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[audunth]

Hi,

As I might get a 3D projector soon (the new Sony VPL-HW30 if reviews are good), I'm also considering swapping out my old ATI HD4550 video card with one that supports 3D (HDMI 1.4).

Has anyone tried both ATI and Nvidia and can tell me anything about the differences, possible issues, picture and sound quality etc.?

My HD4550 works fairly well, except that it sometimes don't enable the HDMI audio output when I turn on my receiver/projector so I have to turn off and on the receiver to activate it. This happened after I updated the driver from 10.6 to 10.11, haven't tried newer drivers for now.
Also I wish I could turn off the real time monitor detection, so that it wouldn't react when I turn on and off displays and just go with my manual settings.

A super important feature of ATI CCS is that I can save settings in profiles and activate them with hotkeys. So if my screen goes black, I can just activate the right display settings with a keypress and get the picture back without rebooting or turning on and off displays (this doesn't work for activating the HDMI audio output as described above, though...) If Nvidia doesn't have hotkey activated settings profiles, it's out of the question for me, which would make my choice easy.

I'm not looking for a high end card, it's much more important that it runs as cool as possible. I'm using a Zalman Reserator 1 V2 water cooling kit, which is made to cool a system very quietly, not high performance cool it. That said, it doesn't have to be the cheapest card available.

Basically, I'm just looking for a low to mid range, cool running card that gives me the least amount of issues possible with the various filters/decoders we use in MC to get the pest possible sound/picture quality. I'm running LPCM to my receiver.

[glynor]

At the low and midrange ends, the AMD cards are a much better deal.  At the mid-high and high ends, it is debatable, and tends to switch back and forth.  This difference comes down to the way they design their chips.  Nvidia builds very complex high-end GPUs for their "halo" products, and then cuts them down for the mid-upper range parts.  This means that the low-end and solid middle-range cards, tend to be last year's stuff relabeled, because they haven't actually designed anything specifically for that product segment.  They basically count on the "halo effect" of their high-end parts, to trickle down into their midrange and low-end parts (people think that because the high end card rules, that their $150 card must be good too).  Quite often, when you look into it, their low/midrange parts are a whole generation (or sometimes two) behind.

AMD designs their GPUs solidly for the midrange price point, and then scales down from there (using the "double GPU" cards for their high-end, with no giant monolithic high-end GPU).  This largely cedes the single-GPU high end to Nvidia, but it makes them VERY competitive in the middle and low-end of the market.  I find that AMD tends to have better HDMI support, better hardware deinterlacing, and I actually like their drivers MUCH better than Nvidia's (now, this was NOT always the case).  I think that often their "features" are better than Nvidia at the low/midrange because of their different design philosophy.  When you buy a midrange AMD GPU it is usually actually a current generation chip, which means you get things like HDMI 1.4 and DTS-MA bitstreaming support (the 6770, which is mostly a rebadged 5770, notwithstanding).  Nvidia tends to "rebrand" their low/midrange GPUs from last year's high end.  This means that, while the top chips from Nvidia will have those features, it usually takes another cycle before they trickle down to the midrange.

On the other hand, Nvidia often tends to have better third-party software support for things like GPU acceleration of video decoding and special features in games.  They throw lots of money at those problems.

If it were me?  I'd probably get a 6870 or 6850 if you don't really care about 3D gaming performance at all.  If I was looking the next "step" up (the 6950 vs the GTS 560 Ti), then it would be a lot closer of a call, and I'd have to look at individual cards and packages to decide.

If all you care about is GPU acceleration of H264 video, because your processor is crap?  Then probably go Nvidia for now (though you could just try CoreAVC for $10).

[Daydream]

On a couple very specific things (otherwise I agree with Glynor) you can probably hedge you bets either way regarding 3D Video as the software solutions (Arcsoft in Totalmedia Theater 5, Cyberlink with PowerDVD 11, etc) started supporting both AMD HD3D and Nvidia 3D vision techs.

Second thing if you want to use the latest bells & whistles in (2D ) video decoding - like LAV and madVR you may want to a) stay with Nvidia again because of LAV Cuvid and b) regardless don't go for an underpowered card if you want madVR to do some crazy scaling for you. All in all I would also pick a 68xx AMD card because it fits my specifics needs; or it's Nvidia counterpart, but overall I'm an AMD fan so, I roll a certain way .

On a sidenote I've already bought I don't know how many "ultimate HTPC" video cards and there was always something left out (bitstram, but only PCM; hardware accel. but not for VC-1; hardware accel. for everything but oops not with post processing, etc). If these guys start shooting (3D) movies at 48 or 60 FPS, and HDMI 1.4a evidently can't cope with that, we're looking at the next best UVD/VDPAU/CUDA & HDMI spec to be put on a new generation of cards. Yeah Duke Nukem, I'm waiting for Christmas, that's exactly what I'm doing...!

At the risk of derailing this a bit I saw you saying

My HD4550 works fairly well, except that it sometimes don't enable the HDMI audio output when I turn on my receiver/projector so I have to turn off and on the receiver to activate it. This happened after I updated the driver from 10.6 to 10.11, haven't tried newer drivers for now.

I experience exactly the same thing with my Onkyo receiver. I contemplated the possibility that the HDMI board in it is dying but the thing is rock solid for the last 6 months. Only that it doesn't detect the HDMI signal when turned on for the life of it. I need to either wait or keep switching inputs for a minute or so and then it's all good for as long as it stays on. And everything did started around Nov. 2010 (therefore around Catalyst 10.10 - 10.11). Anybody has any more insight on this?

[glynor]

You may want to try the new Catalyst drivers.

I know there WAS a long-standing HDMI-sync bug fixed in there sometime this year that people were all excited about over at AVSForum.  I'd never run into the bug myself, so it wasn't a problem for me.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my 6870.  Best video card I've bought in a long time.

[JimH]

I just bought a 6870, too, on Matt's advice.  It's not installed yet.

[Daydream]

You may want to try the new Catalyst drivers.

I am on the latest, religiously. A Windows 7 fresh install also didn't help. Both my desktop and my laptop have Ati 5xxx cards in them and they both exhibit the problem.

I'd buy a new 68xx but I need something that would drive 3 monitors (any combination of DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort ports on the card) and a receiver - another HDMI port. So that leaves me with an Eyefinity card and lots of adapters and questions. DisplayPort to HDMI DOESN'T have to be an active adapter? Did anybody try a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter and can confirm that it bitstreams lossless audio without a glitch?.

BTW that DisplayPort to DVI adapter that Sapphire sells on Newegg for $27 it is active, true to what they advertise (to my total surprise).

[glynor]

I am on the latest, religiously.

I was talking to the original poster, who is still on a 10.x version of Catalyst.

I'd buy a new 68xx but I need something that would drive 3 monitors (any combination of DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort ports on the card) and a receiver - another HDMI port. So that leaves me with an Eyefinity card and lots of adapters and questions.

Or a second AMD card, which would be the cheaper/easier solution.  If you're just trying to drive the receiver and bitstream audio, you don't even need a fancy one.  My Radeon HD 6450 "tester" card was $60 and bitstreams audio just fine.

If you only care about driving an additional display, and don't care about teaming the GPUs for performance, you don't have to match the cards.

You just need a motherboard with a second physical PCIe x16 slot (even if it is only x4 electrical, that doesn't matter, it'll work fine to drive a display).

[Daydream]

Or a second AMD card, which would be the cheaper/easier solution.  If you're just trying to drive the receiver and bitstream audio, you don't even need a fancy one.  My Radeon HD 6450 "tester" card was $60 and bitstreams audio just fine.

That's what I'm doing right now but in my particular case it's a limiting factor since I run 2 extra 8-channel Sata adapters in 2 additional PCI-E slots. So I always have to aim for a 4 PCI-E slots board. So everything become pretty fancy overall and I don't do much gaming. I know this is pretty insane to run a 3 monitors setup on the same machine that acts as the storage resource but that's just me. Until at least I can find a way to run 20-24 drives (or their combined capacity on some other thing) 24/7 in a cool environment without sending the electrical bill off the charts. Than I'll brake the setup into 2 different systems.

What I want are ports, not power. Apparently you can have that many but with a high end video card (if we're talking video), because they expect you to play games on those X monitors combined, and you can't have too many storage ports 'cause then you slip in the the server class solutions.

[glynor]

That makes sense...  I have a similar issue.  I use a PCIe x4 RAID card too, so I can only have one graphics card in my main server (which only has two PCIe x16 slots like a sane motherboard).

The 6870 has three video out ports, and can power three monitors simultaneously.

What exactly do you need to connect and have work?  I'd be willing to test it for you if it isn't crazy.  I need to buy some active adapters anyway.

[glynor]

Oh, and by the way...

You're not too crazy.  I plan to add a third monitor in the basement as soon as I can get a good IPS 24" 1080p display for a remotely reasonable price.  Most of the current IPS displays are all 1900x1200, which is the wrong aspect ratio to match the other two crappy TN panels I have (which are 24" 1080 jobs).  The ones that ARE 16x9 are all smaller than 24" and the wrong physical size to match.

I really want to have the nice IPS in the middle, and the two TNs as flanking monitors.

EDIT:  Well, what I really want is three nice 24" IPS displays, but I'm not made out of money. 

[Daydream]

EDIT:  Well, what I really want is three nice 24" IPS displays, but I'm not made out of money. 

You and me too!

What I'd like is to drive 3 monitors and one Onkyo receiver. The combinations on any non-Eyefinity card do not allow that (max 3 with an active adapter for the DisplayPort).
Now with an Eyefinity card... looking at Newegg I could go with Asus Radeon HD 6870, $200 - 2 DVI, 2 (fullsize) DisplayPorts. 2DVi to 2 monitors, one active DisplayPort to DVI adapter (got it) to the third monitor and one DisplayPort to HDMI adapter to hook up the receiver.

I don't have the DP-2-HDMI adapter, I don't know if it has to be active (read some stuff but it's not clear, single-link, double-link, etc), I don't know how it works with bitstreaming lossless audio (although it should, by specs). I mean without glitches because if it works but it desyncs 15 times before a solid lock on the signal, that's not good. Any kind of tests for DP-2-HDMI would help.

Or I could go with ASUS EAH6950 (I'm aiming for fullsize DisplayPorts since I already have one adapter), break the bank, buy adapters for what I don't have (again, to HDMI), and end up with a more powerful card for whenever Assassin's Creed Revelation comes out for PC .

[MrC]

... a good IPS 24" 1080p display for a remotely reasonable price.  Most of the current IPS displays are all 1900x1200, which is the wrong aspect ratio to match the other two crappy TN panels I have (which are 24" 1080 jobs).  The ones that ARE 16x9 are all smaller than 24" and the wrong physical size to match.

I really want to have the nice IPS in the middle, and the two TNs as flanking monitors.

EDIT:  Well, what I really want is three nice 24" IPS displays, but I'm not made out of money. 

Yeah, three!

A couple of weeks ago, I replaced a couple of old Dell LCDs with a 24" ASUS PA246.  Wow!  And w/free shipping and a $60 instant rebate, though not cheap, I'm loving it.

[KingSparta]

I Have Always Liked ATI Cards, But Nvidia Cards Are Good Also.

Just make sure your power supply will support it.

[glynor]

If it were me?  I'd probably get a 6870 or 6850 if you don't really care about 3D gaming performance at all. 

I realize that because of a punctuation fail, this made it seem like the 6870 and 6850 aren't good gaming cards.  That isn't true at all.  At 1080p, they can play pretty much anything out there with everything set to max quality and AA/AF cranked.

I meant that, for the price difference, I'd get the 6870.  I might get the 6850 instead if money was much more important than gaming performance.  The price difference between the two is pretty small, though so I'd probably go with the 6870 (and did).

The next step up: the 6950 and the GTX 560 Ti are monsters of cards, and I'd look at them if you have a monitor with higher resolution than 1080p (maybe even 1900x1200, but that's borderline).

[audunth]

Thanks for all suggestions

Haven't gotten around to grabbing the latest drivers yet, will do and see if it helps my HDMI syng issues.

The prime importance here is low power (=low heat/noise). My current rig runs at about 100 watts idle with 3 normal hard drives and I want to keep it that way. The HD4550 plays my 3D games fine. Obviously not the heavier ones at high settings, but I mostly play CS and GTA which are no sweat.

I saw a power consumption comparison in a HD6850 review suggesting a 6850 averages 88 W, about 4 times as much as a 6450 at 23 W average. Since the 6450 also supports 3D/HDMI 1.4 why would I need anything more power consuming/expensive? Even the 6450 is a step up gamingwise from my old 4550.

As a tradeoff a 6670 has decent gaming performance and still half power (46 W) and half price of the 6850. Any thougts?

Link to the review for those interested: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_6850_SCS3_Passive/25.html .

[jmone]

Here is an interesting writeup - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4380/discrete-htpc-gpus-shootout/1

[Sandy B Ridge]

I'm thinking of getting a new video card. When I built my HTPC I got a H67 mobo for my i5 2500k with the intention of 'seeing how it went' with the possibility of adding in a dGPU later if things weren't great.

I've been getting some disappointing deinterlacing on some DVDs to the point of moving objects looking like combs! Some of it must be poor mastering as it only seems to be really terrible on some amateurish DVDs. However I do notice pasty deintlacing on most of my discs and wondered whether adding in a dGPU with hardware deinterlacing would help.

My problem is that the only way I could get a PC in the lounge past the other half was to disguise it in a low profile, quite short, case. I plumped for the Moneual Moncaso 320. The case has 2 HD cages on either side of the case (one cage holds 1HD and the other can hold 2HDs). On the right side the cage (2hd cage) sits close to the ATX PSU and I have some of the PSU cables looped under the HD in the space that could hold the second drive. The second cage (1HD - because of the heat from the North/south?? Bridge heatsink I assume) sits on the PCI connector side of the case and with a HD in it, it obstructs any video card longer than about 175mm.   I have 2 x 2Tb drives that are rather full and for the sake of heat dissipation have one on either side of the case.

I could put in an NVIDIA GT 430 LP in without issue, but was concerned about the Anandtech article about it's limitations in terms of framerate capability for h264. Most reviews say the GT 520 is crap. So really wanted something with a bit more grunt. I think I would rather go with NVIDIA because of the LAV CUVID possibilities (unless someone would recommend the AMD HAM option??). This only really leaves the Palit GTS 450 low profile which seems a much more capable card than the 430s. I have some reservations about this one as some reviews have said that it is quite noisy and VERY hot (not great in a quite confined case!). It is also too long (I think) to squeeze in to the space at the moment unless I move the left HD into the right cage under the other one leaving a nightmare to thread the power cables somewhere else. I was also going to add an SSD at some point.

So I have a dilemma! Any thoughts or opinions? Are the GT 430s any good? Does anyone have the Palit GTS 450? Is it hot/noisy as they say? How long is it really from the metal backplate to the end of the card?

Two long shot options are
1) different case (ie non low profile) and put in a 'decent' dGPU like the GTX 560 Ti in it. Would love this one! Maybe one of the Silverstone cases? I'll probably get this past the other half as it still looks quite a decent case and she's now hooked on the HTPC and JRiver!
2) wait and see what the Autumn/Santa has to offer in terms of new NVIDIA cards with the new fabrication process and processing.

oh the joys of building a PC. I love it!

SBR

[Daydream]

Combining a couple of thoughts from different sources, here's how I see it today this get a new video card thing:

- we used to be content with a card that can hardware accelerate 1080p videos; they had a dedicated chip on them to do the work and life was beautiful except when it came to deinterlacing and color correction, and the likes for non-blu-ray sources, which operations still tapped into the GPU power, with results varying depending on drivers, no. of shaders and whatnot. But it was a relatively simple choice, with lots of passively cooled cards to chose from.
- today is not that simple. You may want a card like the above, but 10 minutes after setting it up you may start wondering about madvr with razor-sharp subs and who know what other goodies. At this point that is only GPU assisted, meaning shaders, shaders, shaders. How many we don't know yet. "More" seems to be the norm (although I have yet to see a single piece of comprehensive evidence that the increase in quality with such a setup justifies the cost of a high-end class of cards). So in AMD land, between a 6450 with 160 unified shaders and a, say, 6870 with 1120 shaders, the answer is... all over the place.
- tomorrow you may want something of the likes of Smoothvideo Project that takes a whatever-the-framerate (say 24p) and interpolates it to 60p for your normal PC monitor (or whatever) just like the 120-240-480Hz high end TVs. And then we'll have to wonder how much power THAT adds to the whole equation.

[Sandy B Ridge]

Hmm....

Research into low profile cards continues...

I just came across this review for the radeon hd 6570 and 6670:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6570-radeon-hd-6670-turks,2925-14.html

(Although I cannot find a 6670 for sale anywhere in low profile variety!).

I was set on the NVIDIA gts 450 low profile from Palit, but this review seems to score the HQV benchmark for the gts 450 quite poorly compared with the radeon cards.

Questions:

Is the picture quality 'better' for AMD/ATI (whatever they are called these days) cards than NVIDIA? Or are the HQV benchmark tests a load of old tripe?

I'm mainly interested in improving deinterlacing.

Is hardware deinterlacing much better than software? Or is it just faster? 25i bluray using ffdshow on RO HQ only uses about 75-80% of one core on my machine so I get minimal frame drops in madVR. I assume that this uses the yadif algorithm (is this the best software one?).

I get lots of frame drops on some higher bitrate h264 29.97p, I assume any of the above cards with decent no of shaders would help with that.

(Current is sandybridge 2500k on board GPU).


Help/opinion/rantings all appreciated please - thanks in advance!

SBR

[jmone]

I have a collection of cards and in general have nothing to complain about regarding the basic quality... that said;

- GTS450:  +'ve: works well with LAVCUVID and madVR and the quality results are terrific  -'ve: I've got some issue understanding how to setup custom resolutions correctly so that I'm not changing the dynamic range back and forth (this is a later job for my new spectrometer!).  I have the palit low profile card and struggle to recommend it due to the audible whine the thing makes under load.

- 3000:  I've just done a new i7-2600K build and while I have not had a chance to "see" how it looks.  From what I've read it will struggle with madVR due to the memory speed being low

- 5670:  I've always been happy with the Video/Audio of the ATI cards (could just be familiarity with how to set them up and being used to their bugs).  Works well with madVR but I moved to the GTS450 just to get stutter free playback of 1080/60(i) material as the deinterlacing was too much from my Q6600 (but I now have an i7-2600K !).  It was cool, quite, and back venting (perfect for may Shuttle)

[Sandy B Ridge]

- GTS450:  +'ve: works well with LAVCUVID and madVR and the quality results are terrific 

Great. Can you say if same/better/worse than ATI or is side by side comparison too difficult?

I have the palit low profile card and struggle to recommend it due to the audible whine the thing makes under load.

Yeah, bummer... I read this about it in some reviews... Just so few GDDR5 low profile cards out there.

- 3000:  I've just done a new i7-2600K build and while I have not had a chance to "see" how it looks.  From what I've read it will struggle with madVR due to the memory speed being low

Yay! Congrats on new build. HD3000 generally works well for me with bluray iso's, *some* m2ts files I have are higher bitrate h264 (mainly surround audio demo clips from hd trailers that I've been using to test my setup/amp) and stutter and have framedrops in madVR. haven't tried with RO standard (must do this while I remember). I'm quite surprised at these clips stuttering as they are 1920 x 1080 native and madVR wouldn't need to do any heavy duty scaling. Maybe they are 1080i and I'm struggling with the deinterlacing again (I'll check).

- 5670:  I've always been happy with the Video/Audio of the ATI cards (could just be familiarity with how to set them up and being used to their bugs).  Works well with madVR but I moved to the GTS450 just to get stutter free playback of 1080/60(i) material as the deinterlacing was too much from my Q6600 (but I now have an i7-2600K !).  It was cool, quite, and back venting (perfect for may Shuttle)

I thought this card was no slouch.... Is there no hardware deinterlacing *at all* with ATI cards with madVR in the loop? What does the cyberlink HAM stuff do? Can this be put in the filter graph?

What's the general feeling on the HQV benchmark stuff? The things that seem to differentiate the ATI and NVIDIA cards are the noise reduction/tinkering with skin tones sort of settings and recognition of some pulldown algorithms. Are these important with LAV and MadVR in the loop?

SBR

[Daydream]

Is there no hardware deinterlacing *at all* with ATI cards with madVR in the loop?

NONE. It's not a matter of power, it's a matter of presentation logic. You can't pass the frames any way you like and then feed them to madVR, "here, now you do your magic".

That's why LAV CUVID gets all the attention , it does deinterlacing on the card (yeah, 1080i60) and pass the stuff to madVR.

To answer the other question you had, vector adaptive deinterlacing (as named on AMD cards; Nvidia probably has something similar just less fancy named) is the most advanced, and, to my knowledge, it's overkill to be done in software.

One thing to keep in mind: this is what works today. DXVA works with madVR in PotPlayer (closed architecture). Somebody could use OpenCL and whatever API&SDK AMD supplies to write cool stuff for AMD cards. Just that nobody has done it yet, for objective or subjective reasons.

[Sandy B Ridge]

I'm mainly interested in improving deinterlacing.

Is hardware deinterlacing much better than software? Or is it just faster?

Sorry to quote myself. Bad form....

I have been playing about with the cheese slicer video clips (thanks blaubart):

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1157287

and by golly these are utterly pants on my Intel HD3000. The whole clip seems to lose cadence in the middle. No wonder some of my DVDs look shocking....

Looks like an NVIDIA card required shortly,

Please NVIDIA can you launch a low profile card with loads of shaders, VDPAU Feature set D (VP5) and GDDR5, very fast clock speed and with an absolute lock on 23.976 Hz? Pretty Please? Oh and this year please?

Not going to happen is it?

SBR

[Daydream]

Oh and this year please?

That's an interesting question, when AMD 7000 and Nvidia 600-series cards will be released? If Christmas, might be worth waiting; if generic Q1 2012... meh.

[glynor]

AMD's Southern Islands line is almost certainly shipping in volume before the end of the year (possibly even this quarter).

Nvidia's next gen, Kepler, is not slated until Q1 2012, and it might be late Q1 (or even slip to Q2).  They're relying upon a new process tech from TSMC (28nm HKMG) that they've been having trouble with lately.

Re quality questions:  For a LONG time, ATI had better shaders and postprocessing filtering in their GPUs (only some of which has any impact on video playback).  Then, briefly, Nvidia had the upper hand.  Now they're basically on par with one another if you are comparing the same generation of chips to one another (again, be wary of Nvidia's low-end parts though, they are often re-badged older chips with new model numbers to make them seem like they are new generations of parts).  Video processing is honestly so simple, compared to what the chips do in the 3D realm, that many of the improvements they add in this area are much more for marketing checkbox lists than for any real consumer impact.

And, likewise, most differences you can see amount to differences in the playback software not the hardware itself (sometimes due to an intentional "preference" for one vendor over another, and sometimes just due to happenstance).  These things can swing wildly with a simple driver revision too, so it is difficult to evaluate.

Almost NONE (if not actually none) of the special hardware video processing features will function under madVR and ROHQ.  They typically require either Overlay or EVR renderers to function.  ROHQ doesn't use hardware deinterlacing or anything like that, because it uses fancier software algorithms.

[jmone]

Please NVIDIA can you launch a low profile card with loads of shaders, VDPAU Feature set D (VP5) and GDDR5, very fast clock speed and with an absolute lock on 23.976 Hz? Pretty Please? Oh and this year please?

My GTS450 gives all you need for HTPC playback, Feature Set C (same as D for video decoding), fast GDDR5, clock speeds, and all the shaders you need.  Wanting or needed an "absolute lock" on 23.976 is a myth...what you want is the ability to sync the video and audio playback so you don't drop frames.  The two clocks (audio and video) will never really match anyway....  So MC16 thankfull has added the "Video Clock" feature which will resample the audio on the fly to keep it in track preventing video frames being dropped or repeated but you must decode the audio on the HTPC not on the Receiver.  FYI even if you are a bitstreamer, you can get very close to 23.976 using a custom res, but the "real"  speed of the media is really 24fps anyway.

Is hardware deinterlacing much better than software? Or is it just faster? 25i bluray using ffdshow on RO HQ only uses about 75-80% of one core on my machine so I get minimal frame drops in madVR. I assume that this uses the yadif algorithm (is this the best software one?).

RO HQ uses YADIF (which is why it hits the CPU hard) and is as good as it gets in general.  There are other filters better suited for those wanting to detect and remove ntsc pulldown but I've not played with them. 

Yay! Congrats on new build. HD3000 generally works well for me with bluray iso's, *some* m2ts files I have are higher bitrate h264 (mainly surround audio demo clips from hd trailers that I've been using to test my setup/amp) and stutter and have framedrops in madVR. haven't tried with RO standard (must do this while I remember). I'm quite surprised at these clips stuttering as they are 1920 x 1080 native and madVR wouldn't need to do any heavy duty scaling. Maybe they are 1080i and I'm struggling with the deinterlacing again (I'll check).

Ahh but madVR is doing heavy duty scaling (ok upsampling) of the Chroma on these source (eg Blu ray uses YCbCr 4:2:0).  The toughest I have is without a doubt is blu 1080/60i material that also needs deinterlacing.

[glynor]

The toughest I have is without a doubt is blu 1080/60i material that also needs deinterlacing.

I can give you some RED footage that'd be tougher, if you have a few days to download it. 

[Sandy B Ridge]

Feature Set C (same as D for video decoding)

I can give you some RED footage that'd be tougher, if you have a few days to download it. 

But I'll *need* that feature set D to output the 4k RED footage onto my (non existent) 4k projector!! Needs to be a bloody quick card/PC to deinterlace that 4k footage, but why would you interlace it in the first place?!

Any views on the HQV benchmark stuff from you two? Is it a load of tosh?

SBR

[Daydream]

Opinions about AMD APUs? Between Llano now and Piledriver-Trinity next year? (for me efficient and small will trump madVR performance any day)

[Sandy B Ridge]

- GTS450:  +'ve: ...... I have the palit low profile card ...

Jmone

If you have a spare second or two and you have your case open, could you measure the length of the card from the flat bit of the backplate to the end of the card, please? I'm not sure if the measurements on their website if for total length (including the external connectors) or for the internal length. It might *just* squeeze into my case although I may need to put one of the 2Tb drives in upside down to switch the sides of the sata and power connectors.

I may get this now and then have a look at what is around Q1 or Q2 next year for an upgrade that may be cooler and therefore quieter. Seems pointless going for the GT 430/440 now.

Thanks in advance,

SBR

[jmone]

192mm but I would really not recommend this card.  As soon as you hit the GPU (eg with LAVCUVID) the whine of a small get turbine becomes apparent!  I'm about to test the i7's IGP3000 and then my 5670 again.....

[Sandy B Ridge]

192mm but I would really not recommend this card.  As soon as you hit the GPU (eg with LAVCUVID) the whine of a small get turbine becomes apparent!  I'm about to test the i7's IGP3000 and then my 5670 again.....

Many thanks! I guess I'll leave it for the time being. Or a new full height case? Quite fancy the silverstone lc13.

SBR

[jmone]

So I really want to replace my palit low profile GTS450 card due to the noise (it was a impulse purchase) with another nvidia based card the is:
- Quiet
- Only needs one 6pin Power
- Back Venting if possible (push the heat out of my little Shuttle instead of dumping it in the case)

Any recommendations?  also what about the GTX 550 Ti based cards?

[jmone]

OK Got a Gigabyte GTX550Ti.  First impressions are:
- It is very quiet underload
- It has some back venting but it is not a sealed setup like with my IceQ HIS HD5670
- Swapped out the GTS450 and windows reinstalled the driver.  Had to still re-add my custom resolution and reconfig audio for HDMI.  But that was about it.  Windows experience score rose from 7.2 to 7.4 with the card (if that matters)
- Why the Mini HDMI Port? It does include the adapter but really what is wrong with a normal

Anyway I'm running a 1.5hr 1080/50i video with LAVCUVID so lets see what fan noise I hear over that time.

[Sandy B Ridge]

Not sure what I've done, but the files I was getting frame drops in MadVR now seems to not frame drop anymore.

I did a 'gentle' overclock of the iGPU (i5 2500k) and CPU with the Asus AI Suite 'boost' thingy, and updated MC16 to latest and it all seems hunky dory.

Have you guys got a linky to the 'hardcore' 60i files that were problemmatic for the HD3000 GPU? I'd like to try them.

Cheers,

SBR

[jmone]

Here are a couple of sample files:
- AVC 1080-50p : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7JIIQC7C
- VC1 1080-60i : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EY5IJUYB
- AVC 1080-60i : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2YJXYXLJ
- AVC 1080-50i : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TAUWBCYX

I could play them in RO HQ on the i7 2500K (3000 GPU) but found that it was marginal with:
- dropped frames:  It did not drop frames badly but it did.  Was better with madVR in exclusive mode but still not as good at the nvidia card
- Deinterlacing:  VC1(i) is not a supported format by ffdshow, YADIF is not used so you see the various fields at time as the MS decoder is just not as good.  Trying HW Accel (DXVA) just got me a blank screen so...another + to nvidia

[Sandy B Ridge]

Here are a couple of sample files:
- AVC 1080-50p : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7JIIQC7C
- VC1 1080-60i : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EY5IJUYB
- AVC 1080-60i : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=2YJXYXLJ
- AVC 1080-50i : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TAUWBCYX

I could play them in RO HQ on the i7 2500K (3000 GPU) but found that it was marginal with:
- dropped frames:  It did not drop frames badly but it did.  Was better with madVR in exclusive mode but still not as good at the nvidia card
- Deinterlacing:  VC1(i) is not a supported format by ffdshow, YADIF is not used so you see the various fields at time as the MS decoder is just not as good.  Trying HW Accel (DXVA) just got me a blank screen so...another + to nvidia

Super, thanks.

They played better than I expected.

The AVC 60i clip dropped about 8 frames just at the beginning. ie. MadVR reported 7 or 8 dropped frames before the Stats OSD came up, then did not increase a single dropped frame during the clip. CPU usage running at about 50-55%.
The VC1 60i clip dropped 2 or 3 frames, again not noticeable as they happened before the OSD came up, and again zero increment during the clip. CPU about 25%.
The AVC 50p clip lost 11 to 12 frames, again before the OSD. Again zero increment. CPU about 35%.

All with MadVR exclusive mode. Didn't see any point trying with windowed mode as this would not be my usual settings, but happy to test if anyone is interested. I'm guessing that the dropped frames happen in MadVR windowed just before it flips into exclusive and from then on it copes very well.

Megaupload didn't let me download the 50i clip. I'll try again tomorrow....

So all in all I'm pretty pleased with the performance, and will put that NVIDIA card on hold for now. I'll see what gets released in the Autumn in time for Xmas, or next spring in time for my birthday..... The only surprise for me was the increase in the CPU utilisation for the 50p clip over the VC1 60i (I guess the VC1 is using less computation as it isn't using yadif, but surely the 50p doesn't need deinterlacing anyway??).

Let me know if anyone wants me to test anything else.

SBR

[jmone]

Thanks for the response!  FYI - I always drop a few frames at media start up regardless of the card and also with the change from Windowed to Exclusive mode, but to me this is no big deal.  My issues with dropped frames with this content was with Windowed mode so for these using IGP, then Exclusive Mode is highly recommended.

What HW do you display your content on, eg:
- HDMI to 50" TV via a Receiver at 1920x1080 with refresh rate changing between 24/50/60hz ? 

Also did you try with HW Accel on for fun?

The only surprise for me was the increase in the CPU utilisation for the 50p clip over the VC1 60i (I guess the VC1 is using less computation as it isn't using yadif, but surely the 50p doesn't need deinterlacing anyway??).

Makes sense really given they are different filters being used and producing a big difference in quality.
55% CPU: AVC 60i = 60fps with Deinterlacing (FFDSHOW/YADIF)
35% CPU: AVC 50p = 60fps no Deinterlacing (FFDSHOW)
25% CPU: VC1 60i = 60fps with ordinary interlacing (MS DMO Filter).  I clearly see the separation of both fields during playback.  The only quality playback I can get for VC(i) content at present is via LAVCUVID hence by recommendation on a nvidia card at present (not this may change rapidly when/if VC(i) support is added to ffdshow).

[Sandy B Ridge]

FYI - I always drop a few frames at media start up regardless of the card and also with the change from Windowed to Exclusive mode, but to me this is no big deal. 

Agree, having consistently no dropped frames whilst watching stuff is perfect. Stuttering/frame drops when right clicking the context menus or fiddling about with settings is no big deal, just need to stop doing it, sit back and enjoy the movie!

What HW do you display your content on, eg:
- HDMI to 50" TV via a Receiver at 1920x1080 with refresh rate changing between 24/50/60hz ? 

Spot on! It's a 50in Panny plasma, 1080p native with 24/50/60 support. Using 24 for 23.976 and 24; 50 for 25 and 50 and 60 for 29.97, 30 and 60. Hdmi goes via an amp. I am having trouble with the NTSC rates though (23.976, 29.97, 59.94), keeps giving 1280x768@60Hz or similar when trying to get these from the desktop. There are some reports on Avsforum about similar stuff, so I guess it is the intel driver messing up. The amp is flaky with 23.976 anyway and the (unbypassable) video processor in it insists on resampling it to 24. So I've now settled down to using video clock/resampling to PCM audio at 24fps rather than persevere with bitstreaming/NTSC clock rates. (23.976 is seemingly almost impossible on SandyBridge anyway, unless the wind blows from a particular direction and the moon is in the right phase)

Also did you try with HW Accel on for fun?

No, but I'll give it a go tomorrow/weekend. Do you mean just the simple option in the MC settings menu for HW acceleration, or some settings in the filters themselves?

Makes sense really given they are different filters being used and producing a big difference in quality.
55% CPU: AVC 60i = 60fps with Deinterlacing (FFDSHOW/YADIF)
35% CPU: AVC 50p = 60fps no Deinterlacing (FFDSHOW)
25% CPU: VC1 60i = 60fps with ordinary interlacing (MS DMO Filter).  I clearly see the separation of both fields during playback.  The only quality playback I can get for VC(i) content at present is via LAVCUVID hence by recommendation on a nvidia card at present (not this may change rapidly when/if VC(i) support is added to ffdshow).

I'll have a closer look, I was only looking for stuttering and frame drops today and I was a little distracted, so I'll have another look over the next few days. I didn't immediately notice field separation though. The bonus of getting a card would also be that I get 23.976 and bitstream option again ( as well as the LAVCUVID of course).

Thanks again for uploading those. Very informative!

Cheers,

SBR

[jmone]

Bitstreaming is Overrated IMO from a HTPC
- Can't use Video Clock:  You may get your video and audio clocks close but they will always be different as they are physically separated in an HTPC, hence you will always be dropping or inserting video frames, the question is then just how often.
- No DSP:  You don't then get the ability to use the DSP features in MC
- You DO GET the pretty lights on the AV Receiver lighting up however! 

HW Accel: Just check the option in MC but I bet you uncheck it after a bit at least until you get an nvidia card as your CPU is handling the workload and with the DXVA support for the IGP you will lose madVR.

[Sandy B Ridge]

OK, update:

                   Windowed. Exclusive.
60i AVC. CPU.     55%.    40%
            Drops.   520.      0
50i AVC. CPU.     45%.    35%
            Drops    55.        0
50p AVC. CPU.    40%.    30%
            Drops.    8.          0
60i VC1. CPU.     25%.     20%
            Drops     0.         0

Only counting frame drops in actual playback (not the few at the beginning)

Yes, VC1 does show some combing.

Using HW acceleration doesn't seem to make a difference on my setup, still get MadVR, maybe it's disabled in MC now for intel iGPU?

SBR

[jmone]

The performance looks like what I saw - thanks

[Sandy B Ridge]

So are you saying that with LAVCUVID and your GTX550 Ti you get zero field artefact on the VC1? Is it really gone?!

Am I doing something wrong with the HW acceleration? Do I need to restart MC to make it stick?

SBR

[jmone]

No idea why you are not getting HW Accel working but IMO it is a worse outcome that your current setup as for me VC1(i) played as a black screen and of course you will not get madVR as it is not compatible with DXVA.

When checking the HW Accel option with a nvidia 450/550 Ti ROHQ will insert LAVCUVID as the video decoder (for formats it supports) and the quality of VC1(i) deinterlacing is outstanding.  I'm pretty content with the work YADIF does but the quality of the LAVCUVID HW Deinterlacing is at least as good + it works on VC1, AVC, and MPEG2 unlike FFDSHOW/YADIF that does not support VC1(i).

[jmone]

Also - keep in mind that VC1(i) stuff is not that common - I've hundreds of HD Discs (Blu / Red) and only a couple of VC1(i) material that was Concerts.  It seems the trend is towards AVC(i) with Blu for TV produced stuff which is deinterlaced fine with FFDSHOW/YADIF.

[Sandy B Ridge]

Thanks!

SBR