PNY nVidia Quadro FX 500 sucks at playing compressed movies!

[yobarman]

I've updated the drivers so many times, but nothing seems to work. Every time I play video, whether it be a quicktime file (where the screen will turn green and the computer will come to a halt) or a divx file (where the video skips for seconds at a time, yet sound still plays) my system basically locks up.

Anyone know what may be causing this? I run a lot of graphic intensive 3D programs, which don't have any trouble at all. You'd figure if the card can do that stuff, it'd have no trouble playing compressed video.

+5 Karma to whoever helps me 😉

 

[Keysplayr]

In detail, list your system specs. Try not to leave anything out.
All hardware. Make/model
All software. OS/apps/drivers.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Seems to me, the Quaddro boards cost a great deal more than gaming boards, and are very specifically intended for CAD and various business/commercial applications that require high resolutions on large displays. I really doubt that you will ever get the kind of gaming speed from such a video adapter that is readily available from even a budget-price gamers' board such as an ATI 9600 or an NV FX 5700.

(Much later: I see that my presumption was accurate, but the FX 500 being a couple of generations old, it isn't up to current standard by a large amount. There's an AT article about current CAD adapters, from which the graphic I am going to attach a link to is taken.)

http://images.anandtech.com/gr...4_12210451214/5818.png

😉

 

[xtknight]

How do you know it's the video card that's the problem? Is that one of the video cards that's supposed to have an accelerated video processor onboard like the GeForce 6600? Does the same thing happen with uncompressed AVI files?

If you don't know if it's your video card or not I suggest the following, if you're up to it:

Uninstall all video drivers. Replace your current video card with another, install its drivers, and try playing the videos. If the problem still exists, it's almost certainly your Windows. The problem isn't that your video card can't keep up with the video because I don't even think that card has a video processor on it, you either have a slow processor or fubar'd Windows codecs, or some weird kind of virus 😕 If you have been able to watch videos in the past (on the same CPU) that disproves the slow CPU argument. Sure, there are other things that could have gone wrong too, maybe DivX doesn't like your combination of drivers or something weird like that, but it would be rare, very rare.

Try these settings in Windows Media Player as well (Advanced to get the other dialog):
Windows Media Player Settings

A few questions that would help us help you:

Operating system?
DirectX Version?
CPU Speed?
Motherboard/chipset?
What video player are you using to play Quicktime (I assume Quicktime Player, but there are others) and DivX?



Hope this helps
xtknight

 

[yobarman]

Sorry about not posting the system specs guys:

Windows XP Professional
MSI K8T NeoFis2R
Athlon 64 3000+
1.5 gigs pc 2700 RAM
PNY nVidia Quadro FX 500
2x 120 gig SATA Hitachi hard Drives
Samsung 950 P

 

[Loki726]

definitely a not a problem with the speed of your system...

Here's what I would do:

try to get some kind of media to play that works, play a dvd/avi/mpeg/divx whatever and see if it will work

try a different media player

re-install codecs

run dxdiag and look for errors

update drivers (you already did this)

swap video card with a known working card

If the swapping cards fixes the problem then ditch the quadro, if it doesn't, then 99% you have a software problem and you should check troubleshooting guides for the specific programs you are having issues with.

 

[Rent]

What driver are you using/have you tried?

 

[imported_Kiwi]

This thread had died for lack of pursuit by the OP. But interestingly enough, AT has a new article right now about the newer workstation video cards like that old Quadro FX 500. The current cards aren't so bad at games, maybe the old one was OK after all.

:beer:

 

[decode]

The problem is your NVIDIA drivers. I have the same problem with my FX 5900. The only solution I have found is to downgrade your drivers to 56.72. Then all your videos will work again. Unfortunately, it makes your shell (explorer.exe) unstable, and it will probably crash at least once a day. Here are some other workarounds:

All videos will play correctly the first time after you boot your computer. However, if you try to play another video, or play that one over again, it will do the things you're talking about (avi's have low video frame rates, Quicktime movies display just a green screen). I guess you could just reboot each time you want to play a video.

If you play avi's in Winamp, they will work correctly. WMVs will play correctly in Windows Media Player. Note that you might have to install the AC3 codec if you have videos that use this for audio (WMP can decode it natively).

That's it. If you Google a bit, you'll find other people with the same problem, but I don't know what conditions are causing it. It is possible that it is related to the Athlon64 (I have a 3200+), since I think the problems started when I upgraded from an Athlon CPU.

[Edit]: Perhaps an informal survey would be useful. If you have an Athlon64 and FX 5*, please post whether or not you are experiencing these issues, and which driver version you're using.

 

[yobarman]

Originally posted by: decode
The problem is your NVIDIA drivers. I have the same problem with my FX 5900. The only solution I have found is to downgrade your drivers to 56.72. Then all your videos will work again. Unfortunately, it makes your shell (explorer.exe) unstable, and it will probably crash at least once a day. Here are some other workarounds:

All videos will play correctly the first time after you boot your computer. However, if you try to play another video, or play that one over again, it will do the things you're talking about (avi's have low video frame rates, Quicktime movies display just a green screen). I guess you could just reboot each time you want to play a video.

If you play avi's in Winamp, they will work correctly. WMVs will play correctly in Windows Media Player. Note that you might have to install the AC3 codec if you have videos that use this for audio (WMP can decode it natively).

That's it. If you Google a bit, you'll find other people with the same problem, but I don't know what conditions are causing it. It is possible that it is related to the Athlon64 (I have a 3200+), since I think the problems started when I upgraded from an Athlon CPU.

[Edit]: Perhaps an informal survey would be useful. If you have an Athlon64 and FX 5*, please post whether or not you are experiencing these issues, and which driver version you're using.

Good post. Sorry about not pursuing this thread... I kind of forgot about it once the idea was thrown to switch video card and ditch my current one (Which I am not doing! It was expensive). I spent a lot of time working with 3d applications, so I'm not worried about gameplay. I'm will to sacrifice video play for better performance in 3d apps.

I have the most up to date drivers... and like decode said, reverting to the old ones may cause my computer to crash. So I'm not going to do that either. I guess Ill have to live with the problem until AMD or nVidia comes out with a solution, as it seems to be a Atlon 64/nVidia issue.

My main problem is with quicktime players. They completely lock up my computer. Are they any other programs that will play quicktime files? Recently, my computer seems to be fine with video, but thats probably because I haven't played a quicktime file in a long time.