My card is the ati hd2600 pro and ati claim it takes the load off your cpu using hardware acceleration to force the gpu to do the work instead when watching hd content. I have some hd files & when i play them in wmp my cpu does all the work and my gpu isn't even braking a sweat. The same goes for dvd playback my gpu does very little. I've updated & installed the avivo codecs & i have the latest ccc 9.2. Does anyone know how to get this feature to work on ati cards? thanx.

do you have a check box in the menu of whatever player you are using that allows you to select hardware acceration?

(photo of power dvd 8)

I did install powerdvd & I did check the box for hardware acceleration but it made no real difference to cpu load. My graphics card gpu was hardley breaking a sweat. I swithched back to wmp as the cpu & gpu loads where the same with powerdvd. I just got some new codecs called pure codecs that have the powerdvd codec that works with the ati hd cards. Theres a slight drop in cpu load but my gpu still seems to do very little? Ive come across people who claim there cpu goes down to 5% or even 2% using ati avivio hardware acceleration. My gpu just wont take off the load?

well, how high is your cpu load when the players are running? i don't know specifically how many percent the avivo codecs are suppose to offload to the gpu, but know that there is still going to be some cpu load. i have a radeon hd 4870 with an amd athlon 64 x2 that I have running at 3 GHz. when i play a blu-ray movie, my cpu load increases and stays between 40% and 60%, as i see it on the task manager performance tab.

are there any other programs running in the background while you are watching a movie that might help to contribute to a higher than normal cpu usage? is the video playback jittery or stuttering that makes you concerned about the higher than normal cpu usage?

another comparison fyi: recently, i was playing half life 2 episode 2 and had the task manager running on my second monitor. while playing the game, my cpu load stayed consistently about 50%. just the other day, i wanted to go to where it all started (with the game at least) and fired up half life. i ran the game as i did with hl2: ep2--with the task manager running on the second monitor. to my surprise, my cpu load stayed about 85%! i would have though that the percentages would have been reversed--hl using less cpu than hl2. i guess what i'm trying to state is that i had nothing adversely affecting my performance with a cpu load so high. in the case of your video, i really wouldn't give it much thought unless that high cpu load is causing your video to be jumpy, jerky, or stutter.

I finally sussed it after hours searching through threads on forums. I had to reinstall cyberlink powerdvd after removing the codec pack i was using. I installed an older version of powerdvd version 8 as the new version 9 i found 2 intrusive with the movielife stuff. I then installed a few stand alone codecs ac3 sound filter, divx7 for my normal avi stuff & then haali splitter for the hd stuff like mkv files. The cyberlink hardware acceleration hd264 codec is auto working in wmp as well as powerdvd & my cpu never goes above 20% even playing 1080p files. I did have a problem playing mkv files but only in powerdvd, but if i changed the file extension to avi they would play in powerdvd aswell still using the haali splitter. But mov files would not play in either player unless i changed there file extensions to avi. Don't think i will bother with codec packs from now on. Thanks for your input Mr mpcrsc562 i was just about 2 give up b4 i posted this thread. For people with only single core cpu's this avivio feature could mean they can play hd content on aging setups, shame ati dont include the cyberlink codec free when you bye there hd cards. Thank again.