Topic: Intel HD3000 (i5 2500K) vs NVIDIA GT 430 (Read 18203 times)

Sandy B Ridge · « **on:** September 10, 2011, 03:32:59 pm »

I finally went against all advice and bought a GT430 for my HTPC. I reran the files that jmone kindly posted in the ATI vs NVIDIA thread and I'm a little disappointed with the performance.

Intel HD3000 GT430
Windowed. Exclusive. Windowed. Exclusive.
60i AVC. CPU. 55%. 40% 30% 22%
Drops. 520. 0 1400 0
50i AVC. CPU. 45%. 35% 30% 20%
Drops 55. 0 650 0
50p AVC. CPU. 40%. 30% 30% 20%
Drops. 8. 0 165 0
60i VC1. CPU. 25%. 20% 30% 20%
Drops 0. 0 1500 0

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

On a happier note, the deinterlacing in the VC1 clip is now much better!

I was under the impression that the GT430 was 3 or 4 times 'faster' than the Intel HD3000 for 'games' anyway.
How fast a card does one need to not get frame drops in windowed mode?

The windowed mode performance is poor given that these are relatively short clips of about a minute or so max.

SBR

jmone · « **Reply #1 on:** September 11, 2011, 02:34:03 am »

You can download and run "nvidiaInspector" and see what is happening on GPU and VPU load as this will be more of an issue than your CPU from the look of your stats. Also is your GT430 DDR5 or DDR3 based? You will also see the power state that it is in, if it is not in P0 (eg P8 or P12) you may find forcing it to P0 will help. Else....send it back and get a DDR5 based 450 or 550Ti!

Edit: Given that VC1(i) is looking better, I take it you have checked the "HW Accel" box under Tools --> Options --> Video and that LAVCUVID is being used.

jmone · « **Reply #2 on:** September 11, 2011, 02:59:30 am »

Here is the a pic of my 450 doing 1080 VC1(i) with madVR in windowed mode. The drops etc were just from the opening then perfect from then on. This is with the stock config from the MC install with one exception, I raised the "Backbuffer Queue" from 3 to 8 and on this HW this prevented occasions drops I was seeing from if a queue dipped.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #3 on:** September 11, 2011, 03:28:31 am »

Quote from: jmone on September 11, 2011, 02:34:03 am

You can download and run "nvidiaInspector" and see what is happening on GPU and VPU load as this will be more of an issue than your CPU from the look of your stats.

Thanks, will do, i guess it has more info than GPU-Z which i used?

Quote

Also is your GT430 DDR5 or DDR3 based?

I needed a low profile one because of my case, so i was stuck with DDR3. I don't think there are any DDR5 LP cards apart from the palit GTS450 LP (noisy and slightly too long for my case as it is at the moment)

Quote

You will also see the power state that it is in, if it is not in P0 (eg P8 or P12) you may find forcing it to P0 will help. Else....send it back and get a DDR5 based 450 or 550Ti!

Edit: Given that VC1(i) is looking better, I take it you have checked the "HW Accel" box under Tools --> Options --> Video and that LAVCUVID is being used.

Yes, correct. This I am happy with!

Thanks for the help. I'll download the inspector later ( need to watch the rugby now - Go Wales!)

SBR

jmone · « **Reply #4 on:** September 11, 2011, 05:44:44 am »

So not your day....crap GPU and Wales lost by 1 point to the Boks!

jmone · « **Reply #5 on:** September 11, 2011, 05:52:36 am »

FYI - I'm using my palit GTS450 LP in my full size main PC (put the 550Ti in the HTPC) and for "fun" I'm going to see if I can bolt a watercooled CPU cooler to it as it runs at 70 degrees all the time.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #6 on:** September 11, 2011, 08:03:21 am »

Quote from: jmone on September 11, 2011, 05:44:44 am

So not your day....crap GPU and Wales lost by 1 point to the Boks!

yeah.

I've had to go to work too.

SBR

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #7 on:** September 11, 2011, 04:23:46 pm »

OK, here's the inspector for the 50i AVC clip:

It's the render queue that seems to be suffering.

Are there any NVIDIA panel setting to tweak to improve performance?

SBR

jmone · « **Reply #8 on:** September 11, 2011, 04:39:43 pm »

Yup, this was what I was seeing and increasing the BackBuffer Queue to 8 from 3 worked for me (it pushes the render queue up and prevents drops)

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #9 on:** September 11, 2011, 04:43:48 pm »

Thanks. I'll give it a go tomorrow.

Also I've never seen the fan go above 3% on this inspector or GPU-Z. I'd better make sure it's spinning next time I play a movie!

Cheers mate!

SBR

jmone · « **Reply #10 on:** September 11, 2011, 05:37:37 pm »

Also keep an eye on the times under the Ave and Max stats as your looks sloooow (DDR3?). 60fps material need a frame decoded, rendered and presented every 16.67ms

newsposter · « **Reply #11 on:** September 12, 2011, 11:40:20 am »

The apparent frame rate of a GPU is often governed by the ability of the rest of the system to keep it fed with data.

If your cpu, disk, memory, chipset, drivers, etc have any bottlenecks at all, they will show up in the GPU.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #12 on:** September 12, 2011, 05:34:30 pm »

Quote from: newsposter on September 12, 2011, 11:40:20 am

The apparent frame rate of a GPU is often governed by the ability of the rest of the system to keep it fed with data.

If your cpu, disk, memory, chipset, drivers, etc have any bottlenecks at all, they will show up in the GPU.

Shouldn't be a problem. It's a i5 2500k, h67 MoBo, plenty of memory. Ok, so not a 2Tb SSD (can't afford one!), but a WD 2Tb green connected by SATA. No other software running.

SBR

newsposter · « **Reply #13 on:** September 12, 2011, 09:57:15 pm »

on-demand/access antivirus running? BOINC/Seti or anything like that?

You'd be surprised how onerous an on-demand virus scanner can be on even the fastest of machines.

Unless you're running a quality performance tool that records events for playback, you'll likely never notice the overhead.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #14 on:** September 13, 2011, 06:56:45 am »

Quote from: newsposter on September 12, 2011, 09:57:15 pm

on-demand/access antivirus running? BOINC/Seti or anything like that?

You'd be surprised how onerous an on-demand virus scanner can be on even the fastest of machines.

Unless you're running a quality performance tool that records events for playback, you'll likely never notice the overhead.

True.

Can you recommend a performance tool?

I'm more annoyed by the fact that performance has gone down in windowed mode with the GT430 when compared with the HD3000! Same overheads.

I've increased the backbuffer queue to 8, but it doesn't get filled. The rendering is too slow I think.

SBR

jmone · « **Reply #15 on:** September 13, 2011, 03:54:38 pm »

I think your choice will be to use Exclusive mode or get a faster card. Those rendering times are not good.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #16 on:** September 13, 2011, 05:29:11 pm »

Quote from: jmone on September 13, 2011, 03:54:38 pm

I think your choice will be to use Exclusive mode or get a faster card. Those rendering times are not good.

I've had a little play with the clock settings in NVIDIA inspector and managed to halve the render times, but still the present times are waaaaay too long. Like a hundred times slower than the GTS450 above. This I don't understand???

The overclock did help, with less frames dropped, but still significant. How come the present times are massive?

SBR

JimH · « **Reply #17 on:** September 14, 2011, 04:40:51 pm »

Here's a discussion about Nvidia cards on AVSForum:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1358898

jmone · « **Reply #18 on:** September 14, 2011, 04:50:26 pm »

Quote from: Sandy B Ridge on September 13, 2011, 05:29:11 pm

I've had a little play with the clock settings in NVIDIA inspector and managed to halve the render times, but still the present times are waaaaay too long. Like a hundred times slower than the GTS450 above. This I don't understand???

The overclock did help, with less frames dropped, but still significant. How come the present times are massive?

SBR

I'm guessing the slow memory transfer rate is causing you the issue ... as the time to do the copies back and forward been the system and GPU memory will have an additive effect hence really blowing out times. I don't see how you are going to get this GT430 to work the way you want to no matter how hard you try.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #19 on:** September 14, 2011, 06:06:16 pm »

Quote from: jmone on September 14, 2011, 04:50:26 pm

I'm guessing the slow memory transfer rate is causing you the issue ... as the time to do the copies back and forward been the system and GPU memory will have an additive effect hence really blowing out times. I don't see how you are going to get this GT430 to work the way you want to no matter how hard you try.

Yeah, thanks, I guessed as much.

I'm getting quite a bit of tearing in exclusive mode too now, so all in all I don't seem to gain much from having this card in the box (except for better deinterlacing, 23p and 59p).
I'll keep it in for a couple of weeks and have a good fettle with it, and see how it overclocks, but I think it may have to go.....

Thanks for the help guys,

SBR

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #20 on:** September 16, 2011, 04:24:26 am »

Quote from: jmone on September 14, 2011, 04:50:26 pm

I'm guessing the slow memory transfer rate is causing you the issue ... as the time to do the copies back and forward been the system and GPU memory will have an additive effect hence really blowing out times.

just thinking about this again. I don't think that memory transfer time is the problem here as the present time in the stats shrinks down to submillisecond in exclusive mode. Surely it is the same memory transfer copy load in both modes?

SBR

jmone · « **Reply #21 on:** September 16, 2011, 07:02:32 am »

You would have to ask madshi.

newsposter · « **Reply #22 on:** September 16, 2011, 10:18:44 am »

If it is a memory transfer time problem, I don't know that going to a PCIe card will solve that.

Try loading up sysinternals process monitor and process explorer. Even with those point in time snapshots something might stand out as eating system resources.

jmone · « **Reply #23 on:** September 22, 2011, 10:19:20 pm »

OK - I've asked in the madVR thread on the rendering times as I'm seeing it also in my 550Ti when in windowed mode (but not my 450) - more here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1528143#post1528143

jmone · « **Reply #24 on:** September 23, 2011, 02:49:36 am »

Found and fixed the issue - SBR give this a go on your 430!

Quote

EDIT - Fixed the issue by reapplying the Std Windows 7 Aero Theme (Control Panel --> Personalization). Seems if you have a "Basic" theme then the presentation times go up by x100. With the Aero Theme applied all is fine (no idea how I had a non-aero theme in the first place).

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #25 on:** September 23, 2011, 03:38:48 am »

WooHoo!!!

Thanks for that jmone - I haven't had a chance to catch up on the doom9 fora for a few days. That really sounds promising. I'll try it when I get home.

I disabled Aero on purpose when I first installed windows 7 because that was the advice at the time (about 6 months ago). I really can't remember the reasoning behind it now, but seemed sensible at the time. Some video apps had a 'disable Aero at startup' option (maybe PowerDVD, maybe TMT5 I can't remember off hand) so I just permanently disabled it for that reason. The scientist in me should really keep a notebook of the settings and their whys and wherefores, just to help the grey cells, but hey ho - plus ca change!

Cheers

SBR

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #26 on:** September 23, 2011, 05:24:56 pm »

Boo hoo....

no difference for me unfortunately. I didn't get a chance to fiddle much, but I get no difference in present times with aero. MC seems to disable aero though. A little exclamation mark comes up in the task bar saying MC is incompatible with aero. ?

Never mind!

I'm resigned to exclusive mode now until Q2 next year when next gen things may happen!
Maybe Santa will bring me a full height case?!

SBR

jmone · « **Reply #27 on:** September 23, 2011, 05:39:34 pm »

It was worth a shot. You could always get the dremel out and cut a slot in the case for that pimped out look!

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #28 on:** September 23, 2011, 05:52:57 pm »

Yeah,

Don't think that I haven't considered it!

SBR

JimH · « **Reply #29 on:** September 23, 2011, 05:56:27 pm »

I was thinking of one of those "nibblers" that tile setters use on ceramic tile. They don't use the last 1/4 of an inch on most circuit boards, do they?

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #30 on:** September 23, 2011, 06:12:44 pm »

I'm going to go for this look:

SBR

PS hope this guy doesn't mind a linky to his pics!

JimH · « **Reply #31 on:** September 23, 2011, 06:20:23 pm »

Looking good.

I have a couple I could have entered in that contest.

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #32 on:** September 24, 2011, 01:32:35 pm »

Quote from: jmone on September 23, 2011, 02:49:36 am

Found and fixed the issue - SBR give this a go on your 430!

Looks like I won't have to get the dremel out after all. I've cracked it!

You were completely right jmone, Enabling Aero was the answer, my temporary problem was that I had set madVR to 'disable desktop composition' which meant that it was disabling Aero! I didn't initially make the connection between Aero and desktop composition. So unckecking that made a huge difference, the present times are now below 0.2ms. And no frame drops for those files in full screen windowed mode.

So, to sum up my madVR settings are: (in case anyone else is having problems with framedrops)

Set Windows 7 to use an Aero theme in Control Panel -- Personalisation

MadVR settings: decoding - all off
scaling - fettle to your hearts content (wouldn't suggest something with 8 taps though!)
general :

windowed mode settings:

trade quality for performance: none

Many thanks jmone for making me a happy bunny! I'm going to crack open a bottle of Aussie Shiraz in your honour!

Now to go and watch some stuff and stop fiddling!

SBR

jmone · « **Reply #33 on:** September 24, 2011, 04:32:17 pm »

Exclellent on all counts!

AVTechMan · « **Reply #34 on:** September 24, 2011, 08:40:51 pm »

Wow, who would have ever known that you needed an MS feature to play movies correctly...lol. Usually there are certain configurations when you need to disable Aero...one is if the computer is being used for a specific task (like using it as a DAW) that require specific system settings to insure minimum interference.

JohnT · « **Reply #35 on:** September 26, 2011, 08:37:16 am »

Can anyone explain why disabling Aero caused frame drops during video playback?

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #36 on:** September 26, 2011, 08:50:21 am »

Quote from: JohnT on September 26, 2011, 08:37:16 am

Can anyone explain why disabling Aero caused frame drops during video playback?

where's madshi when you need him! He's been awfully quiet on doom9 recently. I guess he's busy with work stuff.

SBR

newsposter · « **Reply #37 on:** September 26, 2011, 01:45:03 pm »

Disabling Aero has the side effect of disabling all of the hardware acceleration that might be available in the gpu/driver.

I've never seen an explanation of the why behind this. MSFT just decided to couple the two together.

There are some unreliable/unstable driver hacks out there that try to force-set hardware acceleration regardless of how Aero is set up.

Daydream · « **Reply #38 on:** September 29, 2011, 03:35:21 pm »

Back to the original this vs that topic, does the recent developments in ffdshow for Sandy Brindge change the perspective somewhat?

Sandy B Ridge · « **Reply #39 on:** September 29, 2011, 03:58:03 pm »

Quote from: Daydream on September 29, 2011, 03:35:21 pm

Back to the original this vs that topic, does the recent developments in ffdshow for Sandy Brindge change the perspective somewhat?

Good question! Looks promising.

I'm going to wait until it is a bit more stable and integrated into LAV Video and/or Red October before I pull out my GT430 to give it a go. IIRC with my H67 MoBo I'd have to physically remove the card before the iGPU gets activated again?

Has anyone given it a go? Jmone - have you been curious enough to try it?

SBR

jmone · « **Reply #40 on:** September 29, 2011, 04:10:07 pm »

Sort of - I've been watching to see how the development goes, but keep in mind the aim of egur is to get HW Assisted Video Decoding working. The potential upside is that like with LAVCUVID, we should get better quality deinterlacing than with FFDSHOW/YADIF on interlaced material (note: the "quality" of the actual decoding are the same). There may also be an performance upside but for most the Sandy Bridge CPU has more than enough guts to run FFDSHOW just fine as even a i3-2100 should be able decode and use high quality deinterlacing over the common formats.

Back to the the original topic, the quality then comes down to what the renderer does and how well it can keep up....this is where the Sandybridge is going to struggle with madVR due to slower memory transfer rates as SBR has found.

jmone · « **Reply #41 on:** September 29, 2011, 04:14:15 pm »

SBR - I may give it a go on my i7-2600K based HTPC on the W'End for "fun". I also agree that having it as an option at the right time in RO / LAVVideo etc would be good especially for those that need the performance hit (I'm thinking some of the lower end Mobile GPU) as part of the "HW Accel Option" as both this one and CUVID just seem more stable and reliable than DXVA IMO.

jmone · « **Reply #42 on:** October 01, 2011, 06:17:32 pm »

OK - did some testing and while egur's Intel SandyBridge hardware accelerated FFDShow decoder (H264/VC1/MPEG2) 0.14 alpha certianly works and is great for most content it is not doing any frame doubling on Interlaced Content so some of the output looks pretty poor in comparision wiht LAV CUVID. Anyway posted some comments in his thread here:
: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=162442&page=7

Also found something interesting where you can use both the IGP and GPU - http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1529656#post1529656

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Intel HD3000 (i5 2500K) vs NVIDIA GT 430 (Read 18203 times)