Video performance issues

[Phaetos]

Gigabyte F2A55M-HD2
AMD A10-6800K
8 Gig RAM
60Gig Mushkin SSD
1TB standard HD

I have recently noticed that I can't seem to play Diablo 3 and watch a movie at the same time on 2 monitors. The video will stutter and jitter, while the game is fine.

Video files are on a network server on local LAN. If I play the video direct from the share via WMP, it does it. I recently installed Plex Media Server on said network server for other devices in the house to access the collections. When attempting to play videos thru the plex web access, it does the same thing. I can stream those videos from other devices on the network and have no issues.

I can watch any streaming video from youtube, twitch, pbs, anywhere and have no issues.

Any ideas why I can't do both at the same time?

 

[Ken g6]

Could be GPU component availability; could be GPU memory access. What speed and voltage is your RAM?

You could try VLC, with its hardware acceleration off, and see if that fixes it.

I doubt it would help, but does playing from the local drive work better?

 

[Phaetos]

Could be GPU component availability; could be GPU memory access. What speed and voltage is your RAM?

You could try VLC, with its hardware acceleration off, and see if that fixes it.

I doubt it would help, but does playing from the local drive work better?

I did try that, ran it off the SSD and there was no change in performance. I just find it weird that I can stream from anywhere on the 'Net with no problem, but not from my local server.

 

[Phaetos]

Interesting development. While running Path of Exile, I attempted the scenario. The video was a little choppy but not as bad as Diablo 3 running. I had an idea of the game being in Fullscreen mode. So I set it to Windows Fullscreen. Problem watching videos on 2nd monitor, fixed.

I tried it with Diablo 3, still has the same issues. At least one game is better.

 

[Ketchup]

What do you mean by recently? As in, it recently started having this problem, or you recently started trying this?

From your first post, it seems you are using the 8670 in your Richland to run these games.

It seems to me that running a video game (which would theoretically use 100% of the GPU section of the chip and 100% of at least 1 CPU core) and asking it to run whatever decoder you are using on top of that would be a lot to ask, especially on a chip that does both.

A test I would try would be to start the video first, make sure it is playing correctly, then start the game and see what happens.

If that is a bust, I wonder if the same test on an older game (a game that only runs on one core) would do any better?

 

[Phaetos]

What do you mean by recently? As in, it recently started having this problem, or you recently started trying this?

From your first post, it seems you are using the 8670 in your Richland to run these games.

It seems to me that running a video game (which would theoretically use 100% of the GPU section of the chip and 100% of at least 1 CPU core) and asking it to run whatever decoder you are using on top of that would be a lot to ask, especially on a chip that does both.

A test I would try would be to start the video first, make sure it is playing correctly, then start the game and see what happens.

If that is a bust, I wonder if the same test on an older game (a game that only runs on one core) would do any better?

Sorry for the delay in replying. It recently started having this problem, and yes I am using the 8670 for all video.

I know the games don't ever use 100% of any core. I haven't tried to find a util to find out how much of the GPU is being used during gaming. I should probably check that.

I did have a little success in testing the other day. I was playing PoE and a video, I changed the video mode of PoE from Fullscreen to FullScreen Windowed. That fixed the issue in PoE, strange. I duplicated the same for Diablo 3 and it changed nothing.

Playing with it tonight, while running just a video thru WMP from the server, I see a noticeable "tearing" or "flicker" right in the middle of the video horizontally from side to side.
If I put it in fullscreen mode, it gets more noticeable. Now if I try to play the same video through the Plex server, which is accessed via web page and the Plex server does the transcoding if needed, I get the same results. I'm beginning to think maybe my Catalyst drivers have gone screwy.

Guess I'll try to find that Catalyst removal tool and reinstall the drivers.

 

[Ketchup]

.... Playing with it tonight, while running just a video thru WMP from the server, I see a noticeable "tearing" or "flicker" right in the middle of the video horizontally from side to side..... Guess I'll try to find that Catalyst removal tool and reinstall the drivers.

Yes, that sounds like a good way to go here. Curious as well, have you checked your CPU temps while playing video to see if they are still in an acceptable range?

 

[Phaetos]

Yes, that sounds like a good way to go here. Curious as well, have you checked your CPU temps while playing video to see if they are still in an acceptable range?

Yes and no. None of the well-known ID/Temp/Sensor progs seem to work correctly on these APU chips, not even the AMD tool. It's all over the place when it comes to that. I am running the stock fan, should a better one but that means I gotta measure the height limit because of the mobo/case combo, and I got a little deskfan that sits behind my monitor and blows air directly into the intakes. I can run a game and still be able to pass a "finger test" on the heatsink. Don't think I'm having any issues there.

Last night, I downloaded the latest Catalyst and the previous version drivers. AMD apparently doesn't have a Catalyst removal tool anymore, the link to it was dead. As I was about to start the removal/reinstall of the drivers, I was scanning the Add/Remove programs list and had a thought. My K-Lite Codec pack hadn't been updated in ages. So I went to the distro site and found my version to be 6.3 versions behind. So I got it, ran the install and told it to install everything, all codecs, all encoding/decoding, all tools and tweak options and then that was when I remembered that K-Lite installs the old MPC-HT(Media Player Classic-Home Theater) video player/music player. So I had the install install the new version of that and associated all video/music formats to MPC-HT.

Rebooted the PC, went to the server directly thru the share and randomly picked a movie to start testing with. Since the new associations were in place, MPC-HT and it played perfectly on the main monitor, fullscreened it and worked flawlessly. Moved it to the 2nd monitor, same result, no issues at all.

I left the vid playing, started up D3 and ...... it was still "flickering". It didn't have that "tearing" across the middle of the vid, but it was more like a 0.5/sec stutter to it. It was just enough to be pretty annoying. So I started playing with the decode options in MPC and got it nearly gone. I then played around with the tweak tools that came with the K-Lite install, and got it gone while playing PoE!! YAY! While running Diablo 3, it still stutters just a tad, probably no noticeable if you weren't actively looking for it as I was. It even fixed the issues while playing vids thru the Plex Server, after I played with those server options for a few minutes.

So I basically updated my codecs and started using MPC again, which I had totally forgotten about. I never did remove the Catalyst drivers, but I have them on hand if I decide to do it anyway, just to see if it will get rid of that very minor stutter now. But at this point, I'm kinda pushing that towards it being an APU and having to handle both at the same time.

I may just get the new A10 APU with the R9 option, and flash my BIOS to accept the new chip.

 

[Ketchup]

Very good! AMD has always had a nice onboard chip, but you are still pushing it pretty hard. Good to know that it can handle both when/if you need it too.

 

[Phaetos]

Very good! AMD has always had a nice onboard chip, but you are still pushing it pretty hard. Good to know that it can handle both when/if you need it too.

I agree. When I was younger(I hate saying that because it dates me), right out of high school was about the time that AMD came on the scene and actually was giving Intel a run. I had nearly always had an AMD chip of some model in my PC's because the Intel equivalents were always too expensive.

Yep, it still pushing that APU pretty good to do both, but it handles it pretty well with the newest codecs and some tweaking of them.

We'll see how the reviews turn out on the new A10, I may upgrade.