ROC Theme Performance Issue Resolved

[RLF 1]

I was experiencing extremely poor performance with the ROC Theme in Widows Media Center with MBC.

 

With Media Center playing in 1080p full-screen, the ROC UI navigation was extremely sluggish for me while TV video was playing in the background. The TV video was also stuttering in the background.  

 

I noticed when i re-sized the Media Center window to 1/2 screen, the ROC UI and TV video all performed well.  

 

My HTPC setup is a Asus P8Z77-V with a 3rd Gen I5, 16GB memory and an XFX 6450 video card.

 

At full-screen 1080p and navigating the ROC UI, Catalyst Control Center was reporting GPU activity at 100% - this is when the UI was sluggish and background video stuttering.  At 1/2 screen, activity was 50% and things performed well.

 

I just updated the XFX 6450 video card to a XFX 7870. Now, at full-screen 1080p,  the ROC UI is BLAZING BLAZING fast. The performance is stunning.  Video (TV) in the background plays flawlessly. Catalyst Control Center reports activity at 30% at full-screen navigating the ROC UI.

 

I had read posts in the forums about performance issues and sluggishness. Based upon my experience, it may be related to the performance of the system's video card.

 

Just something to ponder....

 

[1972 14]

Nice to see your problem is solved!  

But I am surprised that a pretty heavy (non-fanless?) videocard was needed to solved it. 

 

I think most people who have a silent system, also have a silent videocard (AMD 6450 or below), so I am looking forward to see other possible solutions 

[RLF 1]

I think trying to do 2 things at once - having Media Center playing live full-screen 1080p video in the background while overlaying the highly interactive and intensely graphical ROC UI  - just seems to require a little more GPU horsepower than the XFX 6450 could provide.  If I paused the video, or didn't have it playing, ROC was great. Other themes performed well too - but again, none of those were trying to play video at the same time.  Perhaps an enhancement can be made to ROC to optionally disable background video from playing (freeze it) or being displayed.

 

I agree that the XFX 7870 is a bit overkill, but I didn't want to try an incremental video card. I was good with going from one extreme to the other. The version of the 7870 I went with actually has 2 fans (I needed a shorter length card to fit into my case). They are spinning at 25% and can't be heard. It's running cool around 30c. Plus, I got a great deal on it at my local Microcenter (was on clearance!) Maybe I need to get into gaming now 

[leedavies 301]

I think trying to do 2 things at once - having Media Center playing live full-screen 1080p video in the background while overlaying the highly interactive and intensely graphical ROC UI  - just seems to require a little more GPU horsepower than the XFX 6450 could provide.  If I paused the video, or didn't have it playing, ROC was great. Other themes performed well too - but again, none of those were trying to play video at the same time.  Perhaps an enhancement can be made to ROC to optionally disable background video from playing (freeze it) or being displayed.

 

I agree that the XFX 7870 is a bit overkill, but I didn't want to try an incremental video card. I was good with going from one extreme to the other. The version of the 7870 I went with actually has 2 fans (I needed a shorter length card to fit into my case). They are spinning at 25% and can't be heard. It's running cool around 30c. Plus, I got a great deal on it at my local Microcenter (was on clearance!) Maybe I need to get into gaming now 

 

I agree with your suggestion of having an option to disable background video.  At the end of the day, this is cutting edge stuff which needs decent hardware and one can only push hardware to its limits.  It makes absolute sense to have software that scales according to hardware capabilities.  Turning all the eye candy up to the max may not be possible on some systems - we just need to find sensible default that works for everyone.