Upgrade XL201 CPU?

[clivadio]

Hello all,

I've been using my VGX-XL201 media center for more than a year now, and I'm quite satisfied with it... for most things I do.

1 problem I have today: when trying to read some 1080p videos in H264 (mkv), depending on the player / codec pack, it will either lag, or image and sound will lose synchronization.
When looking to the CPU load, this happens when it gets to 50 or 100%, depending if the player can load the 2 CPUs or not.
I tried most readers and codec packs with no success.
I also tried to change the graphic card with one from Leadtek, equipped with a 8500GT (supposed to decode H264 in hardware), but that one was heating too much and lags would come back...

I'm left with 2 possibilities: as it seems that the CPU is just not enough, first possibility would be overclocking... but apparently there is no safe way to do that, as BIOS is locked-up. Is there one?
Second possibility would be to replace the CPU. But I'm really not sure this is possible, is it?

And actually the third and last possibility, but I'd like to avoid this extreme: selling my XL201 to buy one of the TP2, whenever they come out in Europe

Thanks in advance for your help.

[GavMack]

Sorry to hear you've had problems with your Leadtek unlike mine in my Vista XL3 box.

Have you tried buying CoreAVC Professional to decode your X264 content instead of the free ones offered in the codec packs? I've used that with 1080p content with the old 7600 GTL card which ran fine but I must admit only after I installed a second hard disc to hold my media. With the Leadtek it runs even better.

[clivadio]

Hi GavMack, and thanks for your answer.

What's the reference of the leadtek you have? Is it a fan-less?
Here is the one I purchased
(sorry it's in French...)
Maybe mine has a problem, and I should send it back?

Well, yes I have tried the CoreAVC, and problem gets different, but not solved (see below).

Some additional information:
- I have added an additional harddrive for my movies
- I have added 1GB of RAM (which improved the situation)

Reading Blu-Ray with PowerDVD: I have actually no issue
- I had trouble before adding the RAM (PowerDVD consumes more than 600MB)
- WIth additional RAM, and with the 7600GT, CPU will go up to 60-70% (therefore using both cores). I have no lags at all, since there's CPU left, at least in the movies I tried
- When I changed to the 8500GT, CPU used to go up to 10-15% only, which shows indeed the interest of this H264 HW decoding. But it was heating too much, and situation was pretty the same as with the original graphic card, so I put back the original one

Reading H264 mkv with the core codec pack / simple player or media center:
- no diff with the RAM
- no diff between the 2 graphic cards, as this codec does not make use of HW decoding
- there is no lag, but for "decoding intensive parts" (ex: when it rains in the movie), sound and image synchro gets temporarily lost, when CPU gets to 50% (1 core gets to 100%). I did not find any way to enable dual core in ffdshow.

Reading H264 mkv with the CoreAVC / simple player or media center:
- no diff with the added RAM
- here, in the same parts of the movies ("decoding intensive parts"), it lags a lot, but I keep synchro. CPU does not go up to 100% though, goes around 70-80%

Bottom line: I can read 720p mkvs, but not 1080p.
And this bothers me a lot... as I purchased a Bravia Full HD screen...

Again, thanks for your help.

[clivadio]

Anybody can help?
Thanks!

[FHB]

Well, you bought the proper graphics card already, the one with the 8500 GPU because it supports encoding of HD movies in hardware. The 10-15% CPU load is fine.

The 7600 GPU doesn't offer this hardware encoding support and puts much more load on the CPU. There's no doubt the HD videos will lose frames in some situations, depending on the complexity of the scene.

If you don't have encoding support in your GPU a E6700 CPU is the minimum requirement for smooth HD playback. Unfortunately, nobody (except Sony and the mainboard supplier) knows if the BIOS in the VGX will fully support a E6700. The CPU would fit mechanically for sure. On the other side, the E6700 is quite slow and expensive compared to the new E8x00 CPU's which will replace the old CPU's.

If heat is the only problem with the Leadtek graphics card, I wonder if it would be possible to install an extra silent fan that blows air directly on the cooler of the graphics card.

[clivadio]

Well, I do not know if temperature is the real issue.
The issue I've seen is that, after 1h+ of Blu-Ray decoding, it starts to hang.
And I know that the video card is burning hot (apparently more than 90 degres, as seen here )
It puzzles me, since I've read in another article of this forum that Gav Mack successfully installed the same video card on an XL3.

This leads me to think that maybe my Leadtek heats more than the one that Gav Mack got.

Another thing is that I'm afraid that this kind of temp will increase the general heat inside the computer, and accelerate the degradation of my hard drives.

So I dropped it.