So I upgraded my Radeon 7000 to a Radeon 9550...

[flashbacck]

I just bought a Radeon 9550 (down clocked 9600), mostly so I could finally get DxVA to work with my Fusion3 and also because it's the only low profile (size-wise) Dx9 capable card at the moment.

Anyway, finally got the drivers loaded and powerstrip working. Fusion software w/ DxVA works great. I turn on Sage to fiddle with the 3D accel and VMR9 settings I never could use...

And OMG. Transparent and lag free menus (there used to be a fraction second delay). Awesome. Awesome Awesome Awesome.

My next goal is to finally get ffdshow working. Never could get it working smoothly...

edit: oh yeah, I'm not missing anything else right? Are there any other neat VMR9/Dx9 tricks or abilities I'm missing?

EDIT2: DOH. Ok, I just realized I had my card setup to 16bit color instead of 32bit. Needless to say, switching it to 32bit caused my picture to start distorting. Ah well. It was awesome while it lasted. Maybe I'll try overclocking to see if I can squeeze enough speed out of it.

[Bathman]

I'am thinking of upgrading from an radeon 7000. I use a SDTV. Would you say that the PQ is better with the newer card? I'am not really interested in VMR9 just overlay but I would like to get a picture that is better in quality.

The PC I use as my PVR is weak-Via C3 1.2Mhz which uses a fanless 90Watt powersupply. Can I take it that your 9550 is fanless? Also do you know if it draws any more "wattage" than the 7000.

Hope you can help.

[flashbacck]

Well, I guess I can't accurately compare my VMR9 to overlay because I was running in 16bit color depth. But VMR9 is suppose to be more accurate.

The 9550 is fanless. I haven't tried overclocking to 9600 clockspeeds yet, but given that I started having problems with 3D accel, I don't think a 9550 at stock is powerful enough.

I'll see if overclocking helps and post the results, but I do think you might have power supply issues. 90W is pretty tiny.

[flashbacck]

One other thing, I am running my display at 1776x1000. The higher resolution might be contributing to the VM9 stuttering. Not sure though.

BATHMAN: Here's a thread discussing VMR9 vs overlay

http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...highlight=vmr9

[flashbacck]

Success! I managed to overclock my 9550 from 250 Mhz core/200 mem to 370/230. Which I believe is faster than 9600 stock speeds. I'm pretty impressed considering I'm using a fanless heatsink.

I had to set my video decoder is to "default" so I'm not really sure which decoder it's even using right now. But once I did, everything seemed to run fine. I'll be stress testing my setup the next few days to make sure everything is stable.

[dagar]

Do not expect much if anything with FFDshow and the 9550. Many users with 9600XTs report tearing with FFDshow and I personally use a 9700Pro (grrr) for it.

Yep, that res will increase tearing (stuttering); just replace the word 'VRM9' with 'any ol DirectX game' ... running at a higher rez will require more GPU power BTW, how is the interlacing for you? I wanna barf when I go to 1080i timing ... but then again, I haven't calibrated my RPT CRTS (groan).

[flashbacck]

I was under the impression ffdshow was strictly software powered. So GPU had little to no effect. Can anyone else chime in on this?

I haven't had any problems with interlacing so far. I just picked the 1776x1000i (ATI) timing in powerstrip and it worked.