Game or Movie - which is tougher on hardware?

[porty]

Which are most demanding of hardware, games or movies?

I'm asking because I'm building a home theatre pc that'll only be needed to play .mkv and .avi movies, (no games or DVDs) and I'm wondering how good a display card I need.

Thanks

[poisondeathray]

it depends on the game, hardware and movie

what hardware? cpu? gpu?

e.g. you might offload movie to graphics card, so cpu usage would be less
e.g. some games have very high demands and can use all your cores and graphics (e.g. flight simulators)
e.g. some games use less than 2-3% of a single core. e.g. pac-man
e.g. some movies are harder to decode than others (e.g. HD vs. SD)

[ranchhand]

To answer your post question, games are head & shoulders over the top in resource demands than movies. In fact, there is a popular opinion among many that gaming drives the computer industry as far as technical development goes. Since you are only showing movies, why worry about it? Get yourself a Dual core CPU running 1066FSB, 4 gigs good quality memory running 1066FSB, and a stable mainboard such as Asus, a medium quality video card (I personally like Nvidia) and you are good to go. Heck, I run movies that I load on my Rally flash drive and they run great off the drive on USB2. If you want Blue Ray, just make sure the Video card will handle it and you are fine.

[porty]

poisondeathray, thanks for your response.

Problem: Built a system with a Foxconn AGP mobo, Skt 754 Sempron 3300+ and a Powercolor Radeon HD3850 (AGP) video card. All was well for a while, it'd play Oblivion pretty good as well as smallish AVI and MKV movies, like 500MB size. But when I tried playing a 1.5GB .mkv movie, playback was jerky.

Drivers - tried 'em all, no improvement.

So tried an Asus AGP mobo (P5PE-VM) with an Intel LGA775 E6600, same card. No way, crashes this time.

Much headscratching now. Maybe I need another card, maybe PCIE. But then I'll need a PCIE mobo and the exercise is starting to get costly.

So I thought I'd find out just how games and movies compare, in terms of hardware requirements. My hunch would be that games would be more demanding, so if a system could play a moderately heavy game (or maybe get a certain 3DMark score), then it outta perform OK with even high detail movies.

What do you think?

Later edit: Just found ranchhand's post, thanks for the comment.

Your remark is interesting
"Get yourself a Dual core CPU running 1066FSB, 4 gigs good quality memory running 1066FSB, and a stable mainboard such as Asus, a medium quality video card (I personally like Nvidia) and you are good to go" ...
because that's exactly what a friend said. Which is how I came to buy the Asus P5PE-VM and the Core 2 Duo E6600 (1066FSB etc etc) CPU. This combo goes great. So long as I don't add the Radeon 3850, lol.

[budz]

The radeon agp 3850 can playback blu-ray, hd videos. Are you sure you're using the latest ati radeon drivers for the card or the card is dying. You can even run a ati 4350 pci-e card for blu-ray playback.

[porty]

Budz, I've tried many different drivers, to no avail. I've loaded Powercolor (the card's brand), Saphire, ATI direct, 8.9, 8.11, 10.2 - and more, but nothing has worked. Maybe you're right about the card failing. But I dunno how I can test it. Other than what I've done.

Actually, it's only 6 months old, but the supplier is very hard to deal with. Maybe I should try and get the card back to Powercolor for testing...

[poisondeathray]

Your card will only function to accelerate playback in a DXVA compatible player (e.g. MPCHC) , and it has to be set up properly

It will only work on some videos; the specs have to be DXVA compliant. If there are encoded in a fashion that is not, it breaks DXVA compliance and you fallback on software decoding (CPU), and yours isn't fast enough

Things like too many reference frames, too many b-frames can break compliance. If you use mediainfo (view=>text) you can identify some of these parameters

Better to get a decent CPU and GPU and you've covered all bases

[porty]

I hadn't considered MPCHC. I'd been using VLC because it seems to handle .mkv files OK, but I'll try it.

But T think there's something else amiss. I mean, sometimes I'm getting crashes before I even play media files, so I think the problem is maybe more basic, perhaps with the card.

[ranchhand]

If you are going to have a problem with a card, there is a higher percentage that it is going to be an ATI/Rage product. Dont' get me wrong, ATI is a good company, but they do have a reputation for conflicts with their drivers, and, unfortunately, that has not gone away since Asus purchased them, unfortunately. Personally, I really like Nvidia chipsets and video cards. I am assuming that you are not using a DVD player, but are running your movies from a server hard drive.

[neomaine]

If you are going to have a problem with a card, there is a higher percentage that it is going to be an ATI/Rage product. Dont' get me wrong, ATI is a good company, but they do have a reputation for conflicts with their drivers, and, unfortunately, that has not gone away since Asus purchased them, unfortunately. Personally, I really like Nvidia chipsets and video cards. I am assuming that you are not using a DVD player, but are running your movies from a server hard drive.

What the hell are you talking about?

- ATI hasn't put out a Rage product in many many years.
- Its AMD that bought ATI, not Asus.
- Drivers for ATI cards have been very steady the last couple of years.

[budz]

Nothing wrong with ATI cards....I've seen some NVIDIA cards fail in less than 3 years...every manufacturer will have quality control problems.....IMHO the OP should just buy a new video card to narrow down the problem.
Just my 2 cents!

[ranchhand]

What the hell are you talking about?

Now, now, let's don't get the boiler pressure too high; I'm not talking bad things about your mother, ok? We are only talking about video cards. :0) I did infer that this was my opinion, and yes you are right, it was AMD not Asus that bought ATI, which is irrelevant and only a side thought. For years I have worked for an AV company in the Chicago area, and I regularly ship skidloads (yes, really) of computers out to various conferences and trade shows from coast to coast. We have both ATI and NVIDA integrated graphics on those mainboards, both PCs and Laps, and since I have to spec the configuration on those units, depending on what they are being used for, and take the complaints from my clients when there are problems with playing videos I am in a pretty good position to get an overall impression and thus I form my opinion, and I stick by it. If you don't believe me, then don't believe me. Let's all shake hands and have a beer together, ok?

[porty]

Ranchhand, thanks for your comments. With all due respect to people like Budz and neomaine, I agree entirely with your assessment of ATI cards. Obviously, there are many people who manage to get these products working. But, and I speak as one who's spent most of the last week searching online for solutions to my ATI problem, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of users who have had issues with ATI cards. You only need to Google with parameters like ATI, 3850, driver problems, etc to see what I mean.

I'm a 20-year pc builder and tech and I can honestly say I've never had an ATI card that's been trouble free. So I usually take the pragmatic approach and buy nVidia. But in September 2009, because I wanted to prolong the life of a once-topline AGP board, and the 3850 was the only AGP solution I could find, and the specs looked good, I thought, "Shucks, the company's just been bought by AMD, whose products I respect - I'll give ATI another go".

Well, I couldn't get the card to work in my main pc, so I shelved it and threw in a used nVidia 6800 - no issues at all. In January 2010 I thought I'd try the 3850 again, so I built an HTPC, using a Foxconn AGP board and a skt754 Sempron. That DID work, sort of. Except that some movie playback was jerky. So I tried an Asus P5PE-VM board with an Intel E6600 CPU. Great combination - as long as I didn't try and install the 3850. I mean, the mobo\cpu was fine (XP Pro) using its onboard VGA. But as soon as I added the 3850 the crashes would begin.

OK, you folks who've had good ATI results will be saying, "All you need is the right driver!". Well, yeah, that's the obvious answer. But I've tried about seven or eight different drivers without success. I've reinstalled the OS and the card so many times I've lost count. I've read threads full of tips and fixes until my eyes watered - all to no avail.

As I said, this isn't the first time I've had issues with the brand. I'm a patient guy - hell, you can't be a PC tech if you're prone to hissy fits - but you have to blow the whistle somewhere, and for me, the best whistles have an nVidia logo.

Having said all that, I'd still like to know what's going wrong with the 3850. Maybe the card is actually duff, maybe it's a Monday or Friday card, maybe it's been carelessly handled and zapped by ESD (not by me though - I'm always grounded), maybe it's just bad karma, shucks, I dunno.

So, ATI fans, sorry if I've offended you but I'm telling you like it is. Or rather, how it's been for me for quite some time. If you have a helpful suggestion as to how I can get this card to work, I'm listening (or watching). I really would like to know how to fix it. Really

[jagabo]

VLC only has a single threaded h.264 decoder and it cannot use hardware h.264 decoding by the graphics card. It will not play 1080p video smooth no matter what graphics card or CPU you have.

You need a dual core CPU and multithreaded decoder to decode in software. Or a player that supports DXVA, a driver that supports DXVA, and a graphics card that supports hardware h.264 decoding. The Radeon 3850 supports hardware h.264 decoding. All recent drivers support DXVA. So you need a player. As was suggested earlier, use MPCHC. Enable it's h.264 DXVA decoder. View -> Options -> Internal Filters -> Transform Filters -> H264/AVC (DXVA) -- enable.

[porty]

jagabo, thanks for your input. I'll certainly follow your suggestions, but I'm beginning to suspect that the card itself may be faulty, because I'm getting crashes before I even open movie files, ie, within a few minutes of installing the card. But all that you said makes good sense. Cheers

PS: Something I didn't mention because of added confusion: Every time I've installed the ATI drivers, the ATI Control Center has NOT installed, which I would have expected - I seem to recall that this normally happens, at least it did the last time I installed a Radeon card. I did a bit of research and found that the ATI CCC is based on NetFrameWork, which, at the time I was adding the card, like, 10 mins after XP Pro SP3 had finished, wouldn't have been in place. So I changed my system to adding NetFramework 2 (or 3 or 3.5) before I added the card. But still no installation of the Control Centre. Anyone able to comment?

[jagabo]

I seem to recall ATI has both driver-only downloads and driver plus CCC downloads. Make sure you got the right one.

[porty]

Agreed. But I'm talking about the full kit downloads...

[ranchhand]

the ATI Control Center has NOT installed

I agree; I have installed several ATI video setups lately on newbuilds, mainly integrated graphic but some standalone cards, and I honestly do not see why they bother with the so called "Control Center", which does nothing except give me links to the ATI website to "buy stuff". I remember the Control Center in the older cards and it really allowed a lot of tweaking, scan frequency control, various resolutions, color bit adjustments, etc. etc. Now when installing I select custom install and opt to not install the control center since it is useless for anything. And why have another useless loader sitting in your system tray?

[porty]

Yeah, that old one you describe was the one I meant. The only reason I wanted to install it was, I was clutching at straws, really, given all the hassles I've had. I thought the CCC might enable me to change whatever key settings might be contributing to the crashes. But even when I'd select "Yes, install the CCC", it wouldn't. More oddities......

Anyway, the 3850 is going back to the merchant. Hopefully, they (or Powercolor if they send it back to the mnfr) will sort the problem.

[neomaine]

jagabo, thanks for your input. I'll certainly follow your suggestions, but I'm beginning to suspect that the card itself may be faulty, because I'm getting crashes before I even open movie files ...

Have you tried enabling the boot log to see what was running at the time? With such frequent crashes and crashes before the video card is taxed (opening a movie file), all with different drives it sounds like, I'm beginning to suspect a bad card or a PSU failure.

[neomaine]

What the hell are you talking about?

Now, now, let's don't get the boiler pressure too high; I'm not talking bad things about your mother, ok? We are only talking about video cards. :0) I did infer that this was my opinion, and yes you are right, it was AMD not Asus that bought ATI, which is irrelevant and only a side thought. For years I have worked for an AV company in the Chicago area, and I regularly ship skidloads (yes, really) of computers out to various conferences and trade shows from coast to coast. We have both ATI and NVIDA integrated graphics on those mainboards, both PCs and Laps, and since I have to spec the configuration on those units, depending on what they are being used for, and take the complaints from my clients when there are problems with playing videos I am in a pretty good position to get an overall impression and thus I form my opinion, and I stick by it. If you don't believe me, then don't believe me. Let's all shake hands and have a beer together, ok?

It would take allot more than that to get my blood pressure going. Thing is, these things weren't listed as opinions and had things misleading or downright wrong. I was simply putting things into perspective for further posts. If you come off as being knowledgeable but get facts wrong then it gives a heads up to others later that you're at best misleading. You've scaled back some and that's appreciated in helping your credibility. I just wasn't buying it.

- Listing an ATI Rage product is completely misleading since 1) It was a VERY good product for its day and 2) Its day was over 10 years ago. An eternity in the PC age.
- Yah, AMD vs ASUS... I guess they both start with an 'A'...
- Since ATI also sells their chips to third parties, then in all fairness there should also be a separation between their cards (and onboard graphics) and those of third party makers, like PowerColor here.

Given any one of the 'oops' listed above I probably would have written it off. But the combination...

I don't generally drink beer - or at least not very often - , but, I had one this weekend as a good sport.

[porty]

Re ALL of the above helpful comments, I finally came to the conclusion that it was the AGP Radeon HD3850 card that was at fault. So it's gone back to its distributor to have its little head examined. (Which I should probably do also, having bought in the first place, lol)

In the meantime I fired up a spare PCIE board and dropped in a new Palit GeForce GTS 250. Ahhh, bliss - no install issues, no running issues, no complex configuration, no tie-up with NetFrame. Just excellent performance and faultless movie playback.