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jezzy

Suspended
Original poster
Jan 12, 2012
85
1
Montreal, Quebec
Hi,

I put together some of my old pc parts and a g5 case and created a nice little hackintosh system. it's running ls 10.6.8

Components are a quad core q6600, 8gb ram and nvidia 8800 gts 512mb g92 video card. All this streams to my 46 LCD in the living room.

Problem, some movies (have an expensive kids movie collection for my boys..) I've noticed in some movies, when there's a lot of rendering ie: zooming in or out of a screen..) the video seems to slow down a tad.. audio is fine.

Not all movies, but a few. Sad thing is everything ran flawlessly from my wdtv box! a quad 6600 can't keep up?? really??!

Now, I'm wondering what it can be? processing power? video card too slow?
I'm streaming from my raid-5 setup.. running a dvi to hdmi 20' to the tv, and a seperate audio jack from the sound card to the tv audio in..

any feedback would be great!
 
Last edited:

maccompaq

macrumors 65816
Mar 6, 2007
1,169
24
My first guess would be the video ram is too low, 2nd would be slow video card.

CaveMan, long time no see. My 3rd Hackintosh is a quad core i7. I am considering building a 6 core i7 or Xenon Hackintosh with a GTX680 or a Titan. Do you have any plans for a future build?
 

cosmicjoke

macrumors 6502
Oct 3, 2011
484
1
Portland, OR
Hi,

I put together some of my old pc parts and a g5 case and created a nice little hackintosh system. it's running ls 10.6.8

Components are a quad core q6600, 8gb ram and nvidia 8800 gts 512mb g92 video card. All this streams to my 46 LCD in the living room.

Problem, some movies (have an expensive kids movie collection for my boys..) I've noticed in some movies, when there's a lot of rendering ie: zooming in or out of a screen..) the video seems to slow down a tad.. audio is fine.

Not all movies, but a few. Sad thing is everything ran flawlessly from my wdtv box! a quad 6600 can't keep up?? really??!

Now, I'm wondering what it can be? processing power? video card too slow?
I'm streaming from my raid-5 setup.. running a dvi to hdmi 20' to the tv, and a seperate audio jack from he sound card to the tv audio in..

any feedback would be great!

I'd try going into the Settings > Video > Playback and turning off Hardware Acceleration (VDA Decoder) and see how that treats you....
 

jezzy

Suspended
Original poster
Jan 12, 2012
85
1
Montreal, Quebec
How do those jittery files play in VLC?

Just tried it a few mins ago locally ran vlc, video was jerky/jittery also. I too am thinking might be the video card, heck got many years out of it! found a gtx275 for 40$ locally. may as well try it out.

thanks for the heads up. I too was thinking of upgrading it to a newer i7 system, but damn over kill for a htpc! ;) also have a i5 iMac 27" which is also dying for a CPU and a video card upgrade!

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I'd try going into the Settings > Video > Playback and turning off Hardware Acceleration (VDA Decoder) and see how that treats you....

within xbmc? I'll check it out! edit: did it, it does indeed help! big improvement that's for sure. thanks!
 
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Cave Man

macrumors 604
Just tried it a few mins ago locally ran vlc, video was jerky/jittery also. I too am thinking might be the video card, heck got many years out of it! found a gtx275 for 40$ locally. may as well try it out.

I don't think it's your video card, or anything to do with your hardware or software. I think you have a codec issue in these files. Even a Core 2 Duo Mac Mini with Intel's anemic GMA950 gpu can handle 1080p H.264 video with Dolby Digital AC3 5.1 audio running VLC (which is what I used for my home theater for a while). Your current system is substantially superior to that. Besides, your video card probably has very little to do with video playback, unless you have h.264 video and the card can decode those and that hardware acceleration is enabled in your playback software.

Can you tell us (1) the container of these files, (2) the video codec and (3) the audio codec(s)?? In VLC you can get these from Window > Media Information > Codec Details (current version of VLC). That should probably clear it up a bit.
 

blanka

macrumors 68000
Jul 30, 2012
1,551
4
Power is more than enough. For BluRay/MKV playback, I found the Core2Duo 2.26Ghz Mini with 9400M the minimum, this blows away that machine on every aspect.
But damn it is a toaster system! How much juice does it use? 300 watts? The 6600 is a very old 65nm sucker, and the 8800gts is able to fry some burgers too. Can you still hear the film?

I have the idea that your video-driver is not set up well. How many FPS do you get on Cinebench?
 

jezzy

Suspended
Original poster
Jan 12, 2012
85
1
Montreal, Quebec
Power is more than enough. For BluRay/MKV playback, I found the Core2Duo 2.26Ghz Mini with 9400M the minimum, this blows away that machine on every aspect.
But damn it is a toaster system! How much juice does it use? 300 watts? The 6600 is a very old 65nm sucker, and the 8800gts is able to fry some burgers too. Can you still hear the film?

I have the idea that your video-driver is not set up well. How many FPS do you get on Cinebench?

I hear you! I was running a Mac mini server 2009 with the 9400m without issues in the past, sold that and it paid for my raid server. it's basically a apple g5 tower, mountain mods motherboard tray with a gigabyte 775 motherboard and q6600. 8 gb ddr2, and have 5 hd's mounted inside with a powerful raid card (the name will come to me..) yes it's noisy, 8 fans inside keeping it cool. it runs 24/7 as it also is my download nzb box and streams to my entire household! 750 watt corsair power supply. the video card is the g92 512mb variant. also the main reason why I've got it stored in my basement workshop and running a 20 foot hdmi cable upstairs.

I'm far from a hackintosh expert. that's for sure. I will do what ever you guys suggest. I am going to invest in a better video card. found a few decent ones hd6678 for 100$ locally..positive I'm due! ;)

just tried cinebnench 11.5 for the first time. OpenGL 19.75fp and rendering 2.69 pts..
q6600 2.4




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Can you tell us (1) the container of these files, (2) the video codec and (3) the audio codec(s)?? In VLC you can get these from Window > Media Information > Codec Details (current version of VLC). That should probably clear it up a bit.

just checked, h264 mkv mpg-4
1920x1036

my entire collection is mkv's

I just noticed its running smoothly once I shut down xbmc.. I believe xbmc is part of my issues. it is indeed slow. I'm still using Eden as I cant seem to get my audio working in frodo.
 
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AtomicGrog

macrumors regular
Jul 25, 2011
189
56
What about system stats while running? CPU load, free memory, disk space etc.?

And if the files are remote network transfer levels?

Are you operating over Wifi? I've seen issues like this when I used my ATV over wifi at 1080p when the source was another wifi based device?
 

jezzy

Suspended
Original poster
Jan 12, 2012
85
1
Montreal, Quebec
What about system stats while running? CPU load, free memory, disk space etc.?

And if the files are remote network transfer levels?

Are you operating over Wifi? I've seen issues like this when I used my ATV over wifi at 1080p when the source was another wifi based device?

good questions, nothing's running other than xbmc, I'll run a few terminal commands to get you the free ram, etc. 8gb should be sufficient. my household is wired gigabit LAN, a gigabit switch in my living room and another one in my workshop. I've never run a good throughput test though!

and no, not wifi. I do manage to stream mkv 1080 to my iPad 1 in xbmc though! AirPlay also worked great when I had an apple tv 2 and 3..
 

cosmicjoke

macrumors 6502
Oct 3, 2011
484
1
Portland, OR
I'm all for hackintoshing, it's a fun project... but in this instance if you're just running XBMC and Sabnzbd and not really using anything OS X related, you could definitely make your life a lot easier by just running a linux distro or windows.

But if you must, I'm sure buying a new card isn't gonna solve anything for you, a 8800 series nvidia card & a quad core 775 is perfectly sufficient to use Snow Leopard and XBMC... you just need things set up properly...

Make sure GraphicsEnabler=Yes in your org.chameleon.Boot.plist and check that you are getting graphics acceleration (if you can't move any pieces in Chess for example or make the ripple effect when adding a Dashboard widget, you wouldn't have graphics accel). Ideally you want everything in your DSDT or flagged in org.chameleon.Boot.plist so that you only have to use 3 kexts (fakesmc, lan, audio) and everything from speedstepping, shutdown, restart, sleep taken care of with your DSDT/chameleon boot flags.... The less kexts the better.
 

jezzy

Suspended
Original poster
Jan 12, 2012
85
1
Montreal, Quebec
I'm all for hackintoshing, it's a fun project... but in this instance if you're just running XBMC and Sabnzbd and not really using anything OS X related, you could definitely make your life a lot easier by just running a linux distro or windows.

But if you must, I'm sure buying a new card isn't gonna solve anything for you, a 8800 series nvidia card & a quad core 775 is perfectly sufficient to use Snow Leopard and XBMC... you just need things set up properly...

Make sure GraphicsEnabler=Yes in your org.chameleon.Boot.plist and check that you are getting graphics acceleration (if you can't move any pieces in Chess for example or make the ripple effect when adding a Dashboard widget, you wouldn't have graphics accel). Ideally you want everything in your DSDT or flagged in org.chameleon.Boot.plist so that you only have to use 3 kexts (fakesmc, lan, audio) and everything from speedstepping, shutdown, restart, sleep taken care of with your DSDT/chameleon boot flags.... The less kexts the better.

Just to follow up on my old thread ! sorry for the late late reply.

I fixed my problem, I purchased a newer radeon 7850 1gb video card and fixed all my problems. BUT, I think my problem were because the 8800 didn't have hardware acceleration enabled (seems like it..) anyhoo, no longer any issues which is great.
 
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