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[SamuriHL]

The other thing to try is a clean driver install.  I know you dropped the 4080 in place of the 3090 to see if that would resolve it, but, a clean driver install may not hurt the efforts.

[Manni]

The other thing to try is a clean driver install.  I know you dropped the 4080 in place of the 3090 to see if that would resolve it, but, a clean driver install may not hurt the efforts.

I did a clean install yesterday evening, after the first couple of tests.

[SamuriHL]

I did a clean install yesterday evening, after the first couple of tests.

Ok. Well, that's not great news that's for sure.  But still, it took quite a bit of effort to find another drop.  I get that spending a grand on an imperfect solution isn't ideal but I'd really like to get away from having to deal with "oh this driver makes it worse so we have to use one that's 6+ months old"...

[Manni]

Ok. Well, that's not great news that's for sure.  But still, it took quite a bit of effort to find another drop.  I get that spending a grand on an imperfect solution isn't ideal but I'd really like to get away from having to deal with "oh this driver makes it worse so we have to use one that's 6+ months old"...

Well, the 3090 works fine with the latest driver, so that's not a reason good enough to drop a grand. If the 4080 had resolved the issue, it was an expensive fix. If it doesn't resolve the issue, I'd rather investigate the 3090 further while I can still return the 4080. If it's not the GPU but something else, I'll find out what it is. I'm looking at concurrent access to my unRAID server right now. After the first Atmos freeze earlier, I asked my daughter if she had just started using the server to watch a film and she said yes. It might be a dead end but it's worth investigating

[SamuriHL]

Well, while you investigate that I'm figuring out how I can get the 4080 into service sooner than later.  I may break down and buy a cheap mobo for my 5900x just to get the machine up and running again.  Then I'd have the 3080 machine for a second HTPC/gaming machine which wouldn't suck.

[Manni]

I asked other members of the family not to use the servers and I was able to watch a full film tonight with the 3090, 555.99 in 4K119 10bits without any dropouts or frame drops. I'll keep testing over the next couple of days but at this stage it looks like the issue is NOT the GPU.

[SamuriHL]

That would be odd cause I live alone and have 2.5gb ethernet everywhere.  The HTPC sits next to the router which is directly connected to the NAS that sits below it.  I can't imagine it's a network issue.

[Manni]

That would be odd cause I live alone and have 2.5gb ethernet everywhere.  The HTPC sits next to the router which is directly connected to the NAS that sits below it.  I can't imagine it's a network issue.

Well, in my case it's a bit more complex because my 4k content is on an Unraid server, which is also hosting a win10 VM that's the Mymovies server and the CCC (part of CMC) server, and the 4k server also hosts the Dune metadata used to display the Dune front end. So if someone tries to access the Dune metadata from a Dune player somewhere, it's entirely possible that it could disrupt the unraid server long enough to create a freeze/catchup. This wouldn't explain why I don't have the issue in 8bit, but that might have been a coincidence too.

I'm going to keep the family ban for a while, then I'll see if I can cause drops when they access the server. Then I'll try moving the Dune metadata to the other server (the one that holds my 2K content) and I'll see if it makes a difference.

I didn't think it could be server related because I did lots of tests initially with the films hosted on a local SSDs to rule out network storage issues, but that was a long time ago, before Hendrik improved things in LAV. So I think my drops/freezes might be back for a different reason/cause. I don't have 2.4G but I have wired 1G and I don't think it's a bandwidth issue.

Of course, if you're on your own, then that can't be the reason for you. I'll keep you posted. Still, it might be worth playing content from a local SSD to see if you still get drops or not.

[SamuriHL]

Well, in my case it's a bit more complex because my 4k content is on an Unraid server, which is also hosting a win10 VM that's the Mymovies server and the CCC (part of CMC) server, and the 4k server also hosts the Dune metadata used to display the Dune front end. So if someone tries to access the Dune metadata from a Dune player somewhere, it's entirely possible that it could disrupt the unraid server long enough to create a freeze/catchup. This wouldn't explain why I don't have the issue in 8bit, but that might have been a coincidence too.

I'm going to keep the family ban for a while, then I'll see if I can cause drops when they access the server. Then I'll try moving the Dune metadata to the other server (the one that holds my 2K content) and I'll see if it makes a difference.

I didn't think it could be server related because I did lots of tests initially with the films hosted on a local SSDs tu rule out networ storage issues, but that was a long time ago, before Hendrik improved things in LAV. So I think my drops/freezes might be back for a different reason/cause. I don't have 2.4G but I have wired 1G and I don't think it's a bandwidth isue.

Of course, if you're on your own, then that can't be the reason for you. I'l keep you posted. Still, it might be worth playing content from a local SSD to see if you still get drops or not.

Yea I can certainly run some tests locally on the 3080 machine.  It has some slower ssd's in it but they should be plenty fast enough for 4K MKV playback. I might have some time tomorrow night to watch a movie and see what happens.

[JimH]

I'm going to keep the family ban for a while, then I'll see if I can cause drops when they access the server. Then I'll try moving the Dune metadata to the other server (the one that holds my 2K content) and I'll see if it makes a difference.

Maybe one of your kids has figured out how to manage your router for you.

https://routerfaqs.com/how-to-give-priority-to-a-device-on-a-router/

[Manni]

Maybe one of your kids has figured out how to manage your router for you.

https://routerfaqs.com/how-to-give-priority-to-a-device-on-a-router/

As I said, not a bandwidth/priority issue, my kids only have a slow wifi connection to the router, I have the 1gigabyte access. The issue is (possibly) when a client tries to access info on the server, the server might just glitch while it tries to serve the info. They are not even streaming video at that point, just getting the metadata info for the Dune.

Anyway, I first need to confirm that this is the issue, then I will think of ways to remedy it, which might simply be to move the Dune metadata to the 2K server, so that they don't access the 4K server at all.

[JimH]

The speed of the connection is just one factor.  And nominal speeds and actual speeds are different. 

Network topology matters.  NAS issues.  Electrical interference.  Connections to Internet servers.  And so on. 

This thread is filled with such problems:  https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,24031.0.html

[Manni]

The speed of the connection is just one factor.  And nominal speeds and actual speeds are different. 

Network topology matters.  NAS issues.  Electrical interference.  Connections to Internet servers.  And so on. 

This thread is filled with such problems:  https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,24031.0.html

I'm not disputing any of this, this is very basic stuff. I just like to do things one step at a time:

1) Ascertain whether the issue is caused by other clients network acces or not
2) If network, identify the exact cause.
3) Take steps to mitigate/resolve this.

I have no interest in step 2 or 3 at this stage, network is just one possibility that I need to rule out or confirm first.

[Manni]

Well, troubleshooting this is easy. Just copy your movies to the local storage and disconnect from your network.

Yeah, thanks guys for all this unsollicited advice, but I don't need any help for this network testing, really. I know what I want to test, in which order, and how. I suggested the local SSD test to @SamuriHL, so it's not as if I wasn't aware that it's an obvious first step when/if needed.

The only thing that would have been helpful from you would have been detailed info about your set-up so that we could figure out why it works with your 4080, but I've asked for this every time you post in one of these threads and you never provide the full info, so I guess there must be a reason. At this stage at least here I don't think a 4080 makes any difference vs a 3090. Might be different for you or SamuriHL though. I need to do more testing.

[SamuriHL]

I plan on testing that (local ssd) tonight on my 11700 Intel machine with the 3080. This same 3080 has given me dropouts in audio pretty consistently since I bought it.  Manni, one thing that we do have in common is that my machine that I normally run the 3080 in is a 5900x on an ASUS 570e Gaming Wifi II board (that is now dead).  I wonder if some combination of AMD and nVidia might be contributing to this issue?

[Manni]

I plan on testing that (local ssd) tonight on my 11700 Intel machine with the 3080. This same 3080 has given me dropouts in audio pretty consistently since I bought it.  Manni, one thing that we do have in common is that my machine that I normally run the 3080 in is a 5900x on an ASUS 570e Gaming Wifi II board (that is now dead).  I wonder if some combination of AMD and nVidia might be contributing to this issue?

That's something that crossed my mind, that's why I asked everyone contributing to this thread (those who confirm they have the same issue, as well as those who say that they don't) to post detailed info about that setup. That's one way to find out if there is a common failure point. It could also be the HDMI 2.1 AVR (or VRROOM if used before the AVR to route audio only to a non-HDMI 2.1 AVR, as you do).

[SamuriHL]

That's something that crossed my mind, that's why I asked everyone contributing to this thread (those who confirm they have the same issue, as well as those who say that they don't) to post detailed info about that setup. That's one way to find out if there is a common failure point. It could also be the HDMI 2.1 AVR (or VRROOM if used before the AVR, as you do).

Or a combination of all the above which is what makes testing for it especially difficult.  My AVR isn't 2.1 but everything is directly connected to the VRROOM which is 2.1.  I know you have your VRROOM after the AVR in your chain.  if when I test tonight I get no audio drops local, I'll have to test again off my NAS later this week given that I'm changing 2 variables at once.  I don't love the idea of going back to an Intel platform.  I'm really looking at the new Zen 5 CPUs next month with an 870 board as my upgrade path.  That'll be a darn nice machine with that 4080. But not if I have audio drops....

[Manni]

Or a combination of all the above which is what makes testing for it especially difficult.  My AVR isn't 2.1 but everything is directly connected to the VRROOM which is 2.1.  I know you have your VRROOM after the AVR in your chain.  if when I test tonight I get no audio drops local, I'll have to test again off my NAS later this week given that I'm changing 2 variables at once.  I don't love the idea of going back to an Intel platform.  I'm really looking at the new Zen 5 CPUs next month with an 870 board as my upgrade path.  That'll be a darn nice machine with that 4080. But not if I have audio drops....

Yes, that's why I asked everyone to post ALL their details in a single post, as I did. No one has.

[JimH]

Yes, that's why I asked everyone to post ALL their details in a single post, as I did. No one has.

They just never mind the boss. 

[SamuriHL]

Well it's important in this case.  Manni's been trying to track down the issue with this for literally MONTHS now.  The only way to narrow this down is to know all the variables involved.

[Manni]

Well it's important in this case.  Manni's been trying to track down the issue with this for literally MONTHS now.  The only way to narrow this down is to know all the variables involved.

What's made it harder is that a few software factors have changed over that period of time:

1) Hendrik did an update in LAV that really helped and the first "kind" of Atmos dropouts" (not long freezes, just Atmos sound drop outs) disappeared.
2) Then MS broke something in an update, which caused long freezes, and it looked like it was fixed at some point.
3) Suddenly the long freezes popped back up here, but this could be because I've given access to the network to the rest of the family, so that's what I'm going to rule out first.

That's why I keep asking details both on the hardware side and on the software side.

As soon as you've been able to test one config, please post all the details for it. Also test at least 4-5 films because it can take that long for the issue to pop up. That's why I kept testing after the first few encouraging results with the 4080, and why I tested FULL FILMS, each of them as long as possible. This issue can take a long time before it happens during playback, so testing 30-60min means nothing. I also think that if the Atmos track is anemic (as with older films), the issue is less likely to appear. It's more likely to appear in John Wick than in an old mono or stero movie that happens to have been remixed in Atmos.

[SamuriHL]

Ah, man, I HAVE to watch John Wick...AGAIN?  My heart is broken.  LMAO   Yea, I can't test 4 to 5 movies today but for me this issue was happening quite consistently in almost every movie which is why it was driving me nuts.  If it was rarely happening I wouldn't care as much. The thing that's frustrating about this is that with my Ugoos, it NEVER happens.  And that's going through the exact same chain as my HTPC...i.e. directly connected to the VRROM, audio to my AVR through the VRROM HDMI audio out port, video directly to the G2 with audio muted.  So for me it doesn't seem like a network/nas issue given that the Ugoos is doing the exact same playback as my HTPC.  In any case I'll see what happens tonight.  The machine I'll be testing on is a prebuilt ASUS Intel 11700 machine.  I dropped my corsair 32 gigs of DDR4 3200 in there from my HTPC since it'll never be used again in that machine.  It's got a western digital 512 gig nvme SSD for boot drive and I dropped a 1tb SATA SSD as a second drive in the thing.  I'll be playing off the 1tb SATA SSD tonight when I test.  And obviously my ASUS 3080 TUF card.

[Manni]

Ah, man, I HAVE to watch John Wick...AGAIN?  My heart is broken.  LMAO   Yea, I can't test 4 to 5 movies today but for me this issue was happening quite consistently in almost every movie which is why it was driving me nuts.  If it was rarely happening I wouldn't care as much. The thing that's frustrating about this is that with my Ugoos, it NEVER happens.  And that's going through the exact same chain as my HTPC...i.e. directly connected to the VRROM, audio to my AVR through the VRROM HDMI audio out port, video directly to the G2 with audio muted.  So for me it doesn't seem like a network/nas issue given that the Ugoos is doing the exact same playback as my HTPC.  In any case I'll see what happens tonight.  The machine I'll be testing on is a prebuilt ASUS Intel 11700 machine.  I dropped my corsair 32 gigs of DDR4 3200 in there from my HTPC since it'll never be used again in that machine.  It's got a western digital 512 gig nvme SSD for boot drive and I dropped a 1tb SATA SSD as a second drive in the thing.  I'll be playing off the 1tb SATA SSD tonight when I test.  And obviously my ASUS 3080 TUF card.

Sounds good... Yeah I watch John Wick 3 ten times doing these tests, I had to pick other films after that, all I'm saying is that I've played very long OLD films thinking I was testing because they were Atmos tracks, and I don't think it's testing anything if the Atmos track doesn't need a significant bandwidth. At least with John Wick 3 we know that the Atmos track is lively

I never used to have ANY dropout with the Oppo 203 or the Dune Pro Vision 4K Solo either playing Atmos 4K bluray, or the ATV 4K 2021 / FireTV Stick 4K Max when streaming Atmos titles, but I did get ONE Atmos dropout when playing the Oppo 203 recently, so that's one of the reasons why I'm wondering if these new dropouts might be network related. At least it's something I want to rule out here before doing anything else.

I am also getting these drop outs all the time, at least one per title on the HTPC, which is why I'm trying to resolve this. I would still want to fix this if it was once in a while, because one drop out is enough to ruin a film if you're watching it for the first time. I'm only using the Oppo or the Dune to watch a film for the first time (if I care about it) because of these Atmos dropouts. All the tests I'm doing are with films I've already watched or with new films I don't care about (I've watched a LOT of crappy films recently on the HTPC to test this).

[SamuriHL]

I don't tend to buy movies I don't care about.  I've got a good 600+ UHD's in my collection now with more on the way this week.  I have Ghost Busters Frozen Empire coming today which is probably another good candidate tbh.  The Ugoos as we've discussed, I tend to use strictly for Dolby Vision titles although when I want to watch an HDR movie without audio issues I sometimes use it for that, as well.  Would love to finally solve this HTPC issue once and for all.

[Manni]

I don't tend to buy movies I don't care about.  I've got a good 600+ UHD's in my collection now with more on the way this week.  I have Ghost Busters Frozen Empire coming today which is probably another good candidate tbh.  The Ugoos as we've discussed, I tend to use strictly for Dolby Vision titles although when I want to watch an HDR movie without audio issues I sometimes use it for that, as well.  Would love to finally solve this HTPC issue once and for all.

Yeah, believe it or not, I have to watch films (and series) for work, and a lot of them I don't care about. I don't buy them all though, I often rent them (for as long as that's possible, I'm sure at some point they'll stop renting physical discs) if they are not sent to me.

[Manni]

I've sent the 4080 back today for a refund. I can't justify paying £953 if it doesn't fully solve the problem. The 3090 is still a very decent card that does all I need provided I find a way to fix this Atmos droupout issue. Even if I don't, I can use the Oppo 203 and the Dune player instead for perfect video and audio when needed, so that's my plan B.

[SamuriHL]

I've decided to keep my 4080 and build a new machine around it.  I wasn't REALLY planning on upgrading the HTPC this year but hey why not.  LOL  The only reason is this gives me another machine I can put in my bedroom for HTPC and gaming duties which is nice to have.  If I didn't have the second machine, I'd most definitely be returning the 4080 as well.

[Awesome Donkey]

With the new AMD Ryzen 9000 inbound you can probably get killer deals on very good Ryzen 7000 CPUs so it may not be too bad of a time to be building a new machine.

[SamuriHL]

Oh I'm definitely going for the 9000 Zen 5 at this point.  When I build new machines I tend to go all out so they last a few years.  This one not withstanding as it's only a couple years old unfortunately.  Once I rebuild it I won't be touching it again for 4 or so years so I want the latest specs.  Wifi 7 is definitely desired as I'm running out of 2.5gb ethernet ports and I've already got a wifi 7 router.

I'm debating between the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X.  The 9950x is going to be insanely priced.  The 9900x maybe a good place to be though.

[Manni]

I was able to test a second film tonight with the 3090 (and family network bar still in place). Zero frame drop, zero Atmos drop/freeze. Encouraging. I'll try to run at least one more test tomorrow, then I'll be away for a couple of days for work, but I'll resume testing on Thursday or Friday. If I manage to get five films without any drop, I'll start isolating the network cause. Right I suspect that the daughter's Dune is hogging the network briefly when she accesses the metadata, but it could be something else. I'll keep testing and will report back when/if I get anything conclusive.

[SamuriHL]

I'm watching JW3 right now off the NAS (I didn't want to change more than one variable at a time and I'm already running this on a whole new machine).  So far, half way through, no drops at all.  Usually I have at least one by now.

[mumford]

Maybe you guys can increase the cache.  When I use MPC-BE with MadVR, I use 4G cache.

[SamuriHL]

Off the NAS on the ASUS machine...not one single drop.  I don't remember the last time I was able to watch a movie on an HTPC without a single drop.  The only change for me in my setup was going from the AMD 5900x on a 570e board to the Intel i7-1100kf on a ROG Strix G15CE.  (The memory sticks are the same as I used in my AMD machine) I'm thoroughly amazed.  Obviously far more testing will be required.  But I've not been able to do a movie without a single frame drop in forever.

[Manni]

Off the NAS on the ASUS machine...not one single drop.  I don't remember the last time I was able to watch a movie on an HTPC without a single drop.  The only change for me in my setup was going from the AMD 5900x on a 570e board to the Intel i7-1100kf on a ROG Strix G15CE.  (The memory sticks are the same as I used in my AMD machine) I'm thoroughly amazed.  Obviously far more testing will be required.  But I've not been able to do a movie without a single frame drop in forever.

Glad something positive is finally coming out of your ordeal, and it confirms that a 4xxx isn’t necessary to get a drop-free experience, though I’d watch at least 3-4 more films before drawing a conclusion. It’s happened to me quite often to have no drops for a while, then the drops would come back. But as I said, there has been various software factors at play, which explains why things have changed. Intel vs AMD might be the explanation your side, but it’s not here as I’m still using the exact same hardware. 

[SamuriHL]

I'll get back to it eventually.  My 2 month old Alienware 4080 laptop just decided to no longer boot.  So I'm dealing with a full windows reinstall at the moment.  All my calibration software, davinci, etc all have to be reinstalled.  I'm....."unhappy" right now...

[SamuriHL]

Watching a movie in DTS-HD MA 5.1 and I got 2 drops.  That's frustrating.

[TheShoe]

Not sure if this is helpful, but I finally was able to experience multiple excessive video/audio issues playing the UHD full disc backup of The Hobbit Extended - The Desolation of Smaug via UHD menu playback.  I am bit streaming the audio and this is served off an SMB share.

At various times - and it's not consistent on any part of the movie, the frame drop jumps and the repeated frames jump.  Causes stuttering for 3-5 seconds and then the movie resumes normally until the next event.  CPU/GPU/Network are all normal.  Other movies - like the first Hobbit Movie - no issues.  This movie is a mess.

Playback of the full rip via SMB to the Oppo 203 works perfectly - no issues.

If I remux the video into a single MKV file, no issues

If I create a particle to 0800.mpls (the movie), no issues

It seems that when I playback via full UHD/BluRay Menu, issues.

Setting bit streaming to off, still issues

Don't know what is different with the full menu playback, but for now I'll just particles for titles that experience this.

[Manni]

All right, I wanted to update this thread because I did an in-depth debugging session with the 3090 and I *think* I've found a third compromise, which means no compromise on audio or video, but one on gaming... Here is what I did:

- I tried a clean install of Win10 x64 on a spare SSD (dual boot), with just MC installed. Got dropouts. This ruled out the software stack.
- I tried to take the VRROOM out of the chain, so I only had HTPC > X8500HA > TV. Got dropouts. This ruled out the hardware chain (besides the 3090 itself).
- I got a long audio+video freeze and realised that JRiver had just downloaded a new build while I was playing a film. I disabled auto-update and I've never had a long freeze/drop again (that was 10-15 films ago). If this is confirmed, I would call this a bug, because I don't see any reason for MC to do anything that could compromise playback. Could a dev confirm that MC only checks for a new build at launch, and not during playback? If it's possible during playback, could this be fixed?

Now, turning auto-updates off seems to have resolved the audio+video long freeze.

This means a few things:

1. The long audio+video freeze isn't specific to Atmos or bitstreaming, I experienced it (before disabling JRiver auto-update) on a DTS title using LPCM.
2. The 4xxx was most likely a fix for the micro audio drops, as what I remember was that I got long audio+video freezes, not micro audio drops. The possible network issue was likely a red herring. So if you have Atmos micro audio drops with a 3xxx GPU at 4K120, consider the 4xxx as a likely fix.

The 8-bit workaround mentioned at the beginning of the thread should have led me to test another workaround, which I used to use a while ago and forgot about, which is to have the HTPC on a HDMI 2.0 input of the AVR. This forces TDMS, and allows to have 4K23 in 10/12bits without any Atmos drops. You’re only limited to 8bits at 4K60.

This used to be an issue with some drivers newer than 532.03, as you would get a black screen when a HDMI 2.1 GPU was used that way, but it was fixed in 551.23.

Note that the output doesn't matter (both of the outputs of the X8500HA are HDMI 2.1 and I can use either without any issue).

I've now watched six full films with this set up (3090 >> HDMI 2.0 input >> TV) and have experienced no Atmos drops.

I'm going to do more checks to see if I can enable 8K Enhanced instead of 4K Enhanced in the AVR, and still get no audio drops.

I'm also going to see if I can bring the HTCP back to the HDMI 2.1 input and simply use a HDMI 2.0 EDID when I use it for video tasks (hence limiting it to a TDMS bandwidth) and then a full HDMI 2.1 EDID when I want to game at 4K120. But this will take a while and I wanted to share my third workaround right now, so others can test and see if it works for them too.

I might in fact keep the HTPC in a HDMI 2.0 input, as I can still game at 4K60 and the big advantage of doing this is I can use my Sony HDMI Headphones with the HTPC without having to put another VRROOM between the PC and the VAR to get the audio only to the Sony headphones.

One last thing, for those using a VRROOM, I kept having black screens with the latest fw, so I reverted to 0.34 (which happens to be the last fw with working JVC Macros) and the black screens seem to be gone.

So to summarise, here is my current workaround:

3090 HTPC with latest nVidia drivers (currently 650.81 studio) >> HDMI 2.0 input of the X8500HA >> VRROOM with fw 0.34 >> TV (Samsung S90C).

This gives me no audio compromise (Atmos + DTS:X), no micro Atmos audio drops, 4K23 at 10/12bits, no long video+audio freeze (auto-updates disabled in JRiver MC).

Main dowside is that I lose 4K120 for gaming, but I can live with that, at least until I get a 4xxx or 5xxx next year.

As always with HTPCs, YMMV

Good luck!

[SamuriHL]

What happens if you set the VRROOM to matrix frl->tmds (mode 3)?  Does that solve the problem?

[Manni]

What happens if you set the VRROOM to matrix frl->tmds (mode 3)?  Does that solve the problem?

It depends where the VRROOM is in the chain, and on which output the TV is. I'm not going to do any of these tests for now, as I'm quite happy to have the 3090 going to a HDMI 2.0 input (it allows me to use my Sony HDMI headphone without having a second VRROOM in the chain).

However, given that setting the driver to 8bits (which forces the bandwidth to TDMS) resolves the micro-audio-drops issues, I would say that anything that forces a TDMS bandwidth on the GPU output should work:

- Setting the driver to 8bits
- Using a HDMI 2.0 switch
- Setting the AVR to 4K Enhanced instead of 8K Enhanced
- Using a 4K60 8bits EDID

Etc...

I have only validated using a 4K (HDMI 2.0) input in the AVR at this stage.

Having spent a week on this already, I need to get back to work before I don any further testing re possible other workarounds for the 3xxx ampere bug.

[SamuriHL]

My HTPC is currently off at the moment.  If I have time I'll maybe mess around with it this week.  I have the 3080 in it as I don't have a way to throw the 4080 in yet. At some point, maybe by Christmas, I hope to get a new mobo and CPU to rebuild my proper HTPC and put the 4080 in it.

[Manni]

My HTPC is currently off at the moment.  If I have time I'll maybe mess around with it this week.  I have the 3080 in it as I don't have a way to throw the 4080 in yet. At some point, maybe by Christmas, I hope to get a new mobo and CPU to rebuild my proper HTPC and put the 4080 in it.

Thinking about it using the TDMS downscale on the VRROOM will most likely not work, as the whole point of it is to allows the source to send the full-fat 8K signal to the VRROOM so that you can pass it through to TX0 and so that it can be downscaled for a secondary display on TX1.

What you need is for the GPU to be limited to TDMS, so that it doesn't use FRL5/6 at all. For this, you need a HDMI 2.0 switch, a HDMI 2.0 EDID or the AVR to limit the bandwidth to HDMI 2.0 (if you're going through the AVR, I don't think you are).

[SamuriHL]

I'm definitely not going through my AVR, no.  I suppose I could force it with an EDID in the VRROOM. I'd rather just get my new system built but money and the fact that the mobos and cpu I want aren't out yet.

[MarcVRML]

I worked around this problem by using both a high quality HDMI 2.1 cable and then setting GPU clocks so that they don't downclock all the way.

I noticed this as when I was gaming (clocks all running high), the dropouts didn't happen. Watching video though (clocks low, minimal GPU requirement), the problem was frequent.

By setting my memory clock minimum to 810 instead of 405, this runs the card on an extra 4W of power, and generates an additional 1C of heat, so negligible impact, but appears to have fixed the problem.

Depending on your GPU, the numbers and ranges may differ so some experimentation is likely needed if anyone’s reading this with the same problem, but the method’s pretty simple :

— Determine compatible clock speeds
Open an admin command prompt and type this command:
nvidia-smi -q -d SUPPORTED_CLOCKS

This’ll give you a long list of memory MHz speeds, and within each of those, a range of compatible GPU clock speeds. Ignore the batch of timings at the bottom of the list – those are the slowest downclocks which we don’t want as they cause the problem. For me, next group up is the batch for 810MHz.
Make a note of the memory clock batch number (810 in this case). This is your minimum memory clock.
Now make a note of the minimum gpu clock speed within that batch (it’ll be at the bottom. For me it’s 210).

So that’s your minimums. Now for the maximums.

Go to the top of the list for the fastest supported values. For me this is a memory clock of 10501MHz and a Graphics clock of 3240MHz.

Now you’ve got enough for these commands (which if you like you can also put into a BAT file and run as part of your startup routine).

The -lgc flag controls min,max values for graphics clock, and the -lmc for memory clock.

nvidia-smi -lgc 210,3240
nvidia-smi -lmc 810,10501

This will allow the GPU to ramp up clock speeds when it thinks it needs it, but it’ll stop it downclocking below the threshold required to supply steady signal through the HDMI.

Hope this is helpful!

[Manni]

I worked around this problem by using both a high quality HDMI 2.1 cable and then setting GPU clocks so that they don't downclock all the way.

I noticed this as when I was gaming (clocks all running high), the dropouts didn't happen. Watching video though (clocks low, minimal GPU requirement), the problem was frequent.
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Thanks, that's very helpful and I might give it a try when I'm back from holiday in two weeks.

However, I can't see how the GPU could behave differently when using a HDMI 2.0 input and a HDMI 2.1 input, when both are playing 4K23 10bits RGB content within TDMS bandwidth, and I get drops with the HDMI 2.1 input and no drops with the HDMI 2.0 input.

Please could you kindly provide all the information listed in the first post, so that we can know more about your setup?

Also, surely this isn't relevant when using max performance power in nVidia, and I still get drops with that setting.