Performance issues since upgrading to 17.0 final on NVIDIA ION

Hey all

Having some strange annoying issues with Kodi 17.0 since upgrading from the previous 16.1 final. I’m running Windows 8.1 custom install that’s been operating smooth for many years through many versions of Kodi, running on an ancient Asrock Atom/ION desktop.

I can’t seem to get reliably smooth playback since upgrading. I primarily use Kodi for playing local MKVs from my NAS and for watching Reddit videos via Youtube. I either have smooth playback of MKVs but have screen sync (black screen) issues when switching video streams between MKVs and Youtube – or jerky playback of MKVs but no screen sync issues.

If I enable non-window full screen mode AND enable ‘adjust display refresh rate’ I get jerky MKV playback (like it’s dropping frames every now and again) but Youtube works fine. If I enable full screen window mode AND leave ‘adjust display refresh rate’ turned on MKV playback is perfect but Youtube occassionally causes the whole system to freeze up and the TV to lose sync. The only way I’ve managed to get things to be stable is to enable regular full screen Window mode and TURN OFF ‘adjust display refresh rate’. Which really sucks – things are stable but nothing plays back smoothly like it did with 16.1.

So – any ideas on what could be going wrong here? Is Youtube trying to sync my TV to a refresh rate it can’t handle, causing problems?