Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

[RoyJ]

I've got a GA-MA78GM-S2H set up as a HTPC feeding my TV via HDMI, and have been having a few problems with video freezing when watching live or recorded TV.

I'm using the onboard Radeon 3200 GPU and onboard Onboard ALC889A HD audio, the only addition is a Hauppauge HVR 1300 to tune digital TV.

I've been searching the forums and it seems that the versions of BIOS, Catlayst graphics drivers and Realtek drivers are key to getting stable TV operation, with the latest versions not necessarily being the best.

Which version of each should I be using to get a stable system?

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.7GHz Energy Efficient L2 1MB
OS: XP SP3
Memory: Kingston 2x1GB DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Non-ecc CL5 UB 1.8V
Video Card Driver: 8.475.0.0
Sound Card Driver: 5.10.5532
TV Card: Hauppauge WinTV HVR1300

[jflan]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

After a quick Google, it looks like those cards can be problematic.
There may be drivers here that might help.

http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/board/index.php

(search on your model #)

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

Let me know if the above helped you or not. If not I will try to find you the drivers you need. I dont know much about AMD, but I will try for sure to help ya

[RoyJ]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

There may be drivers here that might help.
Hauppauge UK Forum - Powered by vBulletin
(search on your model #)

Thanks for the tip, but the latest driver disk (4.6b) which the site suggests were only posted this month, are the same as the ones I downloaded and installed about a month ago.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

Does your ram pass memtest86+? If not that could be the issue >>>
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

Freezes are often ram related

As for Drivers, you can get any of the older ones here to test >>>
Old Version of ATI Catalyst Drivers Download

Newest >>>
Drivers & Software

You do have the latest Chipset drivers installed as well right?

[RoyJ]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

Does your ram pass memtest86+? If not that could be the issue >>>
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

Freezes are often ram related

Yes, ran Memtest86+ and my RAM checks out fine.

You do have the latest Chipset drivers installed as well right?

Checking the Gigabyte website, it looks like there are some drivers later than mine. I'll give them a whirl and see it it makes a difference. I might also try updating the BIOS to F5 if I'm feeling brave!

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

Good luck, and yeah a BIOS update may help as well. DO NOT USE @BIOS, here is a qflash guide I made >>>

http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/bios-flashing-how-qflash-guide-27576/

[RoyJ]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

Good luck, and yeah a BIOS update may help as well. DO NOT USE @BIOS, here is a qflash guide I made >>>
http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/bios...h-guide-27576/

Too late with the @BIOS warning - I installed F5 BIOS using @BIOS last night. It all seems to have worked fine. What's the problem with @BIOS?

I'll let you know how I get on - I've updated Realtek audio drivers & LAN drivers. Haven't yet updated the Radeon 3200 drivers as from comments in other forums, I'm still not sure the latest 3200 driver is that stable. It'll take a while for me to establish if I still have problems as the family are getting fed up with me tinkering when they want to watch TV!

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

You just got lucky. DO NOT USE IT AGAIN!

Windows based flashes will kill your board quicker then anything, just consider yourself lucky and forget you ever knew about the app

[RoyJ]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

Update on my progess - No good!

The later drivers seem to make no difference at all. Watching Live TV is OK for about 5 minutes, then the sound starts to stutter, then the picture will stutter or freeze. This happens quicker if I provoke it by changing channels.

So far, recorded programs seem to play fine, it's just Live TV that bombs.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

Hmm, maybe you need a newer card or better ram, or to overclock your system if you can to make it faster to keep up with the issue.

[nanohead]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

FYI, Gigabyte does NOT have their own "drivers" for these boards. They repackage AMD/ATI drivers.

I have several of these boards running, and there are a variety of things to look out for. First, you can get the latest from AMD.com. Look for graphics drivers, and download the IGP driver set. There is a separate southbridge package to get.

I would advise using the ATI uninstaller to remove the existing ones first. Also try using driver cleaner or driver sweeper afterwards, to clean up all the shrapnel left behind.

The install the latest, which is 8.10 as of today.

There is also a HUGE problem with the audio drivers for all ATI/Realtek boards. As AMD built in an HDMI audio decoder into their northbridge, there is a conflict with the Realtek audio only drivers. The driver that is on the Gigabyte website, is a packaged driver that includes the HDMI driver as well, but it does not work correctly and causes problems (you can see them in the system event viewer log)

The best approach is to remove ALL Realtek drivers, use driver cleaner once again, and get the seperate packages from a site like Techpowerup.com (look in the download/drivers/realtek section). You'll need both the latest Realtek as well as ATI HDMI audio driver. Install the Realtek package first, then the ATI package (this seems to work better, but I have no idea why).

Now if you look in the device manager under sound, video, game... you should have 2 entries. One for Realtek High Definition, and 1 for ATI HDMI audio.

I've learned about these errors the hard way unfortunately. It is a software packaging problem amongst other things. If you install the two seperate packages, you should see some improvement. It is probably not a hardware problem.

As for the Haupauge devices, its unclear whether there is a conflict between their drivers and the ATI or Realtek drivers. I have successfully gotten a Pinnacle TV tuner card to work, however, performance is spotty for sure. Its not a hardware problem, as CPU and memory utilization is not high. It is clearly some kind of goofy resource conflict amongst all the software trying to control display, audio, and video resources.

I have to believe that the Hauppauge drivers nare a major part of your problem, as the 780G-S2H board has been the most reliable I have ever used (although I also have a S3H version that is flakier than heck).

Hope this winded diatribe helps. But it would appear that you are having classic driver/resource control issues. You may also want to check and diagnose root cause on things like CPU and memory consumption using windows tools when you are experiencing these issues.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

Any luck with this and the above suggestions?

[RoyJ]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

After trawling various forums I found a few people stating that there were problems with the Catalyst drivers 8.6 to 8.9. I have therefore installed v8.5 (earlier than the version I was previously using). Everything seems to be working OK now, with the exception of Live TV from the Hauppauge card. I can live with this, as my TV has a built in Freeview tuner.

As long as recorded material keeps playing without errors, I will be a happy bunny!

Thanks to all who offered advice.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Advice needed-GA-MA78GM-S2H bios & drivers

Nice to see you found a partial fix at least!

I think 8.11 is out now, did you try it yet?