel VIIV compatible which as far as I can tell it is. Sorry to all the AMD guys out there, but I'm an Intel guy, always have and probably always will be.


I don't even know what VIIV is. But I can say both are quality choices. I've used both (lately mostly AMD-- the Athlon XP line was unbeatable in terms of price/performance by Intel during its reign. So, I have 4 AthlonXP systems in this room. Still, if I were to build a system today, it'd be Intel. And with the price drops looming July 22, I may do just that and build a quad.

The only other thing I can say is dump the Sony DVD. It may be the cheapest one on newegg right now, but I urge anyone to avoid SONY when possible.

[burfadel]

I would have to agree, the p35 chipset would be much better. It effectively replaces the 975. THe current 975's, 965's etc are getting a bit long in the tooth... and even those with full C2D support can be a little 'clunky' at times - that is, the system feel isn't as good as a Nforce based chipset, even though it often outperforms the Nvidia equivalent.

The E6600 is soon to be replaced by the E6550. Its labelled E6550 as its fsb is 1333, and the clock frequency is lower so its slightly slower than an E6600. However, more recent E6600's supposedly aren't as good as the earlier ones, so it may be well worth looking at, or looking at the e6750 (replacing the E6700 with a 1333 bus, but is slightly faster). Not to mention these supposedly have the SSE4 instruction set, not to be confused with the E6600 etc's SSSE3 (not SSE3) instruction set that was termed SSE4 originally at many places. The proper SSE4 instruction set, for future programmes that support it, is supposed to be very beneficial and a much bigger step than from SSE2 to even SSSE3.

The graphics card is good, although Nvidia have been a bit slack with their drivers lately. They're working on that and will soon go back to the true UDA, so it will officially support Geforce 5 through 8. Note that even Forceware versions supposedly only supporting the 8800's work very well with the 6600's 7600's etc etc, just not officially!

I would get Vista x64. There are two reasons for that. The first is that Microsoft will no longer be making 32 bit operating systems, so in 3 years time when the new Windows comes out it will be 64 bit only. At least with the x64 Vista it will support the software for the next operating system. The second is that for drivers to install on Vista (unless you disable stuff and force install it, most people don't do this), drivers have to be WHQL signed. To get WHQL, both 32 and 64 bit versions have to be fully supported, so you're safe there. You won't be able to run old 16 bit Windows programmes, but that only affects programmes from early win95/and win 3.1 days so that shouldn't be a problem. Old dos games can be run through dosbox (a GNU dos emulator).

Get a good quality power supply. The 8600GTS requires a lot of juice, if you're running fans and two hard drives or more etc a 450W won't cut it! Get a good quality 600W+, costs a lot more but it won't need replacing every 3 months like the cheaper ones do on an always on machine!

Make sure with the case there's clearance for the 8600 and the drives etc behind it (towards the front of the case) some cases fit the 7600 etc fine, but barely fit the 8600 (with the 8800 possibly not fitting at all).

That Ram can easily be run at CAS 4, you can run 2.1V no problems through it and have tight timings :), or have more default timings but still cas 4 possibly at 1.9V. You would also want to make sure you have a command timing of 1T, as 2T slows down considerably. The motherboard may default to 2T with the 2x1GB Ram chips.

[morph166955]

Wow...that was fast! I'm going to try to answer/ask my questions in order of how you guys posted for my ease

@Inventive
Whats wrong with the higher resolutions? I'm considering running at 1080p at some point (i have a 720p projector this is going to be going to now). This is solely going to be a media center so games is not a concern, however I dont want to ever hit a bottleneck on this for any 1080p content (assuming its a movie or something like that, nothing super insane that is outside of the realm of this setup)

@Nematocyst
While i would normally agree, the NEC 7170 dvd drive is by far the best thing i've ever used in terms of burners (and i have had quite a few). It is the only one that i have yet to have a burn compatibility problem with (eg using a disc in another manuf. dvd). I wasn't even looking @ price on that I was just going with what I knew/trusted from experience.

@burfadel
Any idea on when those new cpu's are due to hit the streets? I'm looking into other motherboards now that are VIIV approved with the other chipsets. I was unaware that the 965 came after the 975, I thought it was the other way around.

Saddly yea, I'm going Vista x64 (probably ultimate since I have a copy if that floating around). As much as I despise Vista it does have DX10 and NVidia PureVideo HD plus a dozen other things that I just really need in a video work horse like this.

Yea i forgot, I'm still hunting for a power supply but it wont be anything skimpy. I've had enough issues getting the power supply for my encoder (imagine, dual x5355 xeons, 4x hdd's, 4gb fbdimm, etc) so this isnt going to be something that I intend to skimp on. From what I've been told about this case it is deeper then most media centers by almost a full inch so I don't forsee any issues with the space.


I also forgot to say in the original post that I'm still contimplating what TV tuner to use. I have a DVICO 5 Gold in my encoder thats kind of just sitting around doing nothing but unfortunately thats not media center compatibile/compliant or w/e they call it so I'm probably going to end up with something else. Any suggestions?

[morph166955]

What about this motherboard?

Intel BOXDG965WHMKR LGA 775 Intel G965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121052

or this one

Intel BOXDP35DPM LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121314

I'm not sure if the P35 chipset is VIIV compatibile although I have to assume it is.

[prOnorama]

-I went with that specific video card for several reasons. 1) its DX10 compliant, 2) Its half the cost of the comparable ATI/AMD cards that are DX10 compliant, 3) It is only one card thick (not 2 like some are with their heat syncs/fans), 4) I have always used Asus video cards w/ NVidia chipsets and they have thus far proved themselves to me, 5) it is HDCP compliant so if that ever comes into play for me (which I'm sure it will) I'll be ready

If you're willing to let go of 4.) there are brand new ATI cards out:the HD 2600/2400 range. Though it seems the cards have not have had very favourable reviews for gaming (the 8600GT beats it), the new UVD engine seems to work well. So if you're not a die-hard of gamer and consider a card which can off-load the CPU from H.264/VC-1 decoding considerably then it might be worth to check them out.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/440/7/

[squid_80]

@Inventive
Whats wrong with the higher resolutions? I'm considering running at 1080p at some point (i have a 720p projector this is going to be going to now). This is solely going to be a media center so games is not a concern, however I dont want to ever hit a bottleneck on this for any 1080p content (assuming its a movie or something like that, nothing super insane that is outside of the realm of this setup)
Some games won't support HDTV resolutions natively but most can be co-erced. I know for a fact it's rather trivial to get quake4 to run at 720p, same goes for silent hill 3 which is actually pretty old now.

[FishTank]

may i ask the stupid question why you want dx10 if you dont
plan on playing games on it? i dont see any other reason to go
for a dx10 card, not that that one would do any good in
dx10 games anyhow.

[morph166955]

ok...then im not worried. I thought you were referring to a limitation on the hardware, i could care less about running videos on this

@pronorama
The 8600's from nvidia can also offload all of the H.264 decoding straight to the GPU.

[morph166955]

may i ask the stupid question why you want dx10 if you dont
plan on playing games on it? i dont see any other reason to go
for a dx10 card, not that that one would do any good in
dx10 games anyhow.

dx10 also helps in the video decoding process (i think). plus why not get one that has support for it for later on.

[Surf]

Video Card:
I second Panorama's recommendation. Some of the new 2400/2600 have HDCP and silent heatsink, cheap too.

RAM:
Crucial has a pair of BALLISTICS on sale with fast timings on sale...$70 after rebate! Much better choice.

Motherboard:
Asus' P35K Deluxe seems a better choice, with IEEE 1394 which you may need to record off the HD settop box. Moreover it's almost a sin NOT to overclock the E6600.

Case:
Silverstone has a few good ones. The Thermaltake choice is an icky with the horizontal PCIs! Also the height is quite low for possible bigger case fan add-ons.

PSU:
Corsair's 520w, built by Seasonic. Quiet!

HSF:
Apack Zerotherm 900. Low profile if stock is not good enough. Other great coolers are usually around 6" tall!!

DVD writer:
Liteon's latest SATA type. CDfreaks always have good words about it.

Well, that's what I end up with so far for mine upcoming project.

[morph166955]

@ Surf

Memory:
The intel boards need some very specific memory and I have had issues in the past with compatibility of the ram and mobo in environments like this. Crucial themselves once told me not to use ballistic memory in a media center because it can have timing issues.

Mobo:
I dont overclock, ever. Personal choice. Also the asus isnt Viiv approved.

Case:
I want the lower case, its one reason I went with it. Plus the only thing thats going to be in there is the video card (maybe a tv tuner eventually) so I'm not entirely worried.

DVD:
My old lite-on was the biggest piece of garbage I have ever used. To this day I still have issues reading disc's it burnt. I had to buy a new one to put in an external bay so that I can read the bad discs when I need them or so i can reburn them with the new burner.

[Inventive Software]

@Inventive
Whats wrong with the higher resolutions? I'm considering running at 1080p at some point (i have a 720p projector this is going to be going to now). This is solely going to be a media center so games is not a concern, however I dont want to ever hit a bottleneck on this for any 1080p content (assuming its a movie or something like that, nothing super insane that is outside of the realm of this setup)


I also forgot to say in the original post that I'm still contimplating what TV tuner to use. I have a DVICO 5 Gold in my encoder thats kind of just sitting around doing nothing but unfortunately thats not media center compatibile/compliant or w/e they call it so I'm probably going to end up with something else. Any suggestions?

For the tuner, PC Format had a review and there was a Hauppauge that came top that had DVB-S, S2 and dual DVB-T, but I can't remember the model number. I'll get back to you on that one. ;)

Regarding the HD resolution thing, the 8 series cards are quite good for games, especially the 8800 series, but that's because they're clocked good and have decent memory bandwidth. The 8600 and 8500 series are at the moment crippled in games performance by inadequate memory bandwidth - 128 bit for the 8500, 256 bit I believe for the 8600 - even though the chips (G84 for the 8600, G86 for the 8500) themselves are more efficient and in some ways faster than the G80.

If I'm wrong on the specs, somebody please correct me. :D

[morph166955]

Regarding the HD resolution thing, the 8 series cards are quite good for games, especially the 8800 series, but that's because they're clocked good and have decent memory bandwidth. The 8600 and 8500 series are at the moment crippled in games performance by inadequate memory bandwidth - 128 bit for the 8500, 256 bit I believe for the 8600 - even though the chips (G84 for the 8600, G86 for the 8500) themselves are more efficient and in some ways faster than the G80.

Cool. But to say again, I really don't care about in game performance of these cards, I care about their HD media applications only. I don't have any need for the high frame rates that some games run at, as long as I can run 1080p with out issues thats fine! I've been reading more reviews and the cpu stats when using the onboard processor for the H.264 decoding is almost unbelievable. So unless anyone can give me a definitive reason for that card not being able to do what I want it to do, I'm pretty sure thats the one I'm going with.

More importantly now, is the motherboard. I'm very interested in knowing peoples opinions on the two new ones I posted above in comparison to the original one I posted.

[Inventive Software]

In which case you should be set for both the HDCP side and the resolution, and the decoding.

[prOnorama]

@pronorama
The 8600's from nvidia can also offload all of the H.264 decoding straight to the GPU.

Yes, but not VC-1 and the majority of HD DVD's/Blu-Ray use VC-1. Also I think there are some driver issues with the 8600 cards (like setting custom resolution etc.). Though I think with a CD 6600 you'll probably be OK to decode VC-1 1080p without the aid of a GPU.

However, in regard to the fact you're looking for a system that will last you for quite a while this quote is also interesting:

Right now the format with the highest potential for pushing hardware beyond its limits is Blu-ray. With 50GB disks possible today, we could see 2+ hour movies with sustained bitrates of 45 Mbps under H.264 which would really push even an X6800 system with an 8800 GTX running the display. Of course, bitrates that high aren't really necessary most of the time, so it won't likely be an issue. But HD-DVD is currently limited to 30GB disks which decreases the potential for high bitrate video (which translates to large file size).

( http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2890&p=5 )

Note: I have no preference for ATI or nVidia but it looks like ATI has the edge at the moment as far as off-loading the CPU for decoding HD content is concerned. Though who knows maybe nVidia will release another, better alternative soon (maybe the 8400GS) if you like to stick with that brand.

[Blue_MiSfit]

With 50GB disks possible today, we could see 2+ hour movies with sustained bitrates of 45 Mbps under H.264 which would really push even an X6800 system with an 8800 GTX running the display


What you fail to mention is that the 8800 GTX does NOT have full H.264 decode acceleration.

I know, it sounds crazy, but only the 8500 and 8600 series do this.

If you use it, you can have under 20% utilization decoding a 1080p H.264 at 40Mbps.

VC-1 though... yeah that sucks. :)

I think the new X2400/2600's do VC1, which would be somewhat important :)

~MiSfit

[burfadel]

The P965 and P975 came out at roughly the same time, although apparently the p965 has had a few revision the P975 didn't get!

The E6750's etc apparently are coming on 22 July, a bit later than initially planned.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/e6750_performance_preview/
Thats just one review of the new E6750.

Some recent E6600's etc don't overclock well at all, and I know you don't overclock, but since the earlier ones did, there possibly sounds like a reliability issue?... apparently resolved with the 6x50's!

[morph166955]

VC-1 though... yeah that sucks. :)

I think the new X2400/2600's do VC1, which would be somewhat important :)

~MiSfit

Correct me if im wrong here (which I very well could be), but isnt VC1 significantly easier on the cpu to decode because of the whole CABAC/CAVLC thing? Assuming that I am right on that couldnt the E6600 handle it just fine?

[dade49]

I'm playing HD video in 1080p (1920X1080) on my LCD TV. My HTPC is an AMD X2 4800+ with 4GB DDR2-800 (CL4) RAM with a Geforce 7600GT with HDMI out on Vista64. I picked this card because it was the only card that had native HDMI out with a SPDIF connector to run 5.1 audio with the video to the TV via HDMI. I'm able to decode and play HD video at 1920X1080 from Blu-ray and HDDVD with Mpeg2, AVC, and VC-1 without issue. No dropped frames or choppyness.

Honestly, the video card you're spec'ing here is overkill. It will definately handle decoding VC-1 and AVC with ease (assuming you have the right decoders). The new ATI HD cards will also work, maybe even better, but do you really need that? As for the proc you're using, the E6600 is awesome, but..... I have a diff box that I decoded/encoded HD video on that is a Xeon with a 1333 FSB. It was so much faster, I can't describe it. If you're looking for ultimate power, get a board with a P35 chipset and the new 6650 proc with the faster FSB. It makes the difference. And don't skimp on the RAM. Get yourself at least 2GB, and buy some good quality low latency memory. Don't go for that cheap CL5 crap. Your memory is just as important as your video card.

O yeah, 1 more thing.
Almost all HDDVD's use a VC-1 encoding. This is true. Blu-ray's use all 3 (Mpeg2, AVC, VC-1). For the most part, most Blu-ray's are Mpeg2, and I am seeing more are AVC. I've only run into 2 Blu-ray's that were actually VC-1. The VC-1 codec was co-developed by Toshiba and Microsoft, and as such, Sony affiliates prefer to use AVC for good compression, or just use Mpeg2.

[morph166955]

@dade

Thanks for all the info! Yea this box is straight up for decoding, i have my own little encoding box that I use thats just so much faster then everything else I have its crazy (picture this, 8x 2.66ghz core2 xeon's running simultaniously...yea...). I do ALOT of stuff in H.264 myself and a whole lot less straight from bluray or hddvd so in the end thats much more important to me right now.

[Blue_MiSfit]

buy some good quality low latency memory. Don't go for that cheap CL5 crap.


Yeah, that's just not true.

The performance difference between CL5 and CL4 is minimal, at the most.

Your memory is absolutely NOT as important as your graphics card, assuming you have half decent memory (CL5 DDR2 800 is a GREAT fit for Core 2 Duo systems). Of course, I don't own a Core 2 Duo, so I can't really say from personal experience, but everything I've seen indicates this. If you can point me to something reputable that demonstrates your position (real world benchmarks, not synthetic Sandra or Everest benchmarks) , then I stand corrected :)

~MiSfit

[morph166955]

Ok its ordered! Heres the final part list:


Intel BOXDP35DPM LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6600

Crucial 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model CT12864AA80E

ASUS EN8600GTS/HTDP/256M GeForce 8600GTS 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card

Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB 10,000 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive

Sony NEC Optiarc 18X DVD±R DVD Burner with 12X DVD-RAM Write Black SATA Model AD-7170S-0B

Thermaltake Mozart Sx VC7001SNS Silver 0.8 mm SECC Chassis ATX Media Center Computer Case

CORSAIR CMPSU-520HX ATX12V v2.2 and EPS12V 2.91 520W Power Supply


And before anyone jumps about the riser card not fitting cause of the PCIe x16 placement, I ordered one of those ribbon wire extensions so that it fits. I forgot to mention the WD Raptor before, but I was pretty much going with that anyway for the speed since I have PLENTY of externals plus the TB or so in my encoder for storing stuff temporarily. I'll be loading Vista Ultimate since thats what I have in my msft action pack (so yes, its legal before anyone complains!). I'm going to try to strip out vista a bit in terms of some of the things that are running that I am not going to need. If anyones got suggestions as to what to kill lemme know since this is my first shot at Vista and I don't have a good feeling about it being...agreeable...

THANKS EVERYONE! I'll let ya know how it goes

[Blue_MiSfit]

Aw dude... you went for 1gb of RAM? With Vista?

I would really really strongly suggest picking up another gig... You will have ~400 available just sitting on the desktop with no extra apps loaded.. I know I did...

It's an extra $40, go for it! :D

Otherwise, GRATS!
~MiSfit

[morph166955]

lol...forgot to put the 2x in there...i went with 2 gig. 1 gig and vista is...yea...

[Blue_MiSfit]

Thank the maker!!

Sad really.... isnt it?

And people are selling "Vista Ready" machines with 512...:rolleyes:

~MiSfit

[morph166955]

machines in, built, and im watching some sweet 1080p content right now :-)

Something I didnt realize that kinda irked me is that the nvidia drivers dont have 720p and 1080p as availible options to display at. I had to go in to the driver file and add them manually before I installed the driver. It works now though so w/e.

And just for reference, H.264 content at 1080p, ~30-40mbit/s...20-30% cpu...its sweet.

[morph166955]

Ok so I've had some more quality time with it now and I'm growing more and more impressed by this thing. It still has a few quirks, mainly with the remote but I'm quickly working those out.

First off, let me warn everyone, Vista and nVidia have some INITIAL issues with each other, but they are easily to fix. I just posted up a short how-to on fixing the issue in this part of the forum you can grab it at http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1022399

For reference, I loaded the newest ffdshow from x264.nl and I loaded coreavc 1.3 as well (yes i disabled H.264 decoding in ffdshow).

First thing I noticed was that when I was playing a large MKV off of a dvd the first few seconds would be very jumpy/bursty probably from the buffers being too empty since the drive was still spinning up. So after a small bit of tweaking with the haali spliter I was able to get a smooth clean playback thus far. What I did, was kick the buffer space up from 8192 to 32767 and I set it to put the decoder to a higher priority. If anyone has any comments about that approach or possibly some other settings please let me know. After that, I left it up to coreavc to do the rest. One thing I noticed though that differed from how ive seen coreavc run on my other computers is that in the past coreavc would pipe raw frames into ffdshow so that I could manipulate it if i wanted to using the ffdshow filters. Now it seems coreavc completely bypasses ffdshow completely. While I dont really mind this since its one less thing that the computer has to do, I did like having the ability to tack the OSD on with ffdshow to see my cpu usage and all that kinda stuff when doing tests.

My test "high bitrate" clip is the final scene from X-Men 3. I have the original bluray source and I'm in the process of snipping those frames out so that I don't have to go searching through and so that it doesn't take up 22gig which it does now. I was told that this scene was a great test scene since its bitrates range from 30 mbit/s all the way up to 45 mbit/s (as confirmed by the haali splitter). A few sites on the net that do the benchmarks had made the comment that this was the highest bitrate scene that they could find at the consumer level so I figured I would just go with that as well since it seemed to work for them. If anyone else knows of a higher bitrate scene/movie please let me know (and in no way am I saying to do anything illegal here!) and I will see if I can buy the bluray/hddvd and use my friends drive to extract the video down so I can snip it and use it. I'll report back more once I have some more concrete results. Last nights report was just me messing around before I went to bed (although the numbers are accurate). Today is going to be the more strenuous testing day for the system.

Well that about sums it up thus far. Thanks to everyone who put in their advice on this! Its greatly appreciated!

[Inventive Software]

Pictures would be nice. :) I'm looking to build my own HTPC in a few months, but want ideas on case designs. ;)

[Blue_MiSfit]

I think that in order to get ffdshow to operate on the output of CoreAVC (or other decoders for that matter) you have to go into its decoder configuration and look for 'raw video'. Change the decoder from disabled to 'all supported' or maybe just yv12, assuming that's what CoreAVC outputs. Then you can actually apply any filter to the output of CoreAVC. I do this all the time to add some noise / lanczos resize etc.. Luckily with clean 1080p content you shouldn't have to! :D /envy

So you are able to decode these high action scenes with no GPU assist at all, using CoreAVC? That's pretty amazing!

How does GPU assist work, actually? I'm not up on this. IIRC, you have to use something like PowerDVD or WinDVD in order to get support for DXVA 2.0. Is it possible to get these decoders working properly for re-encoded content? For example, a 1080p to 720p H.264 + AC3 in MKV created for backup purposes.

~MiSfit

[morph166955]

@inventive
I'll try to get some pics today before i close it up and put it with the rest of the hardware.

@blue_misfit
evidentally coreavc has no hardware decoding in it so i'm not quite sure whats going on. I think my lack of that ffdshow osd is causing a false reading when it's playing back. You can find more info on the hardware decoding in the AVC section theres an active post right now on it.