gabeoravitz Posted December 27, 2006 Share Posted December 27, 2006 (edited) i have my specs listed below. the problem is that in 10.4.8/8.8.1, i cant watch videos that are HD. it is so choppy that it's not watchable. but in windows, on my celeron m 1.47ghz laptop (a different machine), i can watch 1080i HD vids flawlessly. i have qe/ci working. but im just wondering if something that is a cpu problem or video card problem. what i notice is, even though it's choppy, activity monitor never shows 100% cpu usage the way windows' task manager would. the same goes for encoding dvds in Toast etc. they seem to take longer than they should, and the cpu usage is never steady high. making it seem like the OS isn't effeciently utilizing the cpu. any ideas? thanks! gabe below are the specs of the PC that is running mac os. geforce fx 5200 qe/ci working with thico's solution acer 19" widescreen LCD at 1440x900 (hd doesnt work on a 1024x768 setup tho either) msi kv8-max3 mobo all working (havent tried SATA tho) cmedia sound card working 1GB pc2700 RAM (showing as 2gb in ATM tho) amd sempron 64 3000+ cpu Edited December 27, 2006 by gabeoravitz Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
wondergod Posted December 27, 2006 Share Posted December 27, 2006 what player are you using to watch them? Have you tried another one? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-262636 Share on other sites More sharing options...
NetBladeZ Posted December 27, 2006 Share Posted December 27, 2006 lower your res to perhaps 1024x768 or anything lower than what you have now, then try again as a test. Your graphic card is probably not strong enough to hold out such high resolutions.I suspect the issue could be that your cpu + gpu combo is not allowing you to view it properly. Make sure your graphic acceleration is active. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-262725 Share on other sites More sharing options...
gabeoravitz Posted December 27, 2006 Author Share Posted December 27, 2006 (edited) ive tried several players. quicktime, divx player, videolan, windows media player 9 for mac, all the same. ive tried lower resolutions. same thing. it really seems like the os isnt able to use all of my cpu power. how or why would that be? Edited December 27, 2006 by gabeoravitz Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-263036 Share on other sites More sharing options...
sg Posted December 27, 2006 Share Posted December 27, 2006 its more than fine on mine, 1080 hd from apple.com/trailers barely uses up any CPU time while playing. how's your performance with opengl video games? what kernel are you using (i assume your cpu is SSE3? make sure you're not using an SSE2 kernel). also, what video card do you have? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-263068 Share on other sites More sharing options...
gabeoravitz Posted December 27, 2006 Author Share Posted December 27, 2006 (edited) yeah im using the 8.8.1 kernel from the amd test 1 sse3 dvd. and in the system profiler, it lists sse3 among everything else for the cpu. what cpu do you have? im using a sempron 64 3000+ but i know that this thing would perform far better if windows was installed. as far as video editing, and watching. i would really like to figure this out, cuz it's a weird one. what's the best way to tell if i have a good kernel or the right one, and what not? Edited December 27, 2006 by gabeoravitz Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-263133 Share on other sites More sharing options...
gabeoravitz Posted December 28, 2006 Author Share Posted December 28, 2006 anyone else have any insight on this? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-263522 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaminmc Posted December 29, 2006 Share Posted December 29, 2006 I have a Geforce fx 5200 AGP vid card, and my video is choppy too. I am going to get a diff vid card. I think that the driver for that card just isn't that good. I am using titan, and it is fully functional. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-263951 Share on other sites More sharing options...
gabeoravitz Posted December 29, 2006 Author Share Posted December 29, 2006 well it would be nice if that was the easy fix. however, i am still wondering about cpu usage. like, it takes me 8 hours to encode a dvd. where as, with windows, same machine, it's 2 hours. and cpu usage, according to activity monitor, never stays high continuously when i'm doing the encoding the way it does in windows. that's what i am not understanding. and that's what makes me think the HD vid issue isnt the video card. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-264226 Share on other sites More sharing options...
sg Posted December 29, 2006 Share Posted December 29, 2006 are you ever able to fully use both of your cores? it seems like something is very wrong at the kernel level. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-264236 Share on other sites More sharing options...
gabeoravitz Posted December 29, 2006 Author Share Posted December 29, 2006 ok after some testing ive determined that the vid issue is definately the video card, so it seems like the cpu thing is a different problem. i dont have a dual core. i have a sempron 64 3000+. another thing i've noticed is that AOL Instant Messenger for mac runs very poorly, uses at least 20-30% cpu constantly, and in Activity Monitor, it's listed as a "power pc" app. could this all be related? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-264365 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted December 30, 2006 Share Posted December 30, 2006 (edited) Yep - PowerPC apps are running under emulation (rosetta) so are going to be very slow as they use intensive CPU to convert all the PPC instructions to x86 - I should have a look for a new release - there should be a Universal Binary by now - Messenger for Mac used to be like that but it's ironed out wiht version 6.0 from MS. Edited December 30, 2006 by neonkoala Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/36934-watching-hd-videos/#findComment-264423 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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