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Hardware Support Discussions related to using various hardware setups with SageTV products. Anything relating to capture cards, remotes, infrared receivers/transmitters, system compatibility or other hardware related problems or suggestions should be posted here.

View Poll Results: AMD or NVIDIA for Sage?
AMD 6 46.15%
NVIDIA 5 38.46%
No real difference with Sage (performance/ease of setup) 2 15.38%
Voters: 13. You may not vote on this poll

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  #1  
Old 02-20-2012, 07:54 PM
FlyingShawn FlyingShawn is offline
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Guess I need a GPU: AMD or NVIDIA for Sage? (ASRock mobo BSODs with Intel graphics)

As seems to be my luck in life, I managed to build my HTPC with a SERIOUSLY faulty motherboard. I built an i5-2500k system using an ASRock Z68 Extreme4 motherboard, which has a major design/manufacturing/BIOS defect that causes regular BSODs every few days when using the i5's built-in graphics. (Example, here's 38 pages of users experiencing this issue: Asrock Z68 extreme 4 : BSOD A clock interrupt was not received --- Page 38). It's been a known issue since last summer (pretty much right after I bought it, but I didn't find out about the problem until much later) and ASRock won't admit there's a problem, so there's no fix coming).

It seems there are two potential solutions to this problem:
1) Use a fixed VCORE, which will dramatically cut back on the power-saving capabilities of the processor.
2) Use a discrete graphics card.

I'm strongly leaning towards the later option, because it'd give me the added benefit of better video performance. I probably don't have it tweaked right, but my system has struggled with some high-action h.264 Dr. Who footage recorded by my Colossus card, so I think there's a lot of room for improvement in this area.

Which leads me to the question: AMD or NVIDIA?

Anandtech had a really fantastic comparison review last summer (Discrete HTPC GPU Shootout), which essentially narrowed down the best options to the Radeon 6570 or the NVIDIA GT 430. They said that both cards had a lot of various strengths and weaknesses, but that overall the AMD was better for "install and forget" users and the NVIDIA was better for those who like to "constantly tweak their HTPC." However, that was last summer. My hours of research have delved into great debates about the quality of driver support and levels of necessary tweaking, but nothing really Sage-specific or reliable (too many fanboys). I've had good experiences and been burned by both brands, so I don't particularly lean either way.

I'd definitely prefer to do less tweaking (or rather, tweak when setting up the system, then leave it alone) and know that AMD has better de-interlacing performance, but also know that the NVIDIA has better open-source support and probably works better overall if you know what you're doing. Price-wise, they are very nearly the same for most of the better-reviewed cards, so I think that's a toss-up. I'm not confident my Fractal Design R3 case has enough airflow for a passively-cooled card, so I'd be looking for one that's actively cooled but still relatively quiet.

So, how about it, are either of these brands known to work better for Sage? How about ease-of-setup and driver reliability? Is there a newer-model card than these two that I should be looking at? One last thing: I'm going to be upgrading the HTPC to the Windows 8 Consumer Preview when it comes out to take advantage of the Storage Spaces feature, so is one of these brands more likely to have halfway-decent Win8 drivers before the other?

Thanks!

Last edited by FlyingShawn; 02-20-2012 at 07:59 PM. Reason: spelling
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  #2  
Old 02-21-2012, 08:25 AM
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panteragstk panteragstk is offline
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I have the 6570 and it is fantastic. Haven't had a chance to test refresh rate switching yet so I can't tell you how well that works. Card hasn't given me any issues so far.
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  #3  
Old 02-21-2012, 10:03 AM
FlyingShawn FlyingShawn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by panteragstk View Post
I have the 6570 and it is fantastic. Haven't had a chance to test refresh rate switching yet so I can't tell you how well that works. Card hasn't given me any issues so far.
Thanks for the input! Would you mind telling me which brand/model of the 6570 you have? Are you running the latest drivers? Have you tried using MadVR with it?
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  #4  
Old 02-21-2012, 01:32 PM
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panteragstk panteragstk is offline
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Haven't tried madvr yet. I'm running 12.1 drivers. I have the one listed below.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102934
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Living room: nVidia Shield TV, Sage Mini Client, 65" Panasonic VT60
Bedroom: Xiomi Mi Box, Sage Mini Client, 42" Panasonic PZ800u
Theater: nVidia Shield TV, mini client, Plex for movies, 120" screen. Mitsubishi HC4000. Denon X4300H. 7.4.4 speaker setup.
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  #5  
Old 02-21-2012, 01:41 PM
FlyingShawn FlyingShawn is offline
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That's actually the exact model I was leaning towards if I go the AMD route! How noisy is it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by panteragstk View Post
Haven't tried madvr yet. I'm running 12.1 drivers. I have the one listed below.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102934
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  #6  
Old 02-21-2012, 02:35 PM
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panteragstk panteragstk is offline
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I can't hear it at all. My psu fan is much louder. Granted, my psu is very loud. I don't think you'll have an issue with noise.
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SageTV Server: unRAID Docker v9, S2600CPJ, Norco 24 hot swap bay case, 2x Xeon 2670, 64 GB DDR3, 3x Colossus for DirecTV, HDHR for OTA
Living room: nVidia Shield TV, Sage Mini Client, 65" Panasonic VT60
Bedroom: Xiomi Mi Box, Sage Mini Client, 42" Panasonic PZ800u
Theater: nVidia Shield TV, mini client, Plex for movies, 120" screen. Mitsubishi HC4000. Denon X4300H. 7.4.4 speaker setup.
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  #7  
Old 02-21-2012, 02:49 PM
FlyingShawn FlyingShawn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by panteragstk View Post
I can't hear it at all. My psu fan is much louder. Granted, my psu is very loud. I don't think you'll have an issue with noise.
Thanks! I won't be ordering anything for at least another week or so (since I won't have any time to install it anyway), but that card is now the top of my AMD short-list.

Does anyone lean NVIDIA for Sage or have a different card to recommend?
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  #8  
Old 02-21-2012, 04:48 PM
Wirenut Wirenut is offline
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I've been using an ATI HD4870 for two years without any trouble at all. I get H/W accel for H264 and mpeg2. I use the Cyberlink decoder for H264 ts files and ATI's AVIVO decoder [or whatever they call it now] for mpeg2. CPU is like 2% while watching TV. This is with XP32bit and Sage 7. The picture really looks great with HDPVR's and HDHomerun sourced recordings. I have used Nvidia as well, and never really had much trouble with that either. I think the ATI was a little quicker to plug and play without much tweaking, but to be honest, I haven't tried anything new lately, as everything just works great now.

Good luck.
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  #9  
Old 02-22-2012, 08:16 AM
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panteragstk panteragstk is offline
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I went with ati over nvidia because nvidia has a bad habit of breaking video playback with their drivers. It gets old trying to find a driver that doesn't make sage crash. Granted the video card I was using was older, but everything played back wonderfully, but for some reason sage would crash. ATI cards never gave me that problem.
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SageTV Server: unRAID Docker v9, S2600CPJ, Norco 24 hot swap bay case, 2x Xeon 2670, 64 GB DDR3, 3x Colossus for DirecTV, HDHR for OTA
Living room: nVidia Shield TV, Sage Mini Client, 65" Panasonic VT60
Bedroom: Xiomi Mi Box, Sage Mini Client, 42" Panasonic PZ800u
Theater: nVidia Shield TV, mini client, Plex for movies, 120" screen. Mitsubishi HC4000. Denon X4300H. 7.4.4 speaker setup.
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  #10  
Old 02-27-2012, 06:23 PM
FlyingShawn FlyingShawn is offline
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Thanks for the advice everyone!

There was a clear majority voting for AMD in the poll (only one NVIDIA vote and that person didn't post any advice/input to go along with it), I've gone ahead and ordered the same 6570 card panteragstk said that he has.

Sometime in the next couple weeks I'll start rebuilding the server with the new card and the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, so with any luck I'll finally be done with this BSOD problem.

Thanks again!
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  #11  
Old 03-06-2012, 03:12 AM
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doncote0 doncote0 is offline
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Talking Good Luck!

I would go with the Radeon HD 6570. The Radeon HD 4870 is a great card, too, but it uses more power and generates more heat. Depending on the HTPC heat load, you can even over or under clock the dGPU using the ATI catalyst utility (resulting in a modest performance and noise increase or decrease).

Last edited by doncote0; 03-06-2012 at 03:14 AM.
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  #12  
Old 03-06-2012, 02:22 PM
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Naylia Naylia is offline
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Is there an option 3 of buy a new motherboard....?
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  #13  
Old 03-06-2012, 02:34 PM
FlyingShawn FlyingShawn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Naylia View Post
Is there an option 3 of buy a new motherboard....?
To what end?

If this is the only significant known problem with the board (it is, at least as far as I am aware) and a discrete GPU fixes the problem, what would I gain from a new board? Adding a GPU is roughly 1/3 the cost of an equivalent motherboard and comes with the added benefit of increased performance.

If there were more problems with the board, then that's something I'd have to consider, but I don't think that's the case in my particular situation.
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