amd 780g and dvb-t

Forums › Home Theatre (incl HTPC) › amd 780g and dvb-t

richms

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# 20935 10-Apr-2008 16:44

Has anyone got one of these up and running yet,

I am thinking of getting one next week so long as there is no major negative results. My mate in the UK has had a few issues with the hdmi out and his HT receiver, and they dont do 8 channel on hdmi which is a non issue for me at the moment. So long as they can decode the video is all I care about.

Richard rich.ms

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# 122668 10-Apr-2008 20:42

I have one on back order right now and have been reading the avs forums post about the 780G mobo's with interest. As far as i can tell there are a few issues with the HDMI but they are looking very likely to be fixed with future firmware releases.

As for right now i plan on using my 8600GT as the video output but i think i might try and pick up an ATI card to use the hybrid crossfire. I don't plan on using the onboard HDMI at all.

I'l try and do a bit of a run down of the gear when i get it for others that might be interested.

richms

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# 122669 10-Apr-2008 20:50

I will be chucking it into a lowprofile miniatx case so I dont think that I will be able to get a h264 supporting card to work in it.

My mate has a 3800+ in it and it plays fine both with cpu and the powerdvd codec doing it, but he has only tried 720p downloaded movies, and at 4.7 gig they are lower bitrate then tv will be, and no interlace so not a great comparison. Hes played some 1080i stuff on it, but that was mpeg2 so no comparison either.

Richard rich.ms

sbiddle

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# 122670 10-Apr-2008 20:52

The only issue could be the fact H.264 hardware acceleration don't seem to work properly with interlaced video on HD2400's, HD2600's and HD3850's. If it is an issue with the Catalyst drivers then you'll probably encounter the same issues with this new chipset as well.

richms

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# 122675 10-Apr-2008 21:00

Which is why I am letting someone else be the guinne pig on this one before I splash out. The gigabyte board which is the only one I can find listed here isnt really what I am looking for in a desktop board, so if it sucks for htpc then I have to go thru the whole sell it on trademe for less then I paid thing which I hate doing.

Richard rich.ms

hashbrown

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# 123226 13-Apr-2008 17:13

Post below claims to have the Gigabyte board working with de-interlacing issues resolved.

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=83&TopicId=20310&page_no=3#122269

sbiddle

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# 123232 13-Apr-2008 17:26

hashbrown: Post below claims to have the Gigabyte board working with de-interlacing issues resolved.

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=83&TopicId=20310&page_no=3#122269

That's not quite the whole issue.

I could get a perfect picture on TV3 as well with my ATI card however picture breakup on channel changes was poor when switching between interlaced and progressive channels and playback of interlaced content (TV3 in particular) resulted in a loss of sync and picture breakup.

hashbrown

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# 123238 13-Apr-2008 17:53

sbiddle:
That's not quite the whole issue.

I could get a perfect picture on TV3 as well with my ATI card however picture breakup on channel changes was poor when switching between interlaced and progressive channels and playback of interlaced content (TV3 in particular) resulted in a loss of sync and picture breakup.

Have emailed the guy who posted the original message. Hopefully he can share his experience and confirm if he has similar issues.

huckster

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# 123337 14-Apr-2008 09:02

hashbrown:

Have emailed the guy who posted the original message. Hopefully he can share his experience and confirm if he has similar issues.

Yep, have got the Gigabyte board with 2Gb RAM, XP SP2, and a BE2350.

For a few days, I thought I'd made a right cock-up as TV3 was terrible and the desktop in XP also looked pretty awful (e.g. windows dragged across the desktop weren't repainted very well).

I started with all the drivers off the CD and I would get the odd crash. I then went through upgrades to BIOS, drivers off the Gigabyte website for Video, chipset, audio (which crackled initially), the lot.

I was not impressed with the thing running XP and was contemplating an upgrade to Vista when I stumbled upon the Catalyst drivers on the AMD site (http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=mce/radeonx-mce). Hallelujah.

I've only installed the video driver, not the whole Catalyst software suite. I will probably do that when I feel a little more confident that the PC is now stable. This together with a newish SVN of Media Portal (incl. TVServer) and the PowerDVD codec gives me a good picture on all channels. Switching channels is slow (probably the Freecom USB DVB-T stick) but works. If the reception goes, it can cause Media Portal to throw a wobbly. I do need to sort out my aerial as it's not quite pointing in the right direction, but I'm not good with heights! CPU usage is sub 10% when prior to the Catalyst drivers it would be up around 70%.

Things that I thought were causing me grief were Kapersky (installed off the Gigabyte CD) and EasyTune 5 (would not start 1 in 3 times on startup). De-installed those (now running AVG). Also make sure you deinstall the existing ATI drivers and do a reboot before installing the new ones above.

Am I totally happy? No. Media Portal is a bit flakey at the moment e.g. some keystrokes don't work. I think that this is the cause of a few problems and I eagerly await their release candidate.

Any questions, let me know.

But wait there's more.... Am using the HDMI output to a Panasonic plasma.

otherland

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# 123370 14-Apr-2008 10:57

Am running this motherboard with no additional video card, 2 Gig RAM and Windows XP, AMD 9600 connected to a Sony 1080P LCD TV via PC input. Using DVBviewer with a Nova-t 500 card, and use COREAVC rather than PowerDVD as if I use hardware acceleration then the PC locks up after a few hours when watching full screen. Am running latest BIOS and drivers from Gigabyte site.

Currently have CoreAVC set to blend deinterlacing and this seems the best setup at the moment for watching TV3. CPU is around 30-35%. When using hardware acceleration with the PowerDVD filters CPU is 2-3%.

Also have refresh rate set to 50 hertz rather than 60 hertz also seems to improve picture quality.

eXDee

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# 123438 14-Apr-2008 17:03

So these boards work fine for DVB-T? 1080i and all?

Looks like the perfect thing, has HDMI, MATX and only $140. That puts build cost down to $420 or so for me i think.

Seems too good to be true.

CYaBro

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# 123468 14-Apr-2008 18:29

Where have you guys been getting the boards from?

My supplier doesn't have stock until the 18th.

huckster

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# 123473 14-Apr-2008 18:54

CYaBro: Where have you guys been getting the boards from?

My supplier doesn't have stock until the 18th.

I got mine at Computer Lounge in Auckland.

http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=6330

eXDee

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# 123478 14-Apr-2008 19:05

http://c1com.co.nz/shop/step1.php?number=13466

Same board, same price pretty much.

huckster

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# 123487 14-Apr-2008 19:38

eXDee: http://c1com.co.nz/shop/step1.php?number=13466

Same board, same price pretty much.

Ordered from these guys first - then they phoned me back to say they didn't have any stock. Got the CPU and RAM from them, but the board from above.

richms

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# 123559 15-Apr-2008 00:45

Thanks for the feedback. Guess I will be getting one after all.

Will do duty as a new desktop till I get the funds for that together, and yeah, for what the board does it seems like a steal.

Only downside I can see is the hdmi audio only being 2 channel or bitstream, but that wont matter for now for me and I am sure the next generation will solve it before I am in a position to use hdmi audio.

Richard rich.ms

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