Well I had purchased this ATI x300 because I was told on the forum in this thread that it would be fine for my purpose.
I am running a HTPC into my HDTV at 1152x768, and the main purpose is to watch HDTV recorded with my ATI HDTV Wonder through XP MCE 2005. The computer is running a Sempron 3000+ and 512MB RAM on a Biostar Tforce 6100.
When I play HDTV, it is very jumpy (and this is recorded signal that I have played on another system and it is not jumpy). Oddly enough, some will work perfectly fine on this system. It appears this is due to the fact that some is recorded at 720p while others are recorded at 1080i. It does appear to me that the ones that work tend to be on the same channels, while the ones that do not are on others. Other video, such as television shows encoded in XviD play properly, even when streaming over my network.
Additionally, the CPU is completely maxed out at 100%. I had it running at stock 1.8GHz and even overclocked it to 2.7GHz (confirmed stable from running in another system for months) and it is STILL completely maxed out (the RAM was not overclocked). This, along with other reasons which I will outline, leads me to believe that it is the video card that is the issue.
I had no problems of this sort when running in my previous build which included an Athlon XP 2600+ at stock speeds and the same amount of RAM. That system was using an AGP ATI 9600XT.
Because at this point I believed it to be the graphics card, I overclocked it to what was stable with ATI Tool. I seem to have noticed a slight improvement, but not much. The core was overclocked from 371 to 465 and the memory from 196 to only 228.
Am I correct in assuming that it is the graphics card's fault? Is it time to start shopping for a new one? Are there other measures that I should take? And how can I tell what memory interface it has? According to this page, it could be either 128 or 64-bit.
And assuming I should go for another card, what card should I go for? I need a PCI-E card for this motherboard, and obviously I am going for the cheap (which is why I started with this card). The most taxing task it will ever have to do is to play video at high bitrates. However, the last thing I want to do is end up with another dud like this one...
Please chime in if you have any insight at all, thanks so much!!
I am running a HTPC into my HDTV at 1152x768, and the main purpose is to watch HDTV recorded with my ATI HDTV Wonder through XP MCE 2005. The computer is running a Sempron 3000+ and 512MB RAM on a Biostar Tforce 6100.
When I play HDTV, it is very jumpy (and this is recorded signal that I have played on another system and it is not jumpy). Oddly enough, some will work perfectly fine on this system. It appears this is due to the fact that some is recorded at 720p while others are recorded at 1080i. It does appear to me that the ones that work tend to be on the same channels, while the ones that do not are on others. Other video, such as television shows encoded in XviD play properly, even when streaming over my network.
Additionally, the CPU is completely maxed out at 100%. I had it running at stock 1.8GHz and even overclocked it to 2.7GHz (confirmed stable from running in another system for months) and it is STILL completely maxed out (the RAM was not overclocked). This, along with other reasons which I will outline, leads me to believe that it is the video card that is the issue.
I had no problems of this sort when running in my previous build which included an Athlon XP 2600+ at stock speeds and the same amount of RAM. That system was using an AGP ATI 9600XT.
Because at this point I believed it to be the graphics card, I overclocked it to what was stable with ATI Tool. I seem to have noticed a slight improvement, but not much. The core was overclocked from 371 to 465 and the memory from 196 to only 228.
Am I correct in assuming that it is the graphics card's fault? Is it time to start shopping for a new one? Are there other measures that I should take? And how can I tell what memory interface it has? According to this page, it could be either 128 or 64-bit.
And assuming I should go for another card, what card should I go for? I need a PCI-E card for this motherboard, and obviously I am going for the cheap (which is why I started with this card). The most taxing task it will ever have to do is to play video at high bitrates. However, the last thing I want to do is end up with another dud like this one...
Please chime in if you have any insight at all, thanks so much!!
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