AVIVO HD vs Purevideo HD Part 3

[muk]

Today's Radeons and GeForces can accelerate HD video, but our testing shows that not all cards in the same family are created equal.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/26/avivo_hd_vs_purevideo/index.html

 

[prodystopian]

For last few reviews, you have shown how these cards offload the processor when decoding a video while watch DVD/ HD-DVD. But do these cards help offload the processor when encoding a video? For example, if I am changing an MPEG2 movie to avi, will one of these cards lighten the load?

 

[cleeve]

For last few reviews, you have shown how these cards offload the processor when decoding a video while watch DVD/ HD-DVD. But do these cards help offload the processor when encoding a video? For example, if I am changing an MPEG2 movie to avi, will one of these cards lighten the load?

No, unfortunately the video card is not involved in the encoding process.

In the past, there were hints that this would happen, but it's been years since those whispers have come and gone...

 

[prodystopian]

Ugh. That's very frustrating. I keep hearing about how much we can do with GPUs (i.e. the password cracking article on TGDaily a few days ago). Wouldn't it be amazing if that power was helped for video?

Thanks for the response, Cleeve.

 

[cleeve]

I hear you, encoding assistance is one of the things I've been waiting for.

It's inevitable with the fusion of the CPU and GPU, but we'll have to wait a little longer yet.

 

[prodystopian]

Yea I just got a Zune (very cheap, otherwise it might have been something else) and have been encoding videos from my HTPC DVR. It is quite difficult on my P4 3Ghz, though so I was hoping I could get some help if I pick up an 8800gt or ati 3870. Looks like I'll be buying a new processor sooner than I thought.

Cleeve, how do you have a 2900 and 8800? Is that two separate computers?

 

[cleeve]

Cleeve, how do you have a 2900 and 8800? Is that two separate computers?

I do have separate computers, but I always find I'm swapping these two out of my main box for testing and things. They're both great cards I use all the time so I decided to have them both in my sig. Wishy washy of me, I know.

 

[prodystopian]

Don't you know that you need to pick one so that the board members can claim favoritism and fanboy behaviour?

 

[cleeve]

lol! Too true, mate...

Too true.

 

[paulpod]

It's time for Linux and MAC people to respond to this. They claim their OSes are superior in EVERY way yet I have never seen a video hardware acceleration benchmark.

Guys, if video acceleration is possible at all on Linux and/or MAC, please let us know!! If so, point us to some article and benchmarks.

By the way, XP still rules even for the 2600xt. My Fusion HDTV tuner has smooth 1080i playback on XP but it is jerky on Vista. Plus XP worked perfectly out of the box and Vista wasted my time with dozens of renderer/decoder/driver options to try. Some failed completely and none work like XP.

 

[mikesm]

PLEASE TEST MPEG2 HD, especially 1080i. Many of these cards have issues with plain old MPEG2 1080i de-interlacing, and anyone using either a broadcast OTA HD signal or Cable based QAM tuner will have lots of MPEG2 1080i content to view.

These companies have not responded to fixing issues with 1080i decoding, and you have a great opportunity to put a spotlight on these issues and inform buyers before they purchase a card assuming that MPEG2 decoding just works.

Pretty please?

 

[LND]

One thing I really don't get is how does the sound work on the 2x00 series cards? From what I can tell the cards only have DVI connectors on them and I thought DVI was Video only. Putting an HDMI converter on it doesn't seem to me to be a way to get sound out of a Video only channel. Anyone know how this 5.1 decoder works?

 

[cleeve]

If you're not using HDMI, the sound on the Radeons works exactly like the sound on a GeForce: you need to use your motherboard's sound chip, or a discrete sound card. Audio is delivered to your regular speaker setup.

If you use the HDMI, the sound is delivered to the HDMI device... your television, or an inline audio HDMI reciever.

 

[cleeve]

PLEASE TEST MPEG2 HD, especially 1080i.

I'll try to tackle that in the next review, where I'll hopefully have a Blu-Ray playback device at my disposal instead of just the HD-DVD player.

I think the MPEG2 HD titles are all on Blu-Ray right now, although I'm not sure, I'll have to look into it...

 

[bfellow]

What I like to see is an unifying driver that allows you to use 2 different video cards at a same time like having your GTX and XT both running concurrently.

 

[cleeve]

Heheh...well, to have that, Nvidia and Ati would have to co-operate. I don't forsee that happening...

 

[ikkeman]

Great to finally see a benchmark that goes beyond the fairyland of 30" widescreen Full quality gaming.

Thanks Cleeve

I do have one question, how about noise production. I hear the 2600xt can be loud compared to the 8600



Shuttle SG33G5, E6550, 2x1GB DDR2 667, 400GB, videocard is TBD.

 

[cleeve]

The 2600 XT I used was a fanless completely silent version from Sapphire. But I've used a Powercolor 2600XT and never noticed any noise from it.

 

[autoboy]

Cleeve,

I think he was talking about a review of HD 1080i video from TV, not from BluRay, although it would still be an interesting article to see how well they cope with 1080p Mpeg2. Neither card does full acceleration on mpeg2 despite the misnomer "universal decode" from AMD.

Anyways, I have both, the 2400pro and the 2600pro and found that they stumbled on mpeg2 1080i video from TV. It seems like the mpeg2 decoding is done in the shaders of the card, and the deinterlacing is done in the shaders so they compete for resources. VC-1 and H.264 are decoded in the UVD and leaves the shaders available to do the deinterlacing so the h.264 encoded HQV test disk looks perfect. However, 1080i h.264 is rare and so this test disk actually really doesn't prove anything for the majority of end users out there. However, because that is what the reviewers focus on, the 1080i mpeg2 just gets overlooked despite the fact that it is much more abundant because of the huge numbers of HD tuners people have in their PCs. There are considerably less HD/BD drives out there than mpeg2 HD tuners, and all the movies for them are in 1080p which does not need the deinterlacing.

So, what we would really like to see is a showdown of the video cards when it comes to 1080i mpeg2 video where it really counts for 90% of the HD viewing. I would include such cards as AMD and Nvidia onboard video (should only be able to do Bob and weave), a 7300GS and X1300 (also bob and weave), a X1600 and 7600GT (capable of 3:2 pulldown I think), the 8400 and 2400pro (nobody really knows what they can do), 2600 and 8600 (should be able to handle 3:2 pulldown and Vector adaptive deinterlacing), and the 8800 and 2900 which should perform like the x1600 and 7600GT. What are you going to use for test material? I don't know but you are the experts right?

 

[amirbd]

Hi,

what about the 8600GT? is it like the 8600GTS?
i"m going to buy tomorrow a new card and i can't choose between the HD2600XT and the 8600GT .
please , i need your advice.

thx
AmiR

 

[cleeve]

When the new cards come out from Nvidia and Ati, I'm going to see if I can do an all-encompassing video review of the entire 2x00 and 8x00 line.

 

[SiDE]

Hey I'm with amirbd. What about the 8600GT? I have that card right now on my EVGA 650i Ultra motherboard. I was wondering if ATI would be better for watching HD video than Nvidia which I'm thinking is better for gaming..? I mostly watch videos and graphic design on my PC and most of the HD video I download and watch are H.264 formats. I'm just really confuse...

 

[mitch074]

Linux and hardware acceleration...

Well, it exists, actually, with a free implementation - now, what one requires is driver support. Heh.

Right now, video acceleration is done through the X video (Xv) extention. Most current drivers support basic Xv: video scaling, YUV conversion and output (overlay, blit, or pixmap). Xv was originally designed to get and send video fluxes, but this functionality is now rarely used.

OpenChrome (for VIA Chrome hardware) has a very complete and Free implementation of X video Motion Compensation (XvMC): inverse discrete cosine transform, and motion compensation - typically, these help in MPEG-2, MPEG-4 ASP and AVC decompression (and since VC-1 is a primitive form of MPEG-4, it can be accelerated too, but for now, the open decoder is too basic to use it).
Another extension is being considered: due to its age, XvMC was never designed for more complete video acceleration than what is required by MPEG-2; as such, Intel is leading the development of a Free specification for video acceleration (called libva, hosted at freedesktop.org), regularly updated).

The OpenChrome's implementation of XvMC is being considered for porting to Intel, Matrox and AMD hardware; as there is no feature complete Nvidia Free driver, XvMC won't be supported on Nvidia hardware for a while (the Nouveau reverse engineered driver still doesn't have enough 3D features to support XvMC properly).

One thing to note though, is that under Linux+X11 Xorg, Free drivers usually share code - as such, a feature's quality is identical across the range.

 

[charger2000]

Hi, I'm very curious to know if the Quality benchmark of the 8600GTS and HD 2600 Xt, are the same for the 8600GT and HD 2600 pro.



Nik

 

[zozzlhandler]

I did not see if you used 64- or 32- bit Vista for these tests. In other reviews I have noticed a difference in CPU usage that seemed to require a driver improvement for 64-bit (or maybe a 64-bit version of Cyberlink). For your next review it would be really helpful to test both, if possible. Which did you use for this test?

Chris