Is the video card the bottleneck in this system?

[bolido2000]

My gf's PC is an Athlon XP 2200+ and 512MB of RAM. The video card is an old GeForce2 MX. She only uses the PC to surf the net, Office, and mp3/avi/mpg. When playing some avi, like those HDTV TV shows the framerate is kind of choppy. CPU usage is around 20%. Is the video card the bottleneck?
Another thing....we just bought a 17inch LCD and I've notice that the brightness would fluctuate a little bit. This is most noticeable when the screen is "white". The PS is 250W. Is this a video card problem or PS with not enough juice? There are only 1 HD, 1 DVD, and 1 CD rom in the case.

EDIT: How does the GeForceFX 5200 stack up agains the Geforce4 MX440? Newegg has those pretty cheap (refurbished tho)

 

[imported_Phil]

HDTV streams generally require a decent graphics card- the clips on Microsoft's site recommend a DX9 card.

The FX5200 is a crippled, blind, lame duck. Avoid.

 

[bolido2000]

What cheap card do you guys recommend ??

 

[Acanthus]

Hard Drive?

 

[3chordcharlie]

I'd check the DMA settings on the hard drive first, but it's possible the video card is the problem for HDTV playback. The MX440 is a better overall card than the 5200.

 

[MetalMat]

I have an MX460 for sale if you want it. Better than a 440 plus it has dual monitor outputs and the adapter for IN/OUT S-video and composite with it. Its an MSI card.

 

[Acanthus]

If the vid card was the bottleneck CPU usage would hit 100%.

Id say either youre using a horrible HD or DMA is not enabled.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
If the vid card was the bottleneck CPU usage would hit 100%.

Id say either youre using a horrible HD or DMA is not enabled.

If the graphics card can't cope with the load then there's no reason that the CPU usage will spike to 100%...

 

[S0Y73NTGR33N]

Originally posted by: Dopefiend

Originally posted by: Acanthus
If the vid card was the bottleneck CPU usage would hit 100%.

Id say either youre using a horrible HD or DMA is not enabled.

If the graphics card can't cope with the load then there's no reason that the CPU usage will spike to 100%...

yeah it would make your CPU usage less because the CPU could handle the piece of crap video card with less usage.

-green;

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: S0Y73NTGR33N

Originally posted by: Dopefiend

Originally posted by: Acanthus
If the vid card was the bottleneck CPU usage would hit 100%.

Id say either youre using a horrible HD or DMA is not enabled.

If the graphics card can't cope with the load then there's no reason that the CPU usage will spike to 100%...

yeah it would make your CPU usage less because the CPU could handle the piece of crap video card with less usage.

-green;

Precisely.

 

[Acanthus]

weird, because the video card doesnt decode HDTV streams at all unless its a 6xxx series geforce or 9x/Xx radeon...

Its cpu bound. There is no "graphics card load". All the video cards do (pre-video processing) are display the 2d images.

Geforce 2 MX or TNT or Trident 1MB, the graphics card isnt going to make a difference. Look at all the HDTV playback threads with 2.6ghz+ cpus at high usage during playback, theres a different bottleneck.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: bolido2000
My gf's PC is an Athlon XP 2200+ and 512MB of RAM. The video card is an old GeForce2 MX. She only uses the PC to surf the net, Office, and mp3/avi/mpg. When playing some avi, like those HDTV TV shows the framerate is kind of choppy. CPU usage is around 20%. Is the video card the bottleneck? (snip)

EDIT: How does the GeForceFX 5200 stack up agains the Geforce4 MX440? Newegg has those pretty cheap (refurbished tho)

The FX series was an early attempt on nVidia's part to meet the DX-9 standard, but for the most part, they either missed the mark, or overpriced the product out of contention. Much as I always hate ATI driver bugs, the equivilant ATI products were superior. If you can score an FX 5700 Ultra, or an FX 5900, for less than the going rate on an ATI Radeon 9800, you aren't as bad off as with an FX 5200. Basically anything lesser than the 5700 NU (and probably that one also) is hardly better than the cheapest old MX, or Radeon 9600.

On the other hand, I still see some NIB GF 4's such as Ti 4200's, 4600's, turning up here and there. Those were just about the best DX-8's made, and are still fast today. I have one in my primary net machine (this one I'm using right now and it was still new just a few months ago when I got the card), and you can find them new like this for some bargain prices, or get one used from a reputable source, such as a seller in the AT For Sale forum with good feedback (they call it "Heat" here).

The MX's, last I heard, were more less de-tuned GF 3's and GF-4's, with the MX 4000 being about the worst you might run into. My somewhat elderly (for a video card) GF 3 Ti 200 is still running relatively nicely in a backup system here that is used for the most part as a file and print server.

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
weird, because the video card doesnt decode HDTV streams at all unless its a 6xxx series geforce or 9x/Xx radeon...

Its cpu bound. There is no "graphics card load". All the video cards do (pre-video processing) are display the 2d images.

Geforce 2 MX or TNT or Trident 1MB, the graphics card isnt going to make a difference. Look at all the HDTV playback threads with 2.6ghz+ cpus at high usage during playback, theres a different bottleneck.

As true as that is, it doesn't make the following any more of a correct statement:

If the vid card was the bottleneck CPU usage would hit 100%.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Dopefiend

Originally posted by: Acanthus
weird, because the video card doesnt decode HDTV streams at all unless its a 6xxx series geforce or 9x/Xx radeon...

Its cpu bound. There is no "graphics card load". All the video cards do (pre-video processing) are display the 2d images.

Geforce 2 MX or TNT or Trident 1MB, the graphics card isnt going to make a difference. Look at all the HDTV playback threads with 2.6ghz+ cpus at high usage during playback, theres a different bottleneck.

As true as that is, it doesn't make the following any more of a correct statement:

If the vid card was the bottleneck CPU usage would hit 100%.

I am saying that if the video card was the bottleneck, because it wasnt processing the video and it was fully CPU bound, the cpu would be hitting 100% usage and dropping frames, causing stuttering.

If its something else causing the bottleneck, like the HD, its not recieving data streams fast enough to process, hence stuttering and low cpu-usage.

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

It is either a very fragmented HDD or the DMA setting is not correct.

It could also be a codec issue. I have a 2GHz P4 with a ti4200 that is choppy on some HDTV vids, but they play fine on my athlon 1400 w/ an original Radeon AIW.
It is definatly a codec issue if the hdd is set right.

 

[bolido2000]

The HD is on Ultra DMA. From what I've read and experienced HD fragmentation is not really a big issue in overall performance. GSpot says that ffdshow is the codec being used. What should I install instead of ffdshow then?

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: bolido2000
The HD is on Ultra DMA. From what I've read and experienced HD fragmentation is not really a big issue in overall performance. GSpot says that ffdshow is the codec being used. What should I install instead of ffdshow then?

What HD are you using?

And how high resolution are the videos? Compressed or uncompressed?

Even my WD2500JB has trouble with playback on uncompressed 1080i playback.

 

[gscone]

I too have the 5200 Video card. What would be a solid upgrade for under $250 re: Video Card. I have the Dell 2001FP.

GC

 

[bolido2000]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: bolido2000
The HD is on Ultra DMA. From what I've read and experienced HD fragmentation is not really a big issue in overall performance. GSpot says that ffdshow is the codec being used. What should I install instead of ffdshow then?

What HD are you using?

And how high resolution are the videos? Compressed or uncompressed?

Even my WD2500JB has trouble with playback on uncompressed 1080i playback.

I think the HD is an old IBM. Not sure if its 5.4K or 7.2K. The file is 350MB and is 47min long. I might add that the video not is very choppy at all, just slightly enough to be rather annoying.

 

[Acanthus]

I would honestly blame the HD, but theres no way to be sure really as its hard to measure the bottleneck if its the HD.

 

[piroroadkill]

Run a SiSoft sandra disk speed test, and if it ranks dramatically low, you know something is going on strange with your disk.

For example, one of the drives in my server will only run on PIO mode, no idea why, and I can't be bothered to sort it out because it works. It's still fast enough to stream PAL res DivX movies.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
weird, because the video card doesnt decode HDTV streams at all unless its a 6xxx series geforce or 9x/Xx radeon...

Its cpu bound. There is no "graphics card load". All the video cards do (pre-video processing) are display the 2d images.

Geforce 2 MX or TNT or Trident 1MB, the graphics card isnt going to make a difference. Look at all the HDTV playback threads with 2.6ghz+ cpus at high usage during playback, theres a different bottleneck.

Actually, the graphics card will make a difference - the card has to be capable of pushing all those pixels to create moving pictures. FWIW, my AXP 9x200/ Radeon 9600XT/ 1 gig Ram has no trouble with HDTV playback, though I've not check CPU usage.

The "fluctuating LCD" issue may be related to the wiring in your house. What other items are on the same circuit?

 

[mehmetmunur]

I got humbled. After reading the thread, went to microsoft and downloaded two of the streams, one of the being meet the fockers (720p)and the other one being the dolphins(1080i). My setup is close to your girlfriends, athlon xp 2500, 512 ram, onboard gforce mx4, and an 80gb WD. While your CPU utilization was 20%, mine was 100% due to onboard video. In order to check to see if harddrive was the bottleneck, which it was not, I copied the file to my USB 2.0 wd 80gb harddrive(identical drive except for being external), and the frame rates were the same. Meet the fockers has frame rate of 23 fps, while the playback had an actual playback of 10-11 fps, while dolphins had an actual of 3.5 fps. The actual framerate did not change from the PATA (with theoretical limit of 100MB/s and actual sustained of 51 MB/s) to the USB 2.0 (theoretical limit of 60 MB/s and actual of probably ~30MB/s). Also WMP statistics suggest that the stream was 8440 kbps for meet the fockers, and 8384 kbps for the dolphins. So in order to get a choppy framerate due to harddrive bottleneck you would need a harddrive that would have trouble reading 8440 kbps, which is quite ridicilous. So the bottleneck for me would be the onboard video and the CPU, while yours was the video card.

 

[bockchow]

you can get an ATI 9600 pro/xt for fairly cheap now. that would be a solid upgrade for that system.