ATI3650:Micro-Stutter Galore

[skyeclad]

I just "upgraded" from an ATI x800xl, where my HDHR 1080i OTA material was silky smooth but H.264 high bitrate material was a no-go, to an ATI 3650 where my H.264 is now much smoother but my 1080i material is full of "deal-breaking" micro-stutter and sometimes tearing. I've tried many codecs, ATI, PDVD7, PDVD8, Arcsoft, SageTV, Cyberlink and even Nvidia. They all produce both micro-stuttering and tearing. I even tried turning on overlay and turning off 3D acceleration, but that didn't help.

I think the problem might be related to hardware accelerated deinterlacing, so I played with the settings in Catalyst CC. I turned off auto deinterlacing and tried all modes but they all produce stutter. Here's the annoying part, while I debated getting another HD Extender, the lure of getting a BD capable video card for $45 AR was too much for me compared with the $200 worry-free HD-100. Unfortunately, I'm exactly where I didn't want to be, 2 steps back, fiddling with codecs, graphs, filters and Catalyst versions for hours.

Currently I'm using CAT 8.6. I tried Cat 8.8 last night and it seemed to turn off all Hardware Acceleration and that actually made things much worse. At this point I'm contemplating an RMA with the restocking fee . Any advice would be much appreciated at this time!

[thatdude90210]

I don't have that card, but I remember reading some issues that people had with hardware accel and some tweaks that they did in a thread at avsforum.
link

[skyeclad]

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, I didn't really see any resolutions on this issue in this thread. I posted my problem there in case someone figured it out.

[skyeclad]

I hope I'm not speaking too soon but I think I figured out part of the problem. It seems that unlike my previous card, the ATI 3650 is highly dependent on VMR FSE to run smoothly. I noticed that SageTV was full screen but not really maintaining FSE. When I toggled FS back and forth, I could see the screen go black and then it returned with full focus and in FSE mode. From there it seemed that my video problems were gone. I'm not sure if this is going to work though for the other applications, PDVD8 or TMT. They don't seem to lock FSE mode although I could be wrong.