Do video cards make a difference in general HTPC use?

[BonzaiDuck]

I have HD4600 in mine and it's been perfectly sufficient for everything from HD recorded TV to 3D Blu Rays.

See? There you are! There you are . . .

I need to make an experiment for myself with hooking up a monitor/TV to my Intel HD3000 ports with another display output connected to my dGPU(s). I'd actually "done" it, but didn't play with it much, because it was an accident of configuration tinkering.

What happens there is that you have two drivers -- nothing any worse than with a Lucid Virtu setup anyway -- and desktop settings about how you want to use the displays. That's as much as I know, and someone else with more detailed experience with it could enlighten us.

 

[XMan]

Are you trying to run Media Center off of an existing desktop or something?

I suppose it would work though I wonder if you would have window focus issues. I've always run dedicated boxes so I haven't tried it myself.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Are you trying to run Media Center off of an existing desktop or something?

I suppose it would work though I wonder if you would have window focus issues. I've always run dedicated boxes so I haven't tried it myself.

Guess your question is directed to me. So -- Yes.

I started fiddling with tuner cards around 2000. It probably wasn't until mid-decade that I'd managed to integrate one or more with what I then called my "stereo" rig, although I'd achieved a configuration with the cable-provider's STB and coax cabling using XP MC Edition and then Vista-64 Ultimate. By the time I'd got everything totally "HT-enabled," I was doing it with at least one computer in a tower case. The focus of my obsession and fascination had never been "Home Theater," but merely fast computers.

Maybe I said it here or in another thread: If this had been valuable experience for me, it might prove useful to others. And I fully appreciate the quintessential HTPC in its brushed aluminum cabinet. I just never thought I needed to go that route.

So to answer your question, the focus issue isn't really much of a problem. It would be an initial annoyance -- true. On a dedicated HDTV output for Media Center with all the right choices made in the software, full-screen means that you can't sit at the desktop and get focus back to your desktop monitor without either cycling "Alt-Tab" or restoring Media Center to a windowed mode, allowing you to drag the mouse to the other display.

So I discovered a couple things. You can drag a Media Center window to fill your HDTV screen, and leave it in windowed mode. This hasn't seemed to be an obstruction to perceptions of video quality at all. If you want to switch into full-screen mode, a quick double-click to the green button should do it, and you then would go back to either Alt-Tab and "restore" for the Windows taskbar item, or fiddling with the display and mouse to get back the window.

I discovered something else, too. It is certainly possible to have a multi-monitor setup that mixes monitors with different resolution settings. I had done this with a non-HDCP desktop 4:3 1680x1050 monitor and the HDTV (HDCP-compliant, 16:9 and 1080p). But suppose you want to load Media Center to a window which is precisely set to the size of the display? You would orient the MC window to fit the upper left corner of the HDTV -- no doubt -- and then drag the lower right corner of the window to screen's edge.

With the mixed-resolution multi-monitor setup, starting Media Center always produces the MC window matched to the upper left corner, but the window is always smaller than the 1920x1080 display. So you go through the tedium of dragging the lower right corner to enlarge the window to near-full-screen. With multi-purpose, multi-monitor configurations with the same resolution, this problem disappears, and if you left your last WMC session in windowed mode on the HDTV, restarting WMC will open it in windowed mode with the window fitting the HDTV screen the way you want -- and without the tedium.

Now I've yet to find out how multiple resolutions play out with all-digital DVI/HDMI monitor and HDTV connections. But at this point, I don't have a lot of desire to find out. Still, it's not a difficult experiment, and I'll get around to trying it.

Right now, I'm happier than a pig in shit because I've completely purged "incomplete HDCP compliance," and I can view WMC either at the desktop or on the HDTV. I can have WMC active on two machines, with one producing output for the HDTV and the other at the desktop.

With the "Audio-Renderer-Updater" WMC add-in (a French app), I can switch between 5.1 analog and 5.1 HDMI->AVR audio. You could say my "klooge" has evolved, with less-than-deliberate planning, but I think I'm on the verge of a very flexible arrangement in this room.

ONe more thought. With a powerful enough system -- mine are all quad cores -- WMC is a low-demand background process -- using at most 5 to 8% of CPU clocks. I can leave the WMC->HDTV running while playing a game on the desktop monitor switched to the same computer producing the HDTV feed. And the systems take everything I throw at them in that regard.

 

[XMan]

In that case yeah, the only think you might possibly be concerned about would be disk throughput, but if the recording drive is on it's own disk you might not even have that issue.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

In that case yeah, the only think you might possibly be concerned about would be disk throughput, but if the recording drive is on it's own disk you might not even have that issue.

Now for THAT -- I actually did some deliberate planning. I kept the WMC buffer and recording exclusively configured to a separate data drive, with little interaction with the boot-system drive. The second drive is of such a capacity that I can record maybe 500 hours of material before a "maintenance purge" or archival to my server. I must have had accurate anticipations for it: the drive doesn't have to be SATA-III, doesn't need connection to an SATA-III controller. Nothing misses a lick with this.

On the second and newest system, I decided first of all to put all my games on an hard disk that is cached through a 60GB SSD. So far, so good, and you'd expect it to work marvelously. It's not ISRT, but rather a Primo-Cache configuration that literally spans controllers and works in AHCI mode.

Once I decided to test my second HDHR' through exclusive access through the second system, I haphazardly used this cached HDD as WMC buffer and recording storage. That configuration is only two weeks old, seems to be working, and nevertheless easy to change. I think I might add a 2nd HDD. Primo could also cache that drive as well, but it had never been necessary on the first system, and shouldn't be of much value for the second.

 

[evident]

my ivy bridge i3 3225's integrated HD4000 works well with madvr. no issues or lagginess to report.

 

[jkauff]

my ivy bridge i3 3225's integrated HD4000 works well with madvr. no issues or lagginess to report.

It even runs on my HP Stream 7 tablet (Atom Z3735G with a stripped-down HD4000), but to take advantage of the advanced features that make madVR such a great renderer you need a dedicated GPU. My desktop has a GTX 770, and I can max it out if I use high enough settings in madVR. The picture quality, though, is outstanding at those settings.

 

[jkauff]

Then you must be using some super low-end madVR settings.

madVR default settings are not very demanding, but you're missing out on all the goodies.

 

[evident]

Then you must be using some super low-end madVR settings.

My 780 uses anywhere between 20% and 80% usage depending on the source video type and quality using K-Lite + MadVR on MPC.

I'm not really an expert when it comes to madvr. I'm using CCCP and MPC with MadVR. Where can i fiddle with the settings to increase processing??

 

[scannall]

I just use an AMD A4, and it's built in video. Works great, no problems at all. And really cheap.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Where can i fiddle with the settings to increase processing??

The JRiver community has the best guide:

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/MadVR_Expert_Guide

In there are all the best settings.

Personally I think MadVR is at its best in edge cases. Like you have a 4k tv? Upscaling via MadVR is the only way to get 1080p stuff to look really good. Or your TV doesn't support 24p? MadVR has the best technique out there for avoiding 4:3 pulldown. Etc.