Media Player and Radeon X1600

[Guest]

I`ve installed an MSI X1600 256MB graphic card today, yesterday the media
player videos were working fine with onboard Graphics, yet now the videos
will not work I just get a green Screen.

AMD 64 Sempron 754 3100+
512MB PC3200
MSI K8NGM-V Mobo
MSI X1600 Pro TD256E Graphic card

 

[Travis King]

On my very similar machine, I also have problems with WMP11, especially
music playback. Visualizations are extremely slow and Aero Glass slows way
down when WMP11 is running - especially music playback for some reason. I
also get the green screen you're talking about sometimes. I especially get
this from videos from e-mails and some on my hard drive. I use WinAmp
instead as a workaround for both my music and videos. It works much better
except it crashes here and there.
My specs:
AMD Sempron 64 2800+ 754 @ 1.6GHz (Performance Rating: 3.1)
1.5GB PC-2700 RAM (Performance Rating: 3.0)
Asus K8N motherboard
Sapphire Radeon X1600 PRO AGP 8x DDR2 256MB of video RAM - Microsoft WDDM
(Ratings - 5.9 GPU; 4.3 gaming graphics)
Creative Audigy 24-bit 5.1 sound card
WD 80GB IDE hard drive 2 meg cache @ 7200RPM (Windows XP SP2 Home)
WD 120GB IDE hard drive 8 meg cache @ 7200RPM (Two 60GB partitions - one for
personal files and one for Vista) (3.7 rating)

 

[Mark D. VandenBeg]

I`ve installed an MSI X1600 256MB graphic card today, yesterday the media
player videos were working fine with onboard Graphics, yet now the videos
will not work I just get a green Screen.

AMD 64 Sempron 754 3100+
512MB PC3200
MSI K8NGM-V Mobo
MSI X1600 Pro TD256E Graphic card

You may be a little light on system RAM. The specs for Windows Vista Home
Basic are 512MB, and for Home Premium and Ultimate MSFT recommends at least
1 GB.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capable.mspx

 

[Travis King]

I know that RAM won't make a difference for WMP11 for the issues we're
having because I have 1.5GB of RAM and still have many problems with it -
and it sounds like I have the same problems with it that Carl has. I am
leaning towards our computers are having video driver problems. I've used
the Ati drivers and both The MS and Ati drivers gave me the same performance
with WMP11. Now I think Mark was mentioning that you don't have enough
memory for Windows in general, which he's probably right. With 1.5GB of
RAM, a third of it is getting consumed by Vista and my other programs. Even
with 1.5GB of RAM, I have yet to use half of my RAM. I've been in the
40's%, but I don't think I've hit half yet. (I know it wouldn't be too hard
to do though.) I'd recommend you start with a gig of RAM for optimal
performance.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Travis and Mark but the system was working fine with just 384MB of Ram
uptill I installed the X1600 today, the other 128MB I used as Onboard Video
cache and it all worked perfectly, a little slow in places but media player
played with no problems.

These are the sample videos I`m talking of, I have little else on the system
yet.

If I remove the X1600 and revert to onboard video adapter it all works fine
again.

The X1600 was installed in a virgin state, no driver other than the one
Vista got itself.

 

[Mark D. VandenBeg]

Thanks Travis and Mark but the system was working fine with just 384MB of
Ram
uptill I installed the X1600 today, the other 128MB I used as Onboard
Video
cache and it all worked perfectly, a little slow in places but media
player
played with no problems.

These are the sample videos I`m talking of, I have little else on the
system
yet.

If I remove the X1600 and revert to onboard video adapter it all works
fine
again.

The X1600 was installed in a virgin state, no driver other than the one
Vista got itself.

I wonder if this has something to do with Crossfire. I recall a few other
threads that dealt with ATI's Crossfire technology. Try searching the forum
and see if you can find any insight in those threads.

 

[Travis King]

No, I don't think so because I have the same problems on my X1600 PRO and my
motherboard is AGP 8x with one AGP slot only. It's got to do with Ati
drivers as they are still beta - both the Microsoft ones and the Ati ones.
I'm running the ones built-in with Vista right now and experience the same
problems with the MS drivers as I do with the Ati drivers. I actually
prefer the MS drivers though because the Ati Catalyst Control Center is
bloated.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Did you check the power supply requirements for the video card against the
power supply in your computer before installation?

 

[Guest]

Hi Colin, yes I`ve plenty of power. My Half Life 2 works fine on it but no
media Player videos will play, which is kinda strange as media player is a
built in MS app ! It has to be to do with the Ati drivers else why would it
work with the onboard graphics ?

I installed HL2 to test but other than that there`s not a lot else, Trend
Anti-V is about all at present. I didn`t want to push it too early and I have
other XP machines for everything else !

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I agree that with beta video drivers things like this happen. Whether you
find a workaround or not be sure to file the bug report. Some of the most
valuable bug reports are written as the result of trying out games.

 

[Travis King]

I have a 430-watt ThermalTake PSU here. Bought it a month after getting the
video card. My old PSU worked okay with the video card as it was a 400-watt
CompUSA power supply, but my computer shocked me every time I touched the
case and even sometimes when I plugged in a USB device and I also lost a
hard drive and another one was starting to begin to behave strangely, (When
I would boot up the computer, it would turn off and on very rapidly) so I
got rid of the PSU. Funny how ever since my new PSU, I haven't been zapped
by my computer once yet and that hard drive that was beginning to behave
strangely hasn't caused me any problems since. My other hard drive however
was toast. The BIOS wouldn't even recognize it. The good news was that Mom
was getting a new computer built by me so I took the 80 gig hard drive out
of the old computer. (Identical hard drive to the one I lost.) The hard
drive I lost began making bad grindy noises, so I immediately began backing
up my files by putting them on another computer through our network as it
was the fastest way and managed to get everything backed up. I shut off the
computer and turned it back on an hour later. Everything was working fine
and I started playing music when it happened - the hard drive began making
grindy noises again and the computer crashed. It never worked since then.
Now I do backup my files from time to time so I didn't have a bunch of
things to backup, but that would have been all my latest personal files,
bookmarks, contacts, and e-mails I would have lost so I backed them up at
the first sign of trouble - there was no hesitation. I said 'uh oh' and
began backing up immediately basically. Every location on my computer has
folders called 'new' and 'old'. For example, when you open up the pictures
folder, you will then see a folder called 'New' and a folder called 'Old'.
The folder called 'Old' are files I have already backed up, and the folder
called 'New' has my latest files that I haven't backed up, this way I don't
have to back up the same files twice and waste CDs. I also organize my CDs
where all my music is on one set of CDs, pictures on another, and so on.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Incremental backups don't duplicate your pictures and such. You can
certainly maintain New and Old folder if that is your preference, but you
don't have to do it to save cd's.

 

[Guest]

I`d love to file that bug report but cannot open the error reporting tool
page this morning ! Is there another way ? Thanks for your help mate !

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You can download the bug reporting tools here:
http://windowsbeta.microsoft.com/vista/bugs.aspx?&build=0&sku=0

 

[Guest]

Thanks again Colin. Much obliged !

 

[Guest]

Interesting Video and other results in comparison with my XP machine at
PCPitstop.com

The XP MSI Nvidia 5900 128MB video card scored

328 million pixels per second

The Vista MSI Ati X1600 TD256E
scored

66.7 million

Lot`s of difference there.

Hard drive results were disappointing too. The Vista machine only scored 77%
of similar drives. I have thought it sluggish since I formatted with Vista
(far too quick imho). I used Max Tools to test the drive it is perfect, has
to be the format or the OS imho. Every other I`ve spoken to testing Beta atm
say`s the same best results are when the drive is formatted using another OS
not the apparently quick format Vista uses.

 

[Travis King]

When you're running the test on the video card, is Aero Glass running? If
so, disable it and see how it scores then.

 

[Guest]

Hi Travis, only made a difference of 4 mps so not a lot.

In game demo reports fps is a lot better as opposed to the 5900 but is
stuttery !