ATI for your HTPC? BAD IDEA!

NOTE: It has been brought to my attention (by those who are too self-absorbed to read an entire article) that they understood from the first couple of paragraphs of this article, that the purpose of this article is to BASH companies and convince people to do whatever it is that I say. I would like to believe that I am offering some value, in that I am sharing FACTUAL DATA with you so that MAYBE, just MAYBE you can help make a more informed decision. Again, I would like to reiterate, I am not BASHING or BANNING anything. If your intellectual acumen is above that of a 3 year old, PLEASE read on for the full scoop....

Ok, Huge, huge, h-u-g-e piece of information....

Over the past couple of years, the divide between ATI and nVidia Desktop Graphics Cards has gotten smaller and smaller. Well, if you're in the HTPC arena right now and are deciding what hardware to use or have already built your HTPC and are having some problems, read on...

I have been building HTPC's (Home Theater PC's) for the past 4 years and up until now, they've all been connecting to MODEST displays. Modest, in that the PC's themselves have either been connecting with D-Sub, DVI, Component, S-Video or Composite Video connections.

I finally got around to building a new system for myself about 2-3 weeks ago and since I have the latest and greatest TV, I decided to go with HDMI. (And what a learning experience it has been)

Long story short, I built the system (Including an MSI ATI R3450-TD256H, a modest, yet more than powerful enough card for a Home Theater System), setup Vista and when all was said and done, it looked GREAT! One of the interesting things on that card, is that it has BUILT-IN HD-Audio. That's right, it's got its own Sound Chip, courtesy of Realtek. And that sounded great too!



MSI ATI R3450-TD256H
So if everything looked and sounded great, what's the problem?

About a day in, I turned on the TV and about 10 minutes in, it dawned on me that I didn't have any sound. So after a moderate amount of troubleshooting, I decided to unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in, just to see if maybe there was a glitch or a bad cable or whatever. Of course the sound came back and I just moved along thinking it was a one time deal. Nope. Apparently every time you change video inputs and go back to the HDMI connection that the ATI card is on, you lose your sound. Also, every time you turn your TV on and off you lose sound then too. Uh-oh.

So I just figured it must be something hokey with the drivers. (you would too if you've been doing this stuff for 29 years) I figured that since I was using a motherboard with on-board sound I'd just bypass the HD-Audio and go with the old-faithful Stereo output. (I like great sound as much as the next guy, but I honestly don't care about 49-Channel, Dolby Digital, THX Certified, S/PDIF, Optical Surround Sound. I just need it to be clear and PRESENT. lol...) And so I setup the TV to only look for sound from the Analog source and I moved on happy as a clam, but knowing I'd want to check on newer drivers down the line so I could go back to a single HDMI cable for both sound and video.

A day or two later (I had left the HTPC on for the past two days), I turned the TV back on, only to be greeted by BLACKNESS. So I'm figuring great, I hadn't turned off any of the power saving stuff yet and my computer has gone into Sleep-Hell. (Don't get me wrong, I'm all for Green-Computing, but most of my PC's still don't work right when using the Power Save features.) Anyway, I moved the mouse, hit the "Any-Key", but I did not continue. So I shut 'er down the bad way and fired 'er back up again, immediately turning off every single power-saving thing I could find. Several hours later, I turned the TV back on, and once again was greeted by Blackness.

So here I am now, using the sound from the motherboard and now I have no video. As a matter of necessity, I happen to have a Media Center Remote Control. That control has a teensy-weensy little button on it that I had maybe noticed once. A Standby button. As I hadn't ever really given it any thought (or even pressed it before), I thought I'd give it a shot and see what would happen. Well, the PC went INTO standby. So now I'm standing there with my remote in my hand (Insert Adult-Equivalent Here), and it occurs to me that the last time I shut the PC off I had been mistaken about it's state. So I hit the standby button a second time and like magic, the PC comes back from standby AND the video comes back.

Time to troubleshoot. I change inputs for a few seconds and then came back and just like when I turned it on, I had no video. Back to standby-out of standby and video comes back. I then turned off the TV for a minute and back on, guess what, no video again. Standby-Out of standby and it's back again.

Crap. Now I have a problem. This system is now UNRELIABLE. Unreliable, in that I can't just sit down and start watching it like I would a TiVo or any other DVR/PVR, given the same scenario.

So I decided that since I was using the now current version of ATI's Catalyst Drivers (Version 8.12) that I would go back and give 8.11 a shot. Same thing. So now I figure, what the heck, let's give MSI a phone call and see what they have to say. A very nice young man by the name of Jose takes my call and I completely brief him on the situation. In Jose's defense, he's probably not used to having someone as knowledgeable as myself call in and was ill-equipped to even COMPREHEND what I said. Once I re-explained to him the situation, he still wasn't able to assist me properly. He asked me what resolution I was setting the monitor at and I told him 1080P. He asked me what resolution that was!!! So I told him that I had the card set to 1920x1080 @ 60Hz. He said oh, 1900x1200? At that I just said, sure (because I knew at that point I was talking to someone who was just there to collect a paycheck), and the only other question he could ask me, was if my monitor was HDPC Compliant. Of course the answer to that question was NO, because I'm not using a monitor, but I answered yes, because if he'd actually been listening to me (or understanding me) AT ALL, that would have been the answer. He then asked me what driver I was using and I told him that I had tried both 8.12 and 8.11 and he said, "Well, we can't really help you if you're not using our 'Tested Drivers'." So given the fact that I can appreciate that, I ask him if I should use the 8.05 version that was on their site and he said, "Yeah, use that one, cause then at least we can try to reproduce the problem in our lab".

Anyway, I thanked him and got to installing 8.05 and while the drivers worked, they did not solve either of my two problems with HDMI.

So now I'm thinking, "Hmm, I could call MSI back and MAYBE get a hold of someone that can actually assist me, or maybe I should just call ATI and be done with it."

I called ATI, spoke with Alex in "Advanced Support" and within mere SECONDS of telling him my story he tells me, "Yeah, it's a driver issue. Our Driver Team knows about it and has been working on fixing it for a couple of months." Months? How does a company like AMD (ATI) release a card that advertises HDMI Readiness all over the box without making sure that their drivers work???? I know the answer, I just can't help what I think sometimes. ;)

So foolishly, I asked Alex if he had any suggestions and of course I was told, "Well, it is a driver issue". So now I'm like great, now I have to buy another card. I started going back to all of the HTPC Forums that I had in fact visited before I ever purchased anything to build this system, just in case ANYONE might have posted ANYTHING about this problem OR to see if anyone has any suggestions. I actually did find a couple of posts from people who shared similar circumstances and of course, each one had some nitwit reply with, "Mine works great". So I do some poking through these nitwits other posts, only to find out that they're using the VGA or DVI connectors!!! Duh, of course yours works great. Nitwit!

In any event, I went ahead and grabbed an MSI N9400GT-512H complete with built-in HDMI connector. Now this card doesn't have an Onboard sound chip like the ATI one did, but it does come with the standard 2-Wire S/PDIF adapter for you to connect between the graphics card and your sound card. If you have S/PDIF and you connect that connector, Digital Sound will pass straight through your HDMI cable and it works fabulously!




N9400GT-512H
One additional note that might be of interest to someone who's read this far, is that the ATI cards are UNDERSCANNED out of the box. For those of you not familiar with underscanning, please click this link HERE and read the first sentence for the definition of Underscan. On a 60" TV, without specifically installing and going into the Catalyst Control Center from ATI and setting underscan to 0%, you'll lose about 4" Diagonally. Yuck. The nVidia based card installed properly and gave me a stunning 1080P with 0% underscanned image right out of the box.

So, no slam on ATI (and especially not MSI), but don't bother with an ATI card unless you are absolutely not going to connect it to an HDMI or a DVI to HDMI connector for that matter.

For whatever reason, nVidia currently has the upper hand again, at least in regards to an HTPC System. Please check directly with ATI about this issue BEFORE you purchase.