Topic: AMD or NVIDIA (Read 17842 times)

CraigNZ · « **on:** January 25, 2014, 04:51:41 pm »

I am currently using an AMD 5700 series graphics card but as of v108 I cannot enable HW acceleration when using ROHQ (as noted in my other post). I also have a NVIDIA GTX650ti that is sitting on the bench not being used for anything. Probably an overkill for watching movies but could be useful for making the HTPC also a gaming PC. For some reason I thought a couple of years ago that using NVIDIA graphics cards for HTPC was not good because of driver issues. So should I replace the AMD card with the NVIDIA card and hopefully it works okay with v108, or stay with HW acceleration off and wait until the AMD problem is resolved?

jmone · « **Reply #1 on:** January 25, 2014, 05:03:09 pm »

I'm a fan of the nvidia cards and they are been great. The 650Ti should give you great ROHQ performance. That said I've not had any experience with AMD cards for many years. Give it a go!

Awesome Donkey · « **Reply #2 on:** January 25, 2014, 05:17:08 pm »

I've used both and currently I favor Nvidia cards.

kstuart · « **Reply #3 on:** January 25, 2014, 06:58:07 pm »

Quote from: CraigNZ on January 25, 2014, 04:51:41 pm

So should I replace the AMD card with the NVIDIA card and hopefully it works okay with v108, or stay with HW acceleration off and wait until the AMD problem is resolved?

My guess is that your "problem" is that JRiver's AMD problem was resolved in 108. Previously, hardware acceleration was checked, but it was not being used. So, in 108, suddenly it is being used and the GPU has extra work. madVR is very GPU-intensive.
If you already own the NVIDIA card, then give it a try.

eddyshere · « **Reply #4 on:** January 25, 2014, 07:32:57 pm »

Hate to say it but i mostly tried it all (if I only think about the money spent

…but early still adopter). For me madvr (jinc3 in both chroma and up sampling was always the spot to achieve)…clearly this hurdle WAS only possible with a discrete card (>= 650TI for Nvidia and 7750 for AMD). Re UHD(4K) I have played around with a pana wt600 (4K) for the last weeks and just returned it to my dealer…where I'm customer since ages why he almost always accepts my trading in my stuff and I got my "old" KURO KRP-600A back (which I had traded in for the pana). DVD to 4k scaling in madvr was a pain but could be achieved with both a gtx780 and a R9 290. but I had to take out also my old full height htpc cases and temp and noise where again a concern.

To the OP's question I still have a preference for amd cards for my htpc's (my gaming rig is nvidia) as their driver where often somewhat "better" (deep color works out of the box - for the record : tried once a quadro K4000 and could never achieve deep color as the driver automatically turns it on only with selected softwares) and for me the picture quality with AMD seemed somewhat "sharper".

WHAT MABYE IS OF INTEREST for others : I'm in the early stages of my new "minimalistic-igp only" venture and made first tests with a gigabyte F2-A88X-wifi board with 8GB 2133RAM + the new Kaveri A10-7850. I can report that Jinc3 both chroma + upscaling to 1920-1080 with anti-ringing without dropped frames is possible, be it for dvd source and of course BD source material. So now I can revert to a "more than low-profile" htpc case which will definitly look better and sleek in my living room. So in short it seems that a discrete card is no longer necessary for these MadVr settings.

CraigNZ · « **Reply #5 on:** January 25, 2014, 08:18:52 pm »

Actually, v104 HW acceleration worked, v108 it locked up the program, so I had to turn off HW acceleration. Given the comments above I will swap out the AMD card and try the 650. Will report back here later today.

CraigNZ · « **Reply #6 on:** January 26, 2014, 01:03:15 pm »

I swapped the AMD card for the NVIDIA card (GTX650ti) and after resolving the audio problems everything worked perfectly. I can now use v108 with HW acceleration. But more importantly I was totally amazed by the difference in quality. With the AMD 5700 board the text on the screen was fuzzy .. am using a ONKYO AVR and Panasonic Projector. With the new 650 card the text is crisp and the entire viewing experience is WAY better than I had ever seen it before. This surprised me because I thought the information was completely digital and with all processing turned off the video signal should be identical with either card. But it is night and day. Both cards used the same settings in the JRiver software. Both cards had all enhancement processing turned off, ie, all settings deferred this back to the application. And on the AVR I am using video pass through. So there should be no difference. Only other thing I can think of is the NVIDIA uses a different HDMI cable because of the smaller connector as compared to the AMD card. So maybe the HDMI cable made a difference, but again, if passing digital information I don't see how there could be such a difference. Or, the NVIDIA card is doing some processing to the digital signal that the AMD did or vice versa. In any case I would highly recommend the 650 over the 5700 card.

6233638 · « **Reply #7 on:** January 26, 2014, 05:05:39 pm »

For what it's worth, it was probably a difference in the default output mode on the two cards (one using RGB and the other using YCbCr for example) rather than the card itself affecting the sharpness, or it being the cable/adapter.

It is all digital, and sharpness of text should be unaffected by those things.

CraigNZ · « **Reply #8 on:** January 26, 2014, 05:54:08 pm »

That could be .. if that is true then I would have to say NVIDIA did a much better job at setting up the defaults 'out of the box' then AMD.

jmone · « **Reply #9 on:** January 26, 2014, 08:07:54 pm »

Glad you now have a good result!

bulldogger · « **Reply #10 on:** January 27, 2014, 07:47:58 am »

Quote from: eddyshere on January 25, 2014, 07:32:57 pm

DVD to 4k scaling in madvr was a pain but could be achieved with both a gtx780 and a R9 290. but I had to take out also my old full height htpc cases and temp and noise where again a concern.

Do you know anything about water cooling. This company is selling a water cooled version of the R9 290 that is over-clocked. Seems like a quiet solution for 4k and madvr? http://www.visiontekproducts.com/index.php/component/virtuemart/graphics-cards/visiontek-cryovenom-liquidcooled-series-r9-290-detail?Itemid=0

CraigNZ · « **Reply #11 on:** January 27, 2014, 11:07:14 am »

Not familiar with that technology but sounds like an idea. For my theater room I built a 'stage' which sits below the screen. With easily removable covers it means all the electronics easily fit in there with lots of cooling fans to vent out the sides. Actually one side of the stage is the intake fans and the other side is the output side, so the air flows through the electronics from one end to the other. Each of the components then have their own one or more fans to blow air from the front to the back. With this concept the components keep very cool, it is quiet because the stage is covered in a thick black cloth material, and the panels remove easily from the top to make it easy to work on wiring and components. So far the video card runs about 32 degrees C so quite cool.

ldoodle · « **Reply #12 on:** February 03, 2014, 10:25:11 am »

I'm in this boat now as well. I currently have a 5450 which out-of-the-box (as in driver defaults) is no good for ROST with BluRay's, and only works with ROHQ on low madVR settings.

So deciding between a 6450 and maybe a 630? Need low profile as my case is low profile only!

kstuart · « **Reply #13 on:** February 03, 2014, 12:51:47 pm »

Quote from: ldoodle on February 03, 2014, 10:25:11 am

I'm in this boat now as well. I currently have a 5450 which out-of-the-box (as in driver defaults) is no good for ROST with BluRay's, and only works with ROHQ on low madVR settings.

So deciding between a 6450 and maybe a 630? Need low profile as my case is low profile only!

I just added the Asus passive-cooled Radeon 6450 in my low profile case, and I can now run ROHQ with DXVA2 image upscaling and downscaling, and SoftCubic chroma scaling, and nothing checked in the "trade quality for performance" list (except for subtitles, since I don't care much about subtitle quality). (The color using SoftCubic looks very good, and since that is what is being scaled, it seems fine to my eye.)

I use the madVR SmoothMotion feature since I watch a fair amount of 25fps content and my monitor does not have a 25 or 50fps refresh rate.

I have "hardware acceleration" unchecked, in order to allow the GPU to be used for madVR. I have a dual core 2.8ghz and software decoding using Hendrik' LAV decoder works fine on everything.

(I have all the buffer settings in madVR maximized, since the Asus card was way more memory quantity than is otherwise needed.)

I have not tried Nvidia for HT-PC so I cannot compare them. The Asus card is US$42 new, so it is not much of a gamble if you find it is not suitable.

6233638 · « **Reply #14 on:** February 03, 2014, 01:22:05 pm »

Unfortunately, the 6450 or GT630 are not very high performance cards, but they do seem to be the fastest things you can get with a low profile passive cooler. I think the GT630 is the faster of the two, and personally I prefer Nvidia. I have a GT610 I picked up as a backup card (cheapest I could find with an HDMI output in a pinch) and it will run madVR on the lower quality settings without too much trouble.

The fastest "standard" low profile card I've seen is an AMD 7750, though it is not passively cooled. It should be quite a bit faster than the GT630 though.

There's actually a very strange looking low profile 7850 available, but I'm not sure how quiet that will be.

Quote from: kstuart on February 03, 2014, 12:51:47 pm

I just added the Asus passive-cooled Radeon 6450 in my low profile case, and I can now run ROHQ with DXVA2 image upscaling and downscaling, and SoftCubic chroma scaling, and nothing checked in the "trade quality for performance" list (except for subtitles, since I don't care much about subtitle quality). (The color using SoftCubic looks very good, and since that is what is being scaled, it seems fine to my eye.)

I would suggest using Mitchell-Netravali rather than SoftCubic for Chroma. SoftCubic has a tendency to desaturate colors. (actually, MN does as well, but to a much lesser degree)

I don't know how DXVA scaling is with AMD, but on Nvidia it's actually more demanding than the lower-end scaling options in madVR (ROHQ) and looks worse.

ldoodle · « **Reply #15 on:** February 03, 2014, 03:03:18 pm »

Thanks guys. Do the NVIDIAs do bitstreaming?

What the expected real-world performance of an FM2+ (Kaveri) combo, compared to something like the 6450/630?

ldoodle · « **Reply #16 on:** February 03, 2014, 03:40:44 pm »

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/GT6401GD5L

GDDR5, low profile and passive.

??

Hendrik · « **Reply #17 on:** February 03, 2014, 03:45:58 pm »

That looks like a decent low-profile card, however it does have a fan (because you said passive)

ldoodle · « **Reply #18 on:** February 03, 2014, 04:05:37 pm »

Oh yeah! It looked like it was just a heat sink!

What is the noise level like on these fans?

kstuart · « **Reply #19 on:** February 04, 2014, 04:44:26 pm »

There is also a GDDR3 version.

Just curious if GDDR5 vs GDDR3 makes a difference for Home Theater (madVR) use ?

Hendrik · « **Reply #20 on:** February 04, 2014, 04:48:08 pm »

Yes, the memory speed is rather crucial for madVR. DDR3 cards don't fare too well.

jmone · « **Reply #21 on:** February 04, 2014, 05:12:53 pm »

Read some reviews on Fan noise. I'm not worried about fans as most are fine, but I did have a Low Profile card for about a month before it hit the bin as it's tiny twin fans sounded like a turbine engine at high speed!

kstuart · « **Reply #22 on:** February 04, 2014, 05:27:38 pm »

Quote from: jmone on February 04, 2014, 05:12:53 pm

Read some reviews on Fan noise. I'm not worried about fans as most are fine, but I did have a Low Profile card for about a month before it hit the bin as it's tiny twin fans sounded like a turbine engine at high speed!

The reviews on Newegg for this card are not good concerning fan noise.

Also note that it is "double wide" (takes up two slots width).

kstuart · « **Reply #23 on:** February 04, 2014, 07:12:13 pm »

Quote from: 6233638 on February 03, 2014, 01:22:05 pm

I would suggest using Mitchell-Netravali rather than SoftCubic for Chroma. SoftCubic has a tendency to desaturate colors. (actually, MN does as well, but to a much lesser degree)

I was reading another thread on this site, and it linked to the madVR thread in Dec 2012, where you gave some images that compared various chroma upscaling and BiCubic75 looked the best. Any advantage to using MN instead ?

6233638 · « **Reply #24 on:** February 04, 2014, 08:19:03 pm »

Quote from: kstuart on February 04, 2014, 07:12:13 pm

I was reading another thread on this site, and it linked to the madVR thread in Dec 2012, where you gave some images that compared various chroma upscaling and BiCubic75 looked the best. Any advantage to using MN instead ?

I suggested Mitchell-Netravali because you were using SoftCubic. MN has the least amount of ringing of any of the "cheap" scaling algorithms while retaining reasonably good sharpness. (SC has almost no ringing, but is very soft, and soft scaling tends to desaturate chroma)

Bicubic 75 is the closest thing to the more demanding scaling algorithms like Lanczos or Jinc, but does introduce some ringing compared to MN or SC. (though it's generally not an issue)

kstuart · « **Reply #25 on:** February 04, 2014, 08:28:59 pm »

Quote from: 6233638 on February 04, 2014, 08:19:03 pm

I suggested Mitchell-Netravali because you were using SoftCubic. MN has the least amount of ringing of any of the "cheap" scaling algorithms while retaining reasonably good sharpness. (SC has almost no ringing, but is very soft, and soft scaling tends to desaturate chroma)

Bicubic 75 is the closest thing to the more demanding scaling algorithms like Lanczos or Jinc, but does introduce some ringing compared to MN or SC. (though it's generally not an issue)

I just found madshi's comment on your comparison images:

Quote

So I guess I agree with you to use either Mitchell-Netravali or Bicubic75 for chroma for good quality sources, when anti-ringing is disabled (SoftCubic for bad sources, though). It's probably a matter of taste which one to choose. Mitchell-Netravali has less ringing. Bicubic75 is sharper and has less aliasing, but has more ringing. Performance is the same.

So, is there any significant performance difference between Bicubic 50 and Bicubic 100, or is it just a sharpness difference ?

6233638 · « **Reply #26 on:** February 04, 2014, 09:05:13 pm »

Quote from: kstuart on February 04, 2014, 08:28:59 pm

I just found madshi's comment on your comparison images:
So, is there any significant performance difference between Bicubic 50 and Bicubic 100, or is it just a sharpness difference ?

75 is the best balance between sharpness, ringing, and most comparable to the more demanding algorithms. (e.g. Lanczos 3, Jinc 3 AR etc.)
Performance requirements are the same for everything between DXVA and Lanczos on the list.

For what it's worth, I don't agree with Madshi, and I would basically never recommend SoftCubic for chroma scaling.
So far I have only found one video where SoftCubic actually looked better than other algorithms, and it was basically the video at fault. (extremely badly encoded) I would not set it globally.

eddyshere · « **Reply #27 on:** February 05, 2014, 12:47:48 pm »

Quote from: bulldogger on January 27, 2014, 07:47:58 am

Do you know anything about water cooling. This company is selling a water cooled version of the R9 290 that is over-clocked. Seems like a quiet solution for 4k and madvr? http://www.visiontekproducts.com/index.php/component/virtuemart/graphics-cards/visiontek-cryovenom-liquidcooled-series-r9-290-detail?Itemid=0

Yes my gaming rig is watercooled.whatercooling for htpc doesn't cut it for me. Closed circuits are only available with 12 cm fans and for "smaller" components you will have noise from the pump. Thus you still use big cases.

Quietest htpc for me so far is aircooled with a very configurable fan controller such as the aquaero from aquacomputer and very carefully selected silent fans

ldoodle · « **Reply #28 on:** February 05, 2014, 02:02:54 pm »

The 'problem' with GPU reviews is the lesser models get panned because they're rubbish at gaming.

I've yet to come across a GPU review that is reviewed for 100% HTPC use only.

kstuart · « **Reply #29 on:** February 05, 2014, 02:33:04 pm »

Quote from: ldoodle on February 05, 2014, 02:02:54 pm

The 'problem' with GPU reviews is the lesser models get panned because they're rubbish at gaming.

I've yet to come across a GPU review that is reviewed for 100% HTPC use only.

Well in the case of that one card, I read the Newegg customer reviews only for the words "fan" or "noise" and there were severall people who thought it was noisy. YMMV.

kstuart · « **Reply #30 on:** February 05, 2014, 02:37:22 pm »

Quote from: 6233638 on February 04, 2014, 09:05:13 pm

75 is the best balance between sharpness, ringing, and most comparable to the more demanding algorithms. (e.g. Lanczos 3, Jinc 3 AR etc.)
Performance requirements are the same for everything between DXVA and Lanczos on the list.

Thanks for that.

One other question - If full deinterlacing and Bicubic75 together are challenging for the GPU, would the picture quality be better with half deinterlacing and Bicubic75 or full deinterlacing and Bilinear? Content is 1080i on a 1080p monitor.

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Author Topic: AMD or NVIDIA (Read 17842 times)