Should this hardware work?

  • I had some old MOBO laying around (ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3) that comes with onboard integrated GPU (Radeon HD 3000 - 760G chipset).

    I have put in an old 8-core FX-8320 and an old SSD drive. I have installed LibreELEC with Jellyfin pluggin and everything seems to be working fine except:

    >>I have some 4k HEVC 24 FPS content that the system is struggling with (decoding, downscaling to 1080p). Full HD HEVC content works fine.

    If anyone can tell me if this is to be expected or if there is something that can be done, I would appreciate it.

    I have a NVIDIA GTX 570 laying around that I guess I could put in, although the fan is broken, so I would have to try buy a new one, but I doubt it is worth it...

    Thank you for any advice you can provide.

  • Thanks. I can see there that my old Nvidia card is clearly not the way to go.

    And, given the point made about legacy hardware, I guess I have been lucky that an old FX 8320 CPU with and old Radeon HD 3000 work on the latest LibreELEC version as well as they do.

    Incidentally, I just tested an HEVC file 3840x1600 24 FPS and it works fine! Unfortunately, bigger ones (e.g. 3840x2064 or 3840x1920) stutter noticeably.

    Still, advice/comments welcome.

    Note: I tried Kodi under Windows 10 first on this same hardware, but got the error message "GUI cannot start, closing..." - presumably the old Radeon HD 3000 not enough in this Windows setup, possibly related to OpenGL... This is why I tried LibreELEC, which surprised me very nicely working so well on exactly the same HW.

  • old Radeon HD 3000 work on the latest LibreELEC version as well as they do.


    Incidentally, I just tested an HEVC file 3840x1600 24 FPS and it works fine! Unfortunately, bigger ones (e.g. 3840x2064 or 3840x1920) stutter noticeably.

    according to this:

    https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/SocketAM3+/M5A78L-M_USB3/E8017_M5A78L-M-USB3.pdf

    page ix:

    see "Graphics"

    Supports HDMI with max. resolution up to 1920 x 1200 (1080P) (@60Hz)

    Supports DVI-D compliant with HDCP with max. resolution up to 2560 x 1600 (@60Hz)

    Supports RGB with max. resolution of 2560 x 1440 (@75Hz)

    I'm overask why you can watch with 3840x1600 24 FPS !

    Edited 2 times, last by GDPR-7 (May 27, 2022 at 6:28 PM).

  • Ah! Maybe I did not explained myself: this box is connected to a full HD TV (I only have 4k TV in the living-room; this is bedroom). So, for the HEVC 4k content in question (which is minority in my Jellyfin library), the expectation is for the box to decode and downscale to show on the 1080p TV.

    Anywho, it seems there is not much I can do to watch those files (again, downscaled) with my FX8320 + Radeon HD 3000, OpenELEC or otherwise... And adding an AMD GPU with the required UVD version seems a bit of an overkill...?

    Thanks!