Should my new PC be capable of game+blu-ray?

Variable

I posted this in the new computer thread and the couple of responses I got made me think I should be able to do it, so I figured I'd make a dedicated thread and hope for some more answers on exactly what might help.


I just built a new computer (specs below) and the most indulgent thing I could think of to do with it while I wait on buying video editing software is to play a game on one screen and run a blu-ray on the other. Now, I think this should be possible because as I've tried it, it works for a few minutes. The problem is after that few minutes my 2 monitors go black together, and then come back, but this continues to happen after less and less time.

Maybe this simple isn't gonna be possible and the blank screen is my computer crying out in pain BUT... it might be so I had to make this thread.


specs

intel i7 2.66 ghz
radeon 5870 video card
12 gigs ram

I think that's all that should matter


if anyone needs other info certainly ask. It would be a big ol' boner for me to be able to do this but it's hardly a necessity, just something that seems like it should work. I may just not have the juice I guess.

PeregrineFalcon

Pssh, you want indulgent? Rip that BD to the hard drive and run a recompression on it down to DVD9 size. While gaming.

Now there's something you could be proud of.

Variable

does that mean I should be able to do that? I feel like a retarded baby with a new toy.

TychoCelchuuu

12 gigs of RAM Jesus Christ.

The answer is "it depends" because the bottleneck here is your hard drive/hard drives, not your CPU/GPU/RAM.

edit: okay actually if your screens are going black that sounds like some sort of weird problem, not a matter of system specs. What do you mean "go black" and what do you mean "come back?" Do the programs run fine in the background (i.e. sound keeps going fine)?

Variable

everything keeps running, but the screens literally blank out and then everything comes back on in the same state it was in previously.

I'll do it again soon so I can see if I could give a more detailed description.

TychoCelchuuu

That's really weird. You're moving the mouse and stuff, right, so it's not trying to do any power saving thing? Have you tried just running a game and just running a Blu-ray movie? Or maybe 2 Blu-ray movies (you'd have to rip one I guess)? Or two games? Or I don't know what the hell is going on?

Variable

It's not a power save thing for sure. I am able to watch a blu-ray without issue, and play a game without issue.

Variable

okay, blu-ray and game started at 4:13

game is WoW, running windowed at top settings. everything is fine currently. blu is playing smoothly, game is almost as smooth as without anything else going.

4:17 got some odd glitching on the blu-ray, ummm like pixelization on the bottom of the screen (it's running full screen on my second monitor) it's not too bad, could even be a dirty disc.

umm by 4:27 it still hasn't happened. sooo...

the only change I made was before I had copied my world of warcraft folder from another computer, but I actually installed it earlier.

I don't see how that could fix it but this is easily the longest I've gone without the problem. I'll edit this if it happens but I'm starting to feel like it's gone though I don't know why.

TychoCelchuuu

You can't just copy program folders from other computers. The game has to be installed to end up in your registry. Not sure if that's the fix or anything but, yeah.

tachyon

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

You can't just copy program folders from other computers. The game has to be installed to end up in your registry. Not sure if that's the fix or anything but, yeah.

With WoW and Steam games you can. Above comment is true for the majority though.

xzzy

I would look into heating issues. Get the biggest house fan you can find, pop the side off the case, point the fan at the case, and try again. Since it's winter most places right now, you could even try ducting in air from outside, but that might be overkill.

If it is a heating issue, it's probably the video card. Whenever it gets too hot, it shuts it self off, resets, and turns back on when it's dropped below the overheat threshold.

Triko

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

12 gigs of RAM Jesus Christ.

Overkill is overkill, but hey, it's your money.

I'd settle for a significantly less powerful PC that can still do blu-ray and gaming well, but just one at a time...on the other hand being able to watch a Blu-ray movie while going through a boring raid in WoW for the umpteenth time would be useful.

xzzy

I'd just alt+f4 WoW and focus on the movie.

corky842

I hope you didn't get a cheap PSU.

Rip the movie to your hard drive and play it from there, eliminate one possible problem.

Variable

xzzy wrote: »

I would look into heating issues. Get the biggest house fan you can find, pop the side off the case, point the fan at the case, and try again. Since it's winter most places right now, you could even try ducting in air from outside, but that might be overkill.

If it is a heating issue, it's probably the video card. Whenever it gets too hot, it shuts it self off, resets, and turns back on when it's dropped below the overheat threshold.

that sounds like the most reasonable answer. As I mentioned it didn't happen last night so maybe it's gone or for some reason the overheating just didn't occur, but I appreciate it since that's the most logical answer I've considered/heard.

----

also, not that I mind the comments really, but I know how much I spent and what I got, it was my choice, I don't need to be told it was overkill or more than you need.

I do appreciate the help, believe me, but what you want doesn't really affect what I want/got or why.

Variable

catalyst control center doesn't seem to think the video card is overheating. it registers still on the okay side of things with both the game and blu-ray running.

oh and yeah it's happening again. screen goes black (both of them) and sound continues. then they come back.

the third time it happened they didn't come back and I had to restart.

ArcticMonkey

What program do you use to play blu rays? The standard setting is probably to let the GPU decode the video to offload the CPU. I'm guessing AMD did not spend a lot of time testing the drivers/hardware on this particular scenario.
Your CPU on the other hand should be well equipped to decode a blu ray while playing WOW.

Variable

PowerDVD which came with my drive. afaik I have no other options without spending money.

I'll look through the settings for something like that. thanks.

also, a lot of people around the 'net seem to be having somewhat similar problems. Hopefully mine is much more simple.

edit - closest thing I found was the option to enable hardware acceleration (ati avivo). It was on, so I've turned it off. I'll report back later (gonna be much later because I need sleep) if that made a difference.

I don't know if this matters, but I ran the Windows 7 system performance rater dealie and it gave my graphics card a 6.0 which is lower than a friend of mine is getting who has a lesser card. I don't know what that's a sign of, if anything, but it doesn't seem good to me. might literally be meaningless but I don't think I can give you all too much info here.

FyreWulff

WoW also blacked out on me sometimes. It's the only game that does it. Sometimes Windows 7 will pop up "your graphics driver stopped responding, but we're cool and brought it back" after it happens.

I thought it was overheating as well but UT3 does not trigger it and it's way more intensive than WoW, and my temps seem to be fine.

autono-wally, erotibot300

are you sure it's not a loose cable?

FyreWulff

It should be noted that the WoW screen blacking out thing is a known and somewhat widespread problem.

Some people's only fix is to run windowed.

Stormwatcher

Why don't you test the situation better with other games?

Anyways, depending on how Power DVD works, it might use DirectX to display the video... And that could conflict with the game.

xzzy

If it's not heat, the PSU is the next place to look. System fine at idle, but when you got the video card rendering a video game and a HD video, it sucks more power and pushes the PSU beyond its capacity.

What kind of PSU you got in your machine? Manufacturer and wattage are both significant.

DHS Odium

What video cables are you using? I had bought a DVI cable from monoprice, and it did exactly what you're saying. I guess it periodically failed the HDCP handshake, and would go black, and then come back. It happened at any point during use, though it was more noticeable for me when playing games. I switched out the cable and everything was fine after that. Tried the same cable on 2 other computers, with the same monitor, and the issue was there as well.

Zeon

Ok if this is windows vista or 7 (Im assuming it is) the screens blacking out is the display driver crashing, and when they come back, thats windows resetting it. Unlike earlier versions of Windows, the display driver crashing doesnt bring down the entire system. In your Event Log there will probably be an exclamation point in a red circle saying as such. Have you updated the drivers for that card yet? I assume youre running 64 bit windows with all that RAM, too. If youre not, you should be otherwise the RAM is literally worthless. Make sure youre running the 64 bit ATI driver if youre running 64 bit windows.

Variable

I'm gonna run over all these replies (thanks again) after I post this, but I found a thread on the AMD forums about many people having the same problem. Some are having similar problems, some the exact same, but right now my plan is to RMA the card just in case it makes a difference.

reading em now.

xzzy wrote: »

If it's not heat, the PSU is the next place to look. System fine at idle, but when you got the video card rendering a video game and a HD video, it sucks more power and pushes the PSU beyond its capacity.

What kind of PSU you got in your machine? Manufacturer and wattage are both significant.

corsair 750 watt.

DHS Odium wrote: »

What video cables are you using? I had bought a DVI cable from monoprice, and it did exactly what you're saying. I guess it periodically failed the HDCP handshake, and would go black, and then come back. It happened at any point during use, though it was more noticeable for me when playing games. I switched out the cable and everything was fine after that. Tried the same cable on 2 other computers, with the same monitor, and the issue was there as well.

I'm using what came with the monitors. I don't think it's this because it only happens during playing a blu-ray (and more frequently with another game running) and more importantly it's both monitors at the same time.

Zeon wrote: »

Ok if this is windows vista or 7 (Im assuming it is) the screens blacking out is the display driver crashing, and when they come back, thats windows resetting it. Unlike earlier versions of Windows, the display driver crashing doesnt bring down the entire system. In your Event Log there will probably be an exclamation point in a red circle saying as such. Have you updated the drivers for that card yet? I assume youre running 64 bit windows with all that RAM, too. If youre not, you should be otherwise the RAM is literally worthless. Make sure youre running the 64 bit ATI driver if youre running 64 bit windows.

yeah I'm running 64 and they are the 64 bit drivers. I do believe it's a driver problem after following the AMD thread I mentioned, I just obviously have no way to fix that as I am completely up to date. I've uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times.



thanks so much everyone. I'll test more with other games asap, I've just installed some STEAM games... I may install something more recent to really push the system I figure that can't hurt. I'll also pop in with any info I get from that other thread because it's a pretty weird problem and well... there's gotta be some answer.

Variable

alright, I want to bump with this because I think it's a good sign and I'm about to test.

I mentioned (I think) running the windows 7 system performance scanner dealie and getting only a 6.0 on the graphics ratings... this, to me, seemed like a sign that it was a driver type issue. windows wasn't able to push the card properly in some way.

now, after uninstalling drivers and the catalyst system software, I'm getting a 7.8 on graphics. that's a massive jump so I'm extremely excited something may be solved here.

going to push it right now and I'll update this post... I decided tonight was the night I would RMA it if I didn't find a fix, just to cover my bases, but I hope this is it. I'll report back soon.

edit - NOOOOOOOPE. tried with portal and a movie and it took about 12 minutes but it still happened. both screens go black. baaaam.

... maybe powerdvd just sucks?

I can wish. arghgh

xzzy

I would conclude from the test that going from 6.0 to 7.8 was a problem with windows benchmarking your system, rather than a performance issue.

Since they don't explain how they produce the numbers, it's possible the driver you uninstalled was just reporting bad data to windows or had some kind of incompatibility.

Variable

yeah it was a hope, I can't really say it was logical but you sort of grasp at straws as I'm sure you all know.

RMAing the thing tonight. luckily I just bought a decent card for an older machine in the house so I'll at least have something to work with for the time being. hopefully the replacement is okay... and if it's not I can at least be pretty sure it's not a hardware issue.

but I have to hope it doesn't have any of the problems other folks are reporting... grey screens and lines and whatnot. well worth the risk though I could probably RMA it again if that happens.

Spelunker

It sounds to me like you're very nearly doing the most power-hungry combination of tasks possible (I believe it could be worse if you were burning a DVD). I work at a major tech company, and WoW plus disc burning is what we run to see if a given power supply will collapse under max load. It leads me to suspect that you are either overheating (using all that power generates a lot of heat) or overstressing your power supply. Of course since I work in hardware I tend to suspect hardware issues, so take that for what it's worth.

If you're willing to try an experiment, see what happens when you try to burn a disc instead of playing one. Since that should require more power you may be able to rule out a hardware issue.

Variable

that's a good idea, thank you. I'll do that tonight.

bobAkirafett

Have you tried running them both on one screen? Turning off/disconnecting one of the monitors/tvs? Rule out the multidisplay? Sometimes HDCP/DRM doesn't do multiple displays.

Stormwatcher

So I was reading the release notes for the new Catalyst , and saw this in the "Resolved Win7 issues" part:

Loss of HDMI signal may no longer occurs when viewing Blu-ray content, and rescanning
for the HDMI signal no longer cause the entire screen to shift and display a
green border

Variable

I tried the new drivers last night (though I'm not using hdmi). things actually worked fun for the entirety of The Matrix while playing WoW full on (previously I played my low level characters, last night I was in dalaran the most populated city, and running instances) and everything was fine.

then I put in another movie and it crashed quickly. restarted, tried again right away and it crashed quickly again.

I haven't tried on just one monitor yet.