So I had reached the end of my rope with the MSI ATI Radeon card on a couple fronts. I had HDMI bitstreaming working with Arcsoft TMT (as long as AnyDVD was running), and I could even put up with the flaky Catalyst UI and drivers. But I was stymied trying to get the refresh rate set to 23.976, which the Kuro PRO-141FD will execute a 3:3 pulldown for picture perfect Blu-Ray playback at 71.928. Given the cost of the graphics card vs the 60″ plasma, it was time to make a change.
So with $75 of Amazon coupons burning a hole in my pocket, I decided to give the Zotac NVidia GT430 a shot. Since it goes in the HTPC next to the TV, silent cooling was a must. Gaming performance is a non-issue for me, and since the Kuro isn’t getting replaced anytime soon, 3D video support wasn’t important either, though the Arcsoft BD & 3D assistant gave the card a thumbs up on all accounts.
Upon opening the package, the Zotac NVidia card looks much bigger than the MSI ATI with the giant heat sink, but both cards take up two slots in the machine. The Zotac actually has two brackets, which make it a nice secure installation. Also, the Zotac has an DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connections, while the MSI had VGA, DVI and HDMI. What a difference 9 months makes.
Installation was painless, it was time to download the NVidia drivers. A couple things impressed me right off the bat:
- Clean install option – The NVidia drivers will blow away all previous NVidia registry settings and configuration when checking this box. Very nice when you’ve mucked around with one too many registry hacks.
- No “crap-ware” in install. Thank you, I don’t need a 2 week trial to LOTR online…
- Windows performance index: ATI 5450: 4.9, NVidia 430: 6.7! Very impressive for a fanless card still less than $100.
So the next thing to try was getting to 1920x1080p@23.976. First of all, the NVidia Control Panel was so much easier to navigate than even the ATI Catalyst Beta (the old ATI UI was horrid. The latest is bearable). From there, getting to 23Hz couldn’t of been easier. Although it’s not listed in the defaults, click Custom, and 23p, as well as 59p, are at the top of the list.
No need to dig into the “Create Custom Resolution” dialog (but I wish the ATI UI had that!)
So that was too easy. Hmm… what about my other Blu-Ray playback issues? While I’ve had HD bitstreaming working with the ATI card for a while, I’ve had two other problems with the Arcsoft TMT software. First off, for some reason the TMT player refuses to play ANY BD disc. No explanation given, and all the HDCP tests come out fine. This started happening with their 3.0.1-170 release, and continues through 5.0.1.87. The only fix I’ve found is to install Slysoft AnyDVD . Unfortunately, the problem wasn’t the ATI card in this case, and I still need AnyDVD to watch BD. Not the end of the world since I already own it, but a little disappointing since the software has questionable DMCA legal status in the US. (BTW: If you haven’t figured it out by now, do NOT use your HTPC as your sole Blu-Ray player, unless you want to spend twice the money for twice the headaches.)
The second problem I’ve encountered with TMT is during BD playback (with bitstreaming) the audio will get out of sync if I decide to pause, rew or fastfwd. Fairly irritating. Luckily, Arcsoft has created a hotfix for ATI cards if you encounter this problem, and that seemed to work, though I needed to re-apply it on the latest version. Now for the Nvidia… Change refresh rate to 23.967, pop in the Inception BD, press play and wait for the DTS-HD MSTR display on the SC-07… DTS!?!?! WTF!!!!! Arrrggghhh!!! After getting this far, I’m no longer bitstreaming the uncompressed HD audio track!
OK. Off to Arcsoft Forums to see if anyone else is experiencing this. Found one guy from back in Dec, but it’s not clear he knows what he’s doing…. Post my problem…. Next day check the forum (no email subscription!?). Hmm… it seems Arcsoft has only certified the 260.99 driver, while I had downloaded 266.58. Back to the NVidia site, archived drivers, 260.99, download. Remove 266, install 260 (with the clean install option), reboot, play BD…. WHOOO HOOO!!! DTS-HD MSTR is back! AND no problem with pause, ff, rew, etc all at true 1080p24!
So one thing I noticed is the 260 “Clean Install” check box didn’t do such a great job. Even though I had removed the old driver and rebooted before installing, I was still prompted by numerous “Newer File Exists” messages during the install. Furthermore more, the nice list of resolutions you see above all showed up blank with the older driver, but Windows Monitor properties still said I had 59Hz and 23Hz available . I should probably go back to a restore point prior to installing 266 and then install the 260 version again but it’s working the way I want, so I’m not sweating it for now. I may just wait for Arcsoft to support the 266 drivers, and then upgrade again.
So while not perfect, the NVidia still wins the day. Time to not touch it if it ain’t broke. We’ll see how long that lasts! 🙂