Is my HTPS rig a POS?

[DigitalSyn]

Team,
I have recently run into some issues playing x264 videos. Currently I am running tests on a 1080p 24gb x264 file on my HTPC. I am running Media Player Classic Home Cinema. With that I am also running Core AVC 2. Pro (no deinterlacing), ffdshow (default), and Haali Media Splitter (default). My CPU is throttling at 95%-100% continous and it is of course making the video choppy.
Here are my rig specs:
AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Cor @ 2.88ghz
3gb MEM
ATI 4800

Should my system be throttling at this high cpu level?

[D_Knife]

Try switching your ATI card for an Nvidia one. Core AVC has specific CUDA optimizations that should help a lot. On the Core AVC tool page the first comment lists his specs, they are less than yours and he's playing 1080p/i content.

[TimA-C]

How many other background processes do you have running and are they all necessary? e.g. Anti-virus, malware scanners, iTunes and it's backround sharing service 'Bonjour', any download/file sharing applications (if you're in the UK then this includes the BBC iPlayer download manager and the now defunct Channel 4 on Demand download manager - both of which can dramatically slow your PC and your network connection even if not actively downloading anything), etc... Are any of your drives external?

[jagabo]

1080p at what frame rate? You should have no problem at 24 fps. You probably won't be able to play 60 fps (some camcorders produce this) smoothly with either CPU or GPU decoding.

Which decoder are you using? While playing you can right click on the window and hover over Filters to see which filters are in use. You can also select a filter to change its options (for example, make sure MPCHC's internal h.264 decoder, if you're using it, is using 2 threads).

[dphirschler]

FWIW, I am getting great HD playback on a much lesser PC (Celeron M 550 @ 2.0 GHz, 2.5 GB RAM, Intel integrated video). But I am only playing 720p. My processor runs avg 45% playing 720p mkv. The videos play very smoothly even over the network. The PC Is running Ubuntu 9.10. I use XBMC for playback, but I just tested it with VLC too.


Darryl

[creamyhorror]

As jagabo said, check what decoder/filter is being used. Since you have 95-100% usage, you probably are using both your cores, but something else might be taking up a chunk of CPU time. Are there any fancy subtitles on this video? Is the video a 'challenging' one with high framerate (60p) or local bitrate? Either of those could cause your computer to choke.