Samsung NC10 - Video performance on Vista/Win7 is horrible

I've noticed that the video card performance isn't that great under Vista and Windows 7 on my Samsung NC10. I have upgraded it to 2GB RAM and 320GB 7200rpm drive.

Normal things like web browsing work great and I'm not a gamer. However, when I want to watch videos that are encoded from HD sources, using things like h264, the performance is awful. The video sounds ok, but the video is crazy choppy.

This even happens with HD video (720p) from my pocket digital camera (Samsung NV24HD) which uses the h264 in an MP4 container.

I did the Vista/Win7 experience index and am scoring 2.2 for video which is the slowest score I have by a fair margin.

Anyone experienced this also? Perhaps it the drivers I'm using?

 

I suspect that the hardware is struggling with the workload of decoding. Is the CPU utilisation at around 100%? (The performance page of Task Manager will show this). It's only the latest GM45 Intel chipset which has built-in h264 decoding to take the load off the CPU, and the GMA950 in the NC10 is 2 generations older.

I don't think the video drivers will affect the performance for the decompression. The most suitable video for the NC10 or similar is something which is not compressed. the only possible tweak is to make sure that whatever decoder you are using supports multi-threading. The Atom CPU includes hyperthreading which, when enabled, reduced the wPrime benchmark time from 175s to 125s.

John

 

John, thanks for the info.

I'm also asking because it seems like generally the video perf is poor and that is re-enforced by the fact my vista experience scores are so low. I read another post somewhere (can't find it now) where a few people were saying they scored 3.0 or higher.

 

No one has scored over 2.7. I have watched ABC's non-HD Lost and it was perfect. No issues at full-screen. You can also accelerate the app you are in by using the F+"speedy dude" key. It generally helps, though in this, I prefer the Asus approach of using SHE and upping the clock speed to get the extra boost.

 

Use VLC, and this should take care of it:

http://wiki.videolan.org/WindowsFAQ-0.9.x#H.264.2FMPEG-4_AVC_playback_is_too_slow

720p video plays back fine. Haven't tried 1080 yet.

 

h.264 playback? my old 1.6 pentium M system (see sig) didnt manage to do that properly, I'd guess the atom is a slower cpu.
I'd be really surprised if h.264 playback of 720p HD-material runs smooth on this machine - please update the thread when you tried the tweaks posted above - thx!

 

When I had my NC10 I was able to watch Hulu 480p HD with no problems. And as epsalmond said using VLC to watch your videos will dramatically help your performance since it uses a lot less resources then say WMP.

 

I don't have a Samsung NC10, but my ACER Atom 1.6GHz can play 720p H264 Profile 3.1 video fine when using:

KMPlayer
PowerDVD 7 BD video codec
MainConcept Dolby Digital Decoder

ACFilter 1.5 slows down the Acer considerably. I installed PowerDVD that came with my Bluray drive onto my Netbook for the codec and it made a world of difference. It doesn't seem to like 4.1 or 4.0 profile video, but I encoded a 1280x720 H264 with Dolby AC3 audio and could play it back at 23.976 fps with no issues.

It was running at 55% CPU, so if the Samsung has the same type of accelerated video, it should be able to do this also.

Lauren

 

Just wondering, why would you watch 720p+ on a 1024x 600 screen? Or are you using an external output?

 

I don't know about Win7, but I thought that it goes without saying that Vista and the Intel Atom processor don't mix. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

BTW, I am so far pleasantly surprised with my Amazon special edition NC10, I just hope it doesn't have problems tomorrow like my new Dell Studio 15 did after 2 days of use.

 

I hope not. Netbooks have less to go wrong than most notebooks. I hope to see convergence of reliability towards what we would expect from a calculator another there are still more moving parts to wear in the longer term.

John

 

I'm only on XP, but CoreAVC works a treat for 720p content. It's not pixel for pixel, but it's quite a bit prettier than 480/divx!

Only issue, it seems to screw w/ contrast ratio a little. CPU usage ranges from 50 to 90, but it does not drop frames. I can almost stream it through 802G, but it does get a bit sketchy. 100 wired works fine as I would imagine N would too.

Looks like I finally have a need for a new router! Any recommendations?

 

That's best asked in the networking and wireless forum.When I last bought a router I wanted a USB printer port on it, which quickly shortened the list to very few. I got the Asus WL500gP which is well-behaved most of the time.

John

PS: But, in your case, something that works well with the Atheros wireless in the NC10 may be a factor.