Still confuzzled on pcie for Acer Aspire One AOD250-1838

hello. I apologize in advance for my question if its already answered. I have read the forums for about a week now and have gone thorugh 30+ pages that im overloaded hehe. So if i could get a clarification on a few questions i would be sincerely grateful. I am looking to get the D250-1838(Ruby Red) model( boy it is a beautiful machine). Now about the one im getting from newegg, specs indicate it has 250gb hdd, comes with N wifi and bluetooth 2.1 already in the machine. I have the BCM70012 hd decoder card already on the way. The question I have is in the pics i have seen from newegg they show three covers on the bottom of the machine, 1 being hdd, 1is memory, and the last it shows a mini pci-e slot. Now I know from reading here this machine has 2 pci-e slots. Is the cover to the right of the memory area occupying the wifi card? Because if it is, then where are you folks putting your decoder card? Or will that slot be empty? I dont want to give up my wifi and bluetooth just to have hd. Thank you in advance for reading.

 

no one? is this forum dead already?

 

Yes, that is the location of the 2nd port. Nobody has replied because what you are doing isn't understood by many people. Adding that HD card is not trivial; and only a few of us have done it. You have to use a specific BIOS version and player software.

 

thanks bluevolume. I do indeed appreciate the reply. I have the driver and software from the hp site. Now since you mention bios, do i need the specific 1.07 or can i update to the latest 1.22 and still have the pcie slot unlocked for access? thx.

 

mine works with the latest bios with no problems. some people have mentioned the broadcomm card doesn't work after upgrading to 1.07... try 1.06 1st then.

 

thx ashram. i havent received mine just yet, but when i do ill see what it shipped with. And try it with whatever it shipped with. If it does work, ill just leave it. If not, i can downgrade to 1.06 correct?(from a higher version) and go from there.

 

So does pin 20 still need to be blocked for mini pcie devices to work with 1.07+ bios'?

 

not from what im reading, flash n go sounds like thats all there is(of course dont forget driver install and software install). i do still intend to try with whatever shipping bios comes on mine first.

 

pin 20 only needs to be taped for usb based cards, like the sierra wireless aircards

 

just wanted to post back. My D250 came out of the box with bios 1.13, so i decided to try the broadcom card with it just like it was. Installed the drivers for it and it detected no problem! Now ive tried both MPC-HC and KMPlayer. I have them both set to use the card as i have set the merit appropriately for it. It does indeed show that they are both using the card, however i was expecting cpu useage to be much much lower. In KMPlayer cpu useage ranges from 37-55% which to me seems still too high. MPC-HC is even higher around 62%. I tried it with decoder card disabled and it spikes to 88%-100% so i can comfirm the software does use the card when enabled. But i have seen some folks claim cpu useage never gets above 30%. Are they blowing smoke or is this correct? If so, why is my cpu useage so high? Nothing else is running, wireless is off, processes eliminated unwated bloatware uninstalled etc etc. Just trying to find where the tweaks are needed to be to get this useage much lower. thx.

 

ok, so i decided to try a different broadcom driver, something other than the one from the HP site that everyone uses. I went to the Broadcom site and saw a new version of the driver available (crystalhd_2.7.4651).
Uninstalled old driver, rebooted. Installed new driver. Verified MPC-HC using the HD card. Cpu usage has dropped dramatically for me as well as my physical memory usage has flatlined(no more spiking!!) Now cpu usage is at 18-35% with it hovering around 29% for most of the time. A significant drop from what i was seeing as typical at 55% using the old driver. This is playing back a high bitrate 720p mkv. Still see a dropped frame here and there, but not nearly as bad as it was dropping frames previously. I am continuing to peruse the net for any and all info related to tweaking even more(ive done about all i can right now). Im hoping to see more software come out tweaked to take advantage of using this card.

 

wow... last time i checked broadcom didn't have any driver available...

i do have both the arcsoft app (hp) as well as powerdvd (dell variant for the studio hybrid with bcm970012) so this is something for me to try tonight!

also, 32 and 64 bit drivers.... not an issue for the acer, but nice to have regardless.

update... i checked again last night and there were a newer set of drivers from broadcom with a tray app (had to add it to startup manually) that tells you when it's in use! great for testing. i can not get dell's media direct to start (it did before my last reformat) but i just played portions of the hangover on blu-ray in total media theater. 53% cpu utilization and no noticable dropped frames (to me) and it played great! now i have to wait to get home to try shoot em up, which stuttered heavily when the music kicked in (nirvana!!!) during the 1st few minutes of the film

 

hehe of course they came out with new drivers AFTER i grabbed the ones i saw. OK, so I have the new drivers in, everything works fine MPC-HC. But now doesnt play nice with KMPlayer all of a sudden. And wont play nice with the Arcsoft TMT from the HP site. I have also tried a newer version of Arcsoft and it will NOT work with it either. So ive no idea whats up with that now. MPC is still the best performance i have seen personally, but im still losing frames here and there with any kind of 720p files. Still investigating.................

 

seems WMP12 is a solid choice. I dont like the interface, but thats a moot point. Using broadcom as the video codec of choice and AC3filter as the audio, WMP12 shows approx. max usage around 37% under load of high bitrate 720p film. An occasional stutter if you open a window, but it catches back up in a matter of moments. Still looking into why KMPlayer has stopped working(perhaps not liking the new driver install package?). Still diggin' and tweakin'.................

 

if anyone is interested... the latest gl-based nightly build of XBMC is supposed to support the bcm70012 as well... downloading as i type.

http://danielpatton.com/user-accounts/X ... tes/ikons/
remember... gl based build, the dx build are not compatible yet

update... under video rendering setting, the broadcom is there.. 1 issue though. using media player classic, all videos i tried turn on the broadcom icon (dtsinfo.exe, located in the installation dir for the bcm70012)
under xbmc, only h264 and xvid/divx files do...

either way, it's another working app!