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Should my new PC be capable of game+blu-ray?
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Mouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered User regular
Mouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered User regular
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.
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.
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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)?
I'll do it again soon so I can see if I could give a more detailed description.
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.
With WoW and Steam games you can. Above comment is true for the majority though.
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.
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.
Rip the movie to your hard drive and play it from there, eliminate one possible problem.
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.
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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.
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.
Your CPU on the other hand should be well equipped to decode a blu ray while playing WOW.
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.
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.
Some people's only fix is to run windowed.
Anyways, depending on how Power DVD works, it might use DirectX to display the video... And that could conflict with the game.
What kind of PSU you got in your machine? Manufacturer and wattage are both significant.
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.