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PC Drivers & Software

aidar
Journeyman III

Disable H.264 hardware acceleration by Radeon HD 4xxx/4000 WDDM 1.1 driver on Windows 10 v1903

Videos encoded by the newest H.265 (HEVC) codec play fine on my Core i7 3Ghz + Radeon HD 4350 system, in Windows Media Player 12 or “Movies & TV” built-in app.

Videos encoded by the older H.264 (“avc1”) codec show either green or black screen (depending on app), only audio track is played.

It seems that the problem is caused by WDDM 1.1 driver that signals to the OS that it supports Hardware Acceleration for H.264, but cannot deliver.

For newest H.265, the old GPU/driver could not possibly offer any Hardware Acceleration, so Windows 10 does software rendering and everything works fine.

Probably the root cause is that WDDM 1.1 driver (the latest available) works fine on Windows 7, but later OSes adopted WDDM 1.2 “video playback improvements” (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/display/d3d11-video-playback-improvements, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model#WDDM_1.2); the OS believes that Radeon HD 4350 driver can assist with H.264, but cannot correctly take advantage of the Hardware Acceleration due to OS changes introduced in WDDM 1.2+.

Does anybody know, is there a way to make Radeon HD 4350 WDDM 1.1 driver (ver. 8.970.100.9001) to appear dumber than it is and let OS think that it simply does NOT support H.264 hardware-accelerated decoding (much like it does not H.265)?

It would solve the green/black screen issues; the Core i7 system has enough CPU power to decode even computationally intensive H.265, so H.264 decoding would be easy.

Thank you.

For reference, current dxdiag.exe data:

     DirectX Version: DirectX 12

           Card name: ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series

        Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

           Chip type: ATI display adapter (0x954F)

          Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_954F&SUBSYS_E990174B&REV_00

       Device Status: 0180200A [DN_DRIVER_LOADED|DN_STARTED|DN_DISABLEABLE|DN_NT_ENUMERATOR|DN_NT_DRIVER]

 Device Problem Code: No Problem

         Driver Name: aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll

 Driver File Version: 8.17.0010.1129 (English)

      Driver Version: 8.970.100.9001

         DDI Version: 10.1

      Feature Levels: 10_1,10_0,9_3,9_2,9_1

        Driver Model: WDDM 1.1

(this is the latest version, “provided as a courtesy and only available via Windows Update” - https://community.amd.com/docs/DOC-1311)

      Detachable GPU: No

 Hybrid Graphics GPU: Not Applicable

   Driver Attributes: Final Retail

    Driver Date/Size: 1/13/2015 3:00:00 AM, 1094024 bytes

         WHQL Logo'd: Yes

   Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-D60F-11CF-9270-9AC9BEC2C535}

           Vendor ID: 0x1002

           Device ID: 0x954F

           SubSys ID: 0xE990174B

         Revision ID: 0x0000

  Driver Strong Name: oem12.inf:cb0ae4148d05d541:ati2mtag_R7X:8.970.100.9001:pci\ven_1002&dev_954f

      Rank Of Driver: 00D72001

         Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_A ModeMPEG2_C

         DXVA2 Modes: DXVA2_ModeMPEG2_IDCT  DXVA2_ModeH264_VLD_NoFGT  DXVA2_ModeVC1_VLD

        DDraw Status: Enabled

          D3D Status: Enabled

          AGP Status: Enabled

3 Replies
marn
Journeyman III

I have exactly the same problem - green or black window - with Readeon 4250 after upgrading to Windows 10 v1903.

However, hardware acceleration for avc1 video worked fine for me with version 1809 and 1803 of Windows 10, so this is cannot be WDM version problem.

My guess is this is Windows related bug.

aidar
Journeyman III

marn, thanks a lot for the "DXVA Checker" idea, very useful tool!

I have found an unexpected solution for the problem.

AMD strongly recommends WHQL driver for Windows 10: “These graphics products must be installed using display driver version: 8.970.100.9001. This driver is provided as a courtesy and only available via Windows Update. Please enable Windows Update and allow it to detect and install the appropriate driver” (https://community.amd.com/docs/DOC-1311).

Troubleshooting another issue (https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/screen-flickering-aom-patch-2-7-4511863-wddm-1-1-directx-12-featur...) I downloaded previous version 8.970.100.7000 of the driver from AMD web-site, for Windows 8 x64 (https://www.amd.com/ru/support/graphics/amd-radeon-hd/ati-radeon-hd-4000-series/ati-radeon-hd-4350).

H.264 hardware acceleration started to work, green screen is gone!

Apparently, 8.970.100.7000 is better, more compatible with Windows 10 than 8.970.100.9001 in this case.

8.970.100.7000 driver is signed by AMD itself (not Microsoft WHQL), so one has to explicitly approve the driver installation.

Maybe this would help in your case too.

marn
Journeyman III

@aidar, you can get what you want with a tool "DXVA Checker". There, in Driver Settings, you can disable hardware acceleration for AVC1 videos.