Streaming Video - CPU or GPU limited on 770X with 500Mhz P3?

[virge]

I've put the sale of my 770X on hold because I found a good price on a CPU upgrade. I'm hoping that this will give me the ability to stream full screen video from hulu, but I'd like some opinions. Full screen streaming video does not work (video freezes, audio continues) unless I turn off hardware acceleration. With hardware acceleration disabled, the video runs, but is pretty choppy.

Current setup:
P3 500Mhz
512mb RAM
20GB 5400RPM drive
14.1" XGA (4GB VRAM)

What do you all think is holding this machine back?

[AlphaKilo470]

I am pretty sure you have a mix of limitations from both. The 770's graphics hardware was enhanced for MPEG2 and other high end video formats that new in 1997. The Pentium II can only do so much with it's 66mhz bus.

If the video works better when you turn hardware acceleration off, then obviously, your graphics are more limited than your CPU.

BTW, if you feel like taking the system apart again, install a PII and see if video plays similar to how it did with then PIII. With my experience on a 600E I once owned, the PIII advantages were canceled out by the 600E's inability to fully utilize a PIII without bulky and resource-consuming software.

[pkiff]

I've had various kinds of problems playing online streaming video with all members of the 600/770 family, including my main 600X PIII 850MHz machine. One thing that I'm pretty sure is happening is that things like hulu or Youtube are using a variation of flash to send the video content, I think, and flash in particular does not seem to play well on low CPU machines, un-accelerated machines. And none of the 600/770 family have any hardware acceleration for anything to do with streaming video. Some of them have hardware acceleration that helps MPEG-2, including DVDs, but there is very little other functional hardware acceleration present.

One solution might be to try to download the video to disk first (there must by some kind of hulu stream grabber out there or something?). This often resolves the worst of the problem. Also, you can try old tricks like reducing the color depth or screen resolution.

I tried to solve this problem on my 600X by installing a video card with proper hardware acceleration in my SelectaDock III, including a variety of NVidia GForce cards. I was never able to achieve a stable configuration with those cards, but I was able to test them for a while (usually up to about 15 minutes or so). And almost all of them played streaming video super-well, but would eventually also cause a total system freeze. I'm now using a Voodoo 5 in my SelectaDock and it does 3D video and standard 2D video great, but it has no hardware acceleration for video, and I find that in that config, my 600X actually plays streaming video better without the dock/video card than when it is docked. So I use a second, different docking system (without the extra video card) when I am doing something that requires smooth video streaming (or USB 2 ports too, as it turns out, but that is unrelated to the streaming video issue). That's just the kind of trade-off you have to deal with on some of these older machines.

Phil.

[virge]

Thanks for the responses!

@ AlphaKilo470: I'm not sure what you mean about hardware acceleration. My assumption was that if you turned off hardware acceleration on the video card the load would be shifted to the CPU. That's based on pure speculation-- I don't know anything about how hardware acceleration actually works! Also, what's the "bulky and resource-consuming software" that's required to utilize the PIII? I have the powerleap utility running. Is there something else?

@pkiff: How well does your 600X with the 850Mhz CPU work without the SelectaDock video card? I know both the 600X and my 770X have 4MB VRAM-- which one do you think has a better GPU? or is that even an issue?

Do you think that swapping out my XGA hardware (screen and video card) for an SXGA model would help? Its 4MB VRAM vs 8MB. Its the same GPU I think, just more memory.

[AlphaKilo470]

I interpreted that you claim having hardware acceleration disabled resulted in better performance. That means your CPU is steps ahead than the built in dedicated hardware and that the cpu can handle the overhead better. With that in mind, having a higher performance cpu can help the task.

With that in mind, the PIII cpu requires software to fully function in the 600E. The software is resource consuming so maybe the benefits are canceled out.

[el-sahef]

@ virge:

I own both cards (4 MB and 8 MB) and swapping them did not result in any perfomance advantages but when using the 8 MB card with the 1024x768 display, the colors where not correct as if it is stuck at 16 bit even when 32 bit is selected in windows.
On the other hand, youtube videos worked flawless for me with 850 Mhz and 512MB.

[Bookworm]

Do you have the DEVA board? If you can find one, it should fix your video problem. Without it, I've heard video is always jerky on the 770 series.

[virge]

@AlphaKilo470: Now I see what you're saying. I have a 800Mhz MMC2 on its way to me, so hopefully that will help. If that doesn't do it... well, I don't think there's much else I can do!

@el-sahef: I've seen the pics of your 770X and those are some pretty neat mods you have there. I too have tried a 8mb card in the past, but had the same issue with color depth. I was thinking of getting an SXGA LCD to fix that problem, but it sounds like VRAM isn't the issue. Thanks for that tip. PS-- your 770X has some crazy mods!

@Bookworm: Does the DEVA card help with streaming video? I thought that card was for DVD decoding? I haven't looked into that at all.

[AlphaKilo470]

Depending how you're using the computer, you could set up the Windows Remote Desktop Client and simply connect to a faster system (one that could handle the video in question
) at home over wifi and have your 770 act as a wireless console for a faster computer.

[virge]

Windows Remote Desktop is something I hadn't thought about. I've read about it, but have never given it a try. Thanks for that suggestion!

[AlphaKilo470]

Back in 2003, my only laptop was a 133mhz 760ED. I had to be creative to keep that thing useful.

[virge]

Well, the upgrade didn't go so well. The first thing I tried was to modify a 650Mhz CPU so that Speedstep would work. My fat soldering iron didn't work. The tiny SMD I was attempting to attach a wire to came off and stuck to the iron. It took about a half a second-- then there was a puff of smoke and it was gone. Did I mention that the tip of my iron get literally gets red hot if I leave it plugged in for a while? I know what I'm getting or Xmas this year!

I decided not to take the risk with the 800Mhz CPU so I installed that as-is, and it ran at 650Mhz of course. I loaded up a show on hulu and let it run for a while at 100% CPU load-- within 5-10 minutes it was up at 86C! Video was not improved (at least not dramatically). I'm sure it would be better with the CPU at 800Mhz and my brother in law could do the soldering, but I don't have the materials or ability to create a cooling setup like el-sahef. I'll have to stick with the 500Mhz. I happened to pick up a 600E locally this weekend, so I'm going to see how well the cooling works in that.

Thanks for all the help.

[AlphaKilo470]

On my 500mhz PIII equipped 600X, if I'm not running too many programs in the background (I can usually get away with having Trillian and maybe another small app or two open), I can watch videos on Hulu in normal mode. If I go to full screen, it bogs pretty bad. Pretty much the smae with Youtube and google video; videos work just fine in normal size but unwatchable in full screen.

They must have changed the sites around in the past year or two because I remember being able to watch YouTube videos without a hitch at all on the 600E I had a few years back. I am thinking the newer versions of flash are more or a problem for my laptop than the video that's being streamed.

[virge]

With the 770X at 500Mhz, Hulu in normal mode is a little choppy but still watchable. I wonder if you're more successful with the 600X because it has a more modern GPU. I don't know how flash works, so it would be great if someone could explain why its so CPU intensive even at low resolutions.

[AlphaKilo470]

The GPU could have something to do with it. However, when I had a 650mhz PIII in a 600E (with a NeoMagic 2mb chip vs the 600X 4mb chip) and I, oddly enough, had better performance when I returned it to the original PII 400mhz chip. I have never worked with a 770X or Z but I've worked with plenty of 600Es and they have never felt right with the PIII, IMO; too many workarounds and inefficiencies involved.

[virge]

I just put the HDD from my 770X into a 600X (recent acquisition) with the same CPU and 2x 256MB memory... I updated the drivers and disabled the cache utility (from the 770X PIII upgrade).

Result: The 600X feels significantly faster than the 770X in most operations. Video still stinks, but for everything else, the response time is improved.

IMO; too many workarounds and inefficiencies involved.

That probably explains it.

[pkiff]

I should be able to do some simple testing around some of these issues, though my conclusions will all be based simply on perceived differences rather than any real measurements I think. I've got a 770E (2MB video) with a PII 400, a 770Z (8MB)with a PIII 500, a 770Z (8MB) with a PIII 800, a 600X (4MB) with a PIII 850. I'm also running an array of OSes: most are running Win98 and XP SP2, but the 770E is running Win2000 SP4.

I haven't actually ever done any side-by-side video comparisons, so it might be worth checking out. In general, though, there are a number of things I've experienced in an anecdotal evidence way:

- When in a SelectaDock III, both the 770Z and 600X will play standalone video files smoother under Win98 SE than under XP SP2. I am not clear if this is also true when undocked, nor am I clear if the same is true for video streaming. But Win98SE really flies on a PIII 850, and my guess is that pretty much everything can run faster under 98SE, even when you strip down some of the XP eye candy, as long as you strip down the 98SE as well.

- I almost never notice much difference in practical terms between a PIII 500 and a PIII 850. Video decompression for streaming video or for highly compressed AVI/DivX/Xvid is something that should be different between these two processors, though it'll be interesting to see if it really is different. I also notice the difference in a few other heavy processing tasks. And I notice a significant difference in 3D games.

- AlphaKilo470 mentions the good performance he used to have on his 600E with a PII 400. Oddly, I too have found that my 770E with a PII 400 has pretty good video performance. It tends to get slogged down on various other things compared to a PIII, but for some weird reason it seems to do the video stuff okay. I wonder there is some kind of CPU-motherboard-MMC-2 vs. MMC-1 issue here that was somehow affected by video card drivers or something that might explain this....or maybe it is just an incorrect observation that's never been accurately tested.

- I have compared the output of my 600X 850 TV line-out to the output of a Buffalo LinkTheater [Tom's Hardware review] using the same TV and the same Xvid compressed AVI file, and there is a significant difference in the quality of the colours and a minor difference in resolution quality. This seems obviously to be the fault of the NeoMagic video card that comes with the 600X vs. the later, video-dedicated card that the Buffalo Link Theater uses. In particular, I found that on my 600X (using the TV out) you could see layering in solid backgrounds that had colour gradations, whereas with the LinkTheater these gradations had been smoothed out. It is unclear to me where this smoothing takes place (is it something that all newer video cards do automatically? or is it something that is built into the Xvid file itself but that the 600X NeoMagic card is simply unable to render?).

Phil.