I have two PCs that I have been using on my network with MC, one for music only, the other for video only. I have now consolidated the systems and figured I would use the "faster," newer PC. This is an Intel i7 with 3.60GHz CPU and 8GB of RAM. The other one is an Intel NUC with 2 cores and 2.13GHz CPU with only 4GB RAM. The "faster" one is running Windows 8.1; the "slower" one is running Windows 10.
I was using the NUC (slow) for video and the other one (fast) for audio (DSD). I figured using the faster one for video would be a cinch. And indeed, I was able to run it with Red October HQ last night to watch a TV show I had downloaded. Tonight I tried to watch a movie and I couldn't get it to play without stopping every few seconds to buffer. So I put it back to Red October Standard and made sure the setting all matched the NUC. But it still can't play the movie. Now, the difference in file sizes is huge. The TV show was about 1GB and this movie is a remux of about 17GB. However, the NUC can play it fine, no stuttering, no stopping. The faster PC cannot. Why? The hardware would suggest it would be much more capable of handling this. The only main difference is Windows. I can't imagine upgrading to Windows 10 would make the difference. What else am I missing here?
EDIT: it gets weirder! I just installed the DSD drivers I’m using on the fast i7 PC onto the NUC with the hope of just using the NUC and being done with it. But no, it can’t handle playing DSD. I was outputting 256 bitstreamed DSD and now I can’t even do 128DSD smoothly. This tells me something is up with the video set up on the i7 PC. Anyone want to try helping me?