CPU usage high on playback

[luckya]

When I playback HD video on Sage the CPU usage hovers around 90% with frequent freezing issue. If I playback the same video with Windows Media Center the CPU usage is around 30%. I've tried every combination of EVR and VMR with the sage or windows MPEG codec but still get high CPU usage and stutter. Obviously I'm missing something but can't figure out what. Any help would be appreciated since I much prefer Sage to WMC.

Here are some of the relevant specs:
SageT 6.5.6.200
Vista 64 bit
Athlon 64 3000+
6MB memory

[paulbeers]

What Video card are you running?

[luckya]

I've got two cards on my system and see the same problem on each. One is a MSI GeForce 8400GS, the other is a GeForce 7300GT.

[luckya]

Well after trying to give WMC a try for a month I decided it just wasn't worth it so I've been playing around with codecs and video rendering to see if I could drop the CPU usage and get glassy playback. After playing with FFDshow, coreavc, cyberlink PDVD8, purevideo, and the default mpeg decoders I think I've almost found a workable solution. So far my lowest CPU usage has come while using cyberlink powerdvd8 with EVR (which should come as no surprise to those who have gleaned the threads looking to maximize hardware acceleration) and the SageTV MPEG Video Decoder (which I was unaware now can implement DXVA). My glassiest playback is with SageTV MPEG Video Decoder with Overlay as the video renderer. I don't know why but EVR is not quite as smooth. Not horrible stuttering, but small hesitations here and there. Of course I couldn't have solved all my problems, overlay only works for the primary monitor. I thought this was just an XP issue, but apparently even on Vista 64 this primary monitor issue has not gone away. Oh well, I'll start a new thread and see if anyone has any thoughts.